During fair season, time is a valuable commodity. We all want your fair to run as smoothly as possible, with no issues. When a problem does occur, our goal is to solve it as quickly as possible. That’s easier to do when we have all the information we need—a few seconds spent including more information in the initial email will pay off in the timeliness of a solution/response.
- Think in terms of what exactly would we need to know if we were going to exactly replicate what is happening for you, and that will give us all the necessary information to help solve your problem without unnecessary and time-consuming requests for more information.
- Include all information for the “W-words”: Who, What, When, Where – if your ticket contains all of that information from the beginning, the questions will be resolved much more quickly.
- When a long email conversation has been conducted prior to contacting the support team, please summarize the details in the initial support request rather than forwarding the string of messages for the team to decode.
For all support requests, please include the following:
- The name of the fair (especially if you have more than one, or if you’re sending a message from a mobile device that doesn’t include your county/signature)
- The place in the hierarchy that this is happening, if pertinent (department/division/class)
If an exhibitor or entry record is involved, we need to know this information:
- The name of the exhibitor and exhibitor number, and the entry number(s)
- Details about what is not working the way you expected
When you are getting unexpected results on a custom or standard report, we need this information in order to be able to track down the problem:
- The full name of the report (custom or standard)
- A concise description of the intended results of the report
- Examples of names of exhibitors and/or entries (exh/entry numbers) that are or are not listing on the report (expected results vs. actual results)
- Examples of any fields (for example address, description, exhibitor number) that are not showing up—for all or a portion of the report
- Incorrect sort or filter—out of order, too many or too few records are showing up (what order did you expect, which entries are or are not showing up correctly?)
If an error message is encountered, it’s important to know all the details of what happened leading up to that error message:
- The process being attempted (what were you trying to do?)
- The screens/steps used in that process (menu item, tab, and buttons clicked on, plus the record you were working on if that is part of the problem)
- The complete text of any error messages (screen shots are very good here)
- The browser and version being used--You can find the version of your browser in an “About” menu item—for Google and Microsoft Edge both, click on the “three dots” link near the menu bar, and then select Help… About.
Troubleshooting issues related to registration:
- If a 4-H Online family cannot login successfully, start with the article 4-H Online Family Login Problems.
- If a NON 4-H Online family cannot login successfully, check out Exhibitor Groups with Staff and Buyer Accounts for the most common solutions to those issues. If neither of these articles resolve the issue, then contact the support team with the family's email address (and whether they are 4-H Online or not) and what happens when they attempt to login, including any error messages.
- If a family is logged in but cannot successfully complete a registration, check out the "Help! My Families Can't Make Entries!" articles. If none of those solutions solve the problem, tell us the details—which member wants to enter which class, and why are they not able to do that?
- Does the error message indicate that there is a conflict with your entry settings for that department/division/class? If so, use the standard report “Applied Entry Settings” to check to see what might be causing the problem. Many times, it's forgetting to link animal types to divisions before entries open.