To get your support issues resolved quickly and efficiently, it is recommended to follow these best practices when creating a support case:
- Understand the scope of Sitecore Support service and other support policies.
Sitecore Support is designed to assist Sitecore Customers and Partners in resolving technical issues while using or implementing Sitecore software.
Sitecore Support team is not able to assist with website administration, and does not provide implementation assistance, or consulting services.
Before opening a support case, review the scope of Sitecore Support service as well as other available sources of help:
- Investigate the issue before creating a support case.
Search for specific errors, warning messages, or general questions on the internet, because many solutions are provided on sites such as Sitecore Knowledge Base or shared by Sitecore community.
For example, review Sitecore XP log records for any errors or warnings. It can be performed with tools such as the Sitecore Log Analyzer by uploading a log file to it.
- Report one problem per support case.
Only report one problem per support case with only one reproduction scenario. If two or more cases are related, mention this in the problem description.
- Provide an accurate and detailed scenario of an issue. If possible, ensure it is reproduced in a clean or isolated environment.
In most situations, Sitecore Support needs to reproduce the issue on their end to find the resolution. Providing clear scenarios can significantly reduce investigation time and the number of responses and answers needed to fix the issue.
To assist in it provide a step-by-step scenario of reproduction or a screencast of the reproduction of an issue, for example, a video in MP4 format. It is not recommended to capture a video in a GIF format.
If it is possible, provide Support with access to your test environment where the issue is reproduced.
- Provide information about your installation, such as configuration and log files (for self-hosted products such as Experience Manager, Experience Platform, Experience Commerce).
The How to collect basic information about your Sitecore installation article describes how to collect website configuration details and share them with Sitecore Support. This information helps to find better answers to possible issues. Providing this information with the initial request can reduce the resolution time.
It is also important to be careful to provide information from the exact environment where the issues are observed. Otherwise, this can lead the investigations in the wrong direction.
- Describe your Sitecore environment architecture (for self-hosted products such as Experience Manager, Experience Platform, Experience Commerce).
In many situations, understanding your Sitecore environment architecture is critical to properly identifying, reproducing, and resolving the issue. Whenever possible, provide an environment architecture diagram or some other way to explain how your Sitecore instances are set up.
- Provide the correct reference / name of the affected tenant (for Sitecore-Hosted products such as Managed Cloud, Content Hub, XM Cloud).
- Provide information about the severity of the issue.
To attend to the most important support issues as quickly as possible, Sitecore Support internally prioritizes all support cases. To do this, the team uses information from the support case such as the affected environment, business impact level, and problem description.
Make sure these fields always contain the correct information about the severity of your issue. For important project milestones, provide information about the expected deadlines whenever possible.
- Select a contract that corresponds to the specific project related to the issue.
Select one of the available Sitecore licenses from the drop-down list or add a new one. For Sitecore partners, use your Customer license to open cases instead of your Partner license. For more details on how to use Sitecore licenses on the Support Portal review the following article KB0073804.
Proper license information allows the Support Team to work on multiple support cases as a single group, and determine the associated support plan.
- Report full details for errors or exceptions.
When reporting an error or exception, attach all the information about it in plain text or HTML format. It is not recommended to attach a screenshot with the exception stack traces because they normally do not contain the full information.
- Attach files to the case or upload them to the Sitecore Support SharePoint storage.
Navigate to the How to provide files to Sitecore Support article to learn about all available options for exchanging files with Sitecore Support.
- Provide information and apply recommendations against the exact affected environment.
Be careful to provide diagnostics information and perform recommended tests on the exact environment that is affected by the reported issue.
For example, providing log files from the development environment when the issue is only reproducible on production may lead the investigation in the wrong direction. In a similar manner, applying steps recommended for one Sitecore version against a different Sitecore version will likely not produce the expected results.
- Provide a feedback using the support satisfaction survey.
Whenever a support case is closed, a satisfaction survey email message is automatically sent to the creator of the case. Responses provided via such surveys are reviewed and analyzed very carefully to understand the current feedback and discover new ways to improve the support service. When receiving such a survey, spare a few minutes to provide feedback to the support team and share any relevant details about the current support case as well as ideas for future improvements.
Following these simple guidelines ensures that your case is handled in a timely fashion and most likely results in a quicker resolution.