The guidelines below will help us help you. They apply to phone or email support or when submitting a written suggestion or bug report.
- Our Miami, Florida, USA headquarters provides support in English. Support in other languages is available from our Regional Offices and Channel Partners.
- Each contact should be limited to one issue.
- Clearly state the revision numbers of the products you are using (DataFlex, Connectivity Kits, databases, etc.) and the environment in which you are running: i.e. operating system type and revision and system specifications.
- For support requests and bug reports, please clearly document the steps to reproduce your problem. Too much information is better than too little. However, please do not include extraneous information.
- Please provide an example of your problem using the smallest possible sample that clearly demonstrates it. For example, do not send a program with two hundred objects when the same program reduced to one object can illustrate the problem. The more clearly your example illustrates the problem, the faster we can address it for you.
- Please include screen shots with your reports when appropriate. A picture is worth 1,000 words!
- Remember that our support team and product testers rely on the information you supply to assist you. Better information from you makes us more efficient when providing support and testing.
- Be as precise as you can with descriptions; avoid using very general terms.
- Give your problem context. State what you thought should happen and what actually happened.
- Don’t leave it up to us to see your results - what we see on our systems may be different than what you see. For example, instead of, "type a letter and see what happens when you press the F5 key", tell us what happened on your system when F5 is pressed and the result that you were expecting to see. For example, "When I enter a letter and press F5, the application closes when I expected it to...."
- Clearly distinguish bugs (where the behavior differs from the documentation) from suggestions. If a behavior differs from the documentation, please state the exact location on the documentation and what the difference is.
- If you have a suggestion for a better implementation of a feature, please define the benefits of your suggestion compared to the original implementation.
- We welcome suggestions for improvements to our documentation. Please reference the specific documentation item and how we can improve it for clarity or completeness.