June 22, 2021 – South Burlington, VT

When Data Innovations (DI) Support Engineers review a technical case, they consider data from several tools such as: the Specimen Event Log (SEL), Communications Trace (Comm Trace), Global Configuration, and the Driver Configuration. Providing data from these sources can be beneficial in expediting the troubleshooting process.

Questions to answer in the case submission:

To help us expedite the troubleshooting process, provide the following information during your initial submission:

• Description of the issue or problem being experienced. If applicable, go ahead and copy/paste the error into the description.
• Is the system a Live Production System?
• Is this a new setup?
• Did the software ever function as expected?
• What has changed?
• What troubleshooting has already occurred, if any?
• License # of affected Instrument Manager™ (IM) software.
• If connection or instrument/LIS specific:
  • What is the instrument/LIS?
  • What driver & driver version is being used?
• Contact name, number, and email of person to contact to begin troubleshooting.
  

Best Methods for Submission and Considerations:

For customers in North America – Submitting a case to support by email (northamerica-support@datainnovations.com) or via My DI Community is an excellent way to explain the issue, quickly and completely. For more information or clarification on these considerations, please contact DI Customer Support via email or by phone 802-658-1955.

For customers in Asia Pacific, EMEA, or Latin America – Please contact your regional support team for more information or clarification on the considerations mentioned in this article.

A few key considerations:

1. Escalation procedures vary from site-to-site. Being familiar with your own internal escalation procedure (directly to DI or through a Business Partner), could minimize the amount of time it takes to resolve your case.
2. Know the physical location of the IM server so it can be accessed, if necessary.
3. Know who has access to the IM server and their availability to assist in the troubleshooting process, if necessary.
4. Know your IM License number so that DI may identify the license in our systems quickly and review all aspects of the software features.

This information helps DI provide you with a more rapid solution and significantly decreases the interruption time leading to productive use of the software.

What to Provide and How to Obtain:

DI Customer Support (CS) attends to your cases as quickly as possible. We often ask for very specific data to identify and resolve the issue rapidly. Below are some of those items and how to obtain them.

Specimen Event Log (SEL) – This is a diagnostic tool in IM that tracks the events of a specimen’s data as it flows through IM. If you happen to know of one Specimen ID (SID) that exemplifies the issue you are encountering, you can follow the steps below to send that data to us.

1. Log into IM.
2. Select Diagnostics then Specimen Event Log.
3. In the upper left corner, enter your Specimen ID and select the magnifying glass.
4. When the data appears in the upper and lower panes, select the red wrench in the tool bar to “create a support file”. Save the file and send that to Customer Support.
   
   

Communications Trace (Comm Trace) – This tool can be used to review the raw data being transmitted to and from a connection. Your CS case owner uses it to review that the message being transmitted is in the format that the driver or instrument expects, and it can be used to recreate specific issues.

It is not necessary or recommended to keep Comm traces always running, but if you have questions about the exact data being sent or received from an interface, turning the Comm trace on for the connection(s) in question is recommended.

Communications traces only capture the data to the log when the trace is turned on. If you find that there is an issue of an order or result not crossing, follow the steps below to send that data to us.

1. Log into IM.
2. Select System then Status.
3. Find the connection(s) you wish to start capturing data on (usually the LIS Orders/Results and Instrument in question). Right-click on that connection and select Start Communication Trace.
4. Once enabled, you can view the Comm trace data by right-clicking on the connection again and selecting View Communications Trace.
5. Send data through the representative connections.
6. Once you feel like you have captured the data in question, from the Comm Trace window, select the blue disk icon to save the text file out. Send that to Customer Support.
   
   

Global Configuration – The Global Configuration retains all the configuration options and connection assignments. It also retains every rule on the system along with the Specimen Management (SM) Workspace. Often this is used to recreate the issue you are experiencing on a systemic scale, rather than looking at an individual configuration (see below). Typically, this file is large so it might not be easily attached to an email/uploaded to a ticket. The CS case owner will work with you to get the Global Configuration.

To obtain the Global Configuration:

1. Log into IM.
2. Select Configuration then Save Configuration to File.
3. Save the file and send that to Customer Support.
   

Driver Configuration – The Driver Configuration export will provide only the configuration options and rules set-up for your individual instrument/LIS configuration. Although it does not give a complete picture like the Global Configuration, we can still glean helpful troubleshooting data from it.

To obtain the Driver Configuration:

1. Log into IM.
2. Select Configuration then Configuration Editor.
3. Select the configuration that you want to send to DI.
4. Select Export in the bottom of the window.
5. Save the file and send that to Customer Support.