SAG:  eSupport Diagnostic Wizard

When the wizard starts there is a short delay, with a progress bar, while the fundamental environment information (computer, Windows® software, security, system folders, Syscob application “registration”, user logon and Export-It maintenance code information) is gathered.  This initial gathering uses four DLL libraries (eSysInfo.dll, eAppInfo.dll, eUsrInfo.dll and eSecInfo.dll) and may happen so quickly that the delay is not noticed.  When this initial scan finishes a “Complete” indicator will appear at the right of the progress bar, some of the gathered information will be used to populate the fields on the page and the Welcome… page will look something like this:

All of the fields on the Welcome… page are editable by the user and are intended to show what the user thinks, or believes, the information should be.  The user should correct what is shown, or add missing information, so that it describes their environment.  For example:

• The a “Export-It Plus is installed” checkbox is not ticked (and the two drive comboboxes under it are empty)—because the Registry entries are not found on the machine—but the user thinks that Export-It Plus is supposed to be there.  In such a case the user should tick the box and select the drive letters they believe are correct.
• The “Company Name” field is empty (because a company name was not entered when Windows® was installed).  The user should fill in their actual company name.  In such a case (no company name) the field will look like this until a name is entered:

Because this example was run on a machine owned by Bruce Weinel, not Syscob, it was necessary to change the company as in this capture:

Be aware that the information on this page is in addition to the “real” information (it doesn't replace or change that).  So what the user does, or does not, do with these fields does not affect the eSupport collection.  It only supplements that information and appears in the body of any automatic email submission and in the eSupport.log file.

Also note that some additional detail, such as whether the user has “admin” privilege or whether the “Network” is online, is shown along with the basic information.  The new “Environment” field is also important because it distinguishes native 32 bit mode from 32 bit emulation on 64 bit Windows® software and between console versus remote (including terminal server) access.

When the user is satisfied with the description of their system pressing the Next" button will take them to the next page where they can quickly describe their problem(s).

When the user is satisfied with the description of their system and presses the Next button on the Welcome… page it will take them to the issues page which will look like this until the user describes what is going on that caused them to run the eSupport diagnostic:

On this page the user can tick any of the four checkboxes for typical issues.  That will activate the radio buttons for the kind of problem encountered.  In the case of “Communication” problems it also activates the checkboxes to indicate what EDI agencies are affected and the optional edit for entering the EDI document reference(s) or numbers affected.  Then, at the bottom is the mandatory “Description of Issues*” memo where the user should type a short description of the problem.  If anything needed is missing an error dialog will describe what needs to be done:

When the user has corrected any problems the Next button will take them to the next page—rather than display an error dialog—that shows a summary of the user entries on this and the prior page.  In this example, after ticking the radio buttons for the kinds of problems chosen by the checkboxes the page would look like this:

Pressing the Next button when there is nothing missing will go to a page that shows the information that controls the collection of files and indicates that eSupport is ready to begin collection on that basis.

The issues page always shows the user's description of their issue(s) first and then has the information that was shown on the welcome page.  It will initially look something like this:

As the capture above shows, the user can see exactly what they are about to report to Syscob Support.  Should they wish to revise any of this then the Back button can be pressed to change any of the information.  When satisfied with the problem report seen in this page the Next button can be pressed to start identification and collection of files.

This page is the first of two “automatic” steps that, on this page, analyzes the hardware and identifies all files to be collected.  It shows the eSupport.log content as it is being written and the overall progress on a progress bar.  While it is running it will look like this:

If the Cancel button is pressed at any point while eSupport is running then a dialog, as illustrated on the right, appears that requires confirmation.  Answering with the No button will continue just as if no cancel request had been made, but Yes will abort the run and exit.

The collection process is similar to what it was before, including a folder hierarchy listing of all Export-It and Export-It Plus folders, but there is now a progress bar that hits the end when the last file to be collected is identified (a side-effect of the new eDrives.tab and eDiskFiles.tab tab delimited text files which list every drive with Syscob folder in its root, every significant file under a Syscob folder and the Windows® directory).  Note that the Next button is disabled during the analysis and search for files to be collected.  When this step completes the wizard will automatically go to the next, archiving, page.

This page is the second of two “automatic” steps.  On this page the files marked for collection are gathered into an archive (named eSupport.zip in the same folder as the eSupport executable).  The central pane shows the archiving events and, below it, the “Operation” text plus a pair of progress bars show the progress of the archiving operations.  While it is active it will look like this:

Step 6, building a “zip” file from the files identified for collection, runs automatically after the collecting page.  Once again the Next button is disabled during archiving, as seen in the image above, and when archiving is complete the wizard will automatically go to the next page, which will look like the first window capture below if there are any Windows® Mail API [MAPI] “From” addresses registered on the machine or it will be like second window capture below when no user email has been setup under any user logon for this machine.

This page indicates that the collection of files for Syscob Support is complete.  It will also automatically gather all, if any, email “From” addresses that are registered on the platform where eSupport is executing.  The addresses found are placed in the list at the left of the page.  When the wizard enters this page it will look like the first window capture below if there are any email “From” addresses registered on the computer (see second window capture below for the rare case where no email has been setup under any user logon):

However, the image below would be seen when there are no email “From” addresses registered on the machine (see prior window capture above for the normal case where at least one logon has a registered a MAPI “From” address on the platform):

So long as the list of addresses (recipients for a reply from Syscob Support) is empty the list background will be pale yellow.  And the Send... button is disabled—since there is no reply email address; excepting the dedicated EDI Interchange address.  Adding a valid RFC 822 email address to the list, using the Insert reply recipient address... button, will cause the list to become “window” color and will enable the Send... button to allow the user to try to send through the same SMTP server and port as used by SEDI (but it uses its own SMTP client to avoid issues with Chilkat ActiveX server registrations used for SEDI communications).

After archiving is complete the user is left on a page like one of the two pages seen immediately above.  The list of email addresses is automatically populated with any addresses registered on the machine as potential recipients of the reply from Syscob Support (or it may, rarely, be empty).  The user can add addresses to this list, IT staff as an example, using the “insert” button that is always enabled.  It will open the dialog seen above right.

As many recipients as desired may be added to the list of persons to receive the reply from Syscob support.  These addresses have no effect on the message that will be automatically sent if the Send... button is pressed.  However, they will appear in the body of the message sent so that the Syscob staff member replying can simply copy them and then paste them into the reply message that will be sent when the eSupport submission has been analyzed.  To edit or remove an address click on it, so that it becomes highlighted as below, so the Edit selected reply address... and Remove address from reply list... buttons become enabled.

The edit dialog at the right will appear when the “edit” button to the right of the address list is pressed.  The user may change a selected address in any way they desire, but any changed address entered is parsed per the RFC 822 standard and only valid email addresses are acceptable as reply recipients.

When there are “alias” addresses (in the prior capture all go to the same person via different mailboxes, i.e. all are aliases) the user may wish to delete some of the recipient addresses.  In the case of removing an address from the list the user must confirm the removal.  The confirmation dialog above right illustrates such a case.  The dialog shows the address that was selected and the user must press the Yes button to confirm removing it from the list.  Pressing the No leaves the address on the list.

Another difference with this new version of eSupport is that the user has the choice of whether to try an automatic send, via the SMTP server and port used for EDI, or of doing a manual send (with any mailer application) after eSupport finishes.  This will be explained in more detail below, but to try an automatic email submission the user must press the Send... button on this page.

Be aware that the Send... button will only be enabled when there is at least one address in the list.  But the Details... button at the lower left will always be enabled to allow any file captured for submission to Syscob to be viewed in Notepad.  This permits an audit, if desired, of the information collected to assure that it contains no proprietary or sensitive information.  When the Details... button is pressed an independent daughter window opens that contains a list of all of the collected files.  Such a window looks like this:

Note that the Open... button will only be enabled when there is a selection in the list.  But the Find... button beside it will always be enabled to allow searching for a file by a substring within the paths or file names.

Pressing the Find... button will open a dialog like the sample at the right.  Any text can be entered, part or all of a path or a file name, and the search ignores case.  Of course, dialog cancel aborts searching.

When a file is selected, either by clicking on it in the list or by the Find... button, the window looks like this:

 

Pressing the Find... button again after a successful find would open a dialog as the top one at the right.  But pressing the [F3] key would simply find the next occurance of the search target without such a dialog.  Repeated use of the [F3] key would step through successive lines in the list until the target is not found—when a dialog like the one below at the right would appear.  If the initial search did not find a match then that lower dialog would also appear (rather than selection of a line with the target in the list).

In the examples above the fact that a file is selected caused the Open... button to be enabled.  Pressing it would open the selected file in Notepad.  But be aware that the “Word Wrap” option (in the Notepad “Format” menu) should be off and a “fixed pitch” font (like Courier New or Consolas) be selected for best viewing of most of these files.

If the user wishes to attempt an automatic send of the submission (and there is at least one reply recipient address in the list) then they should press the Send... button.  This will run eDeliver to send the message via SMTP.  The next section describes doing an automatic send, but the user may elect to use the Next button to go to the finish page without trying to send (e.g. if they know SEDI cannot connect to its configured SMTP server).  In that case skip the next section and go on to the Finished… page section.

An attempt to send from within eSupport will run eDeliver mail agent to send the message via SMTP and that will open an overlay window which looks like this:

Should the attempt to send fail then eDeliver is likely to display an error dialog, although it can also silently record some errors in its log, and the overlay window would look like this:

Whether eDeliver succeeds or fails (the case above was failure due to a DNS error which failed to resolve the mail server name to an IP address) it will return the result to eSupport which will automatically go to the Finished… page.

When eDeliver succeeds in sending the support request email it will return a status to eSupport indicating a successful send and that will cause it to automatically go to a Finished… page that looks like this:

Even though the send has been done a Back button appears in this case because the user may wish to use the Details... button to view files—or even send the request again (sending obviously works in this case).  But in most cases the user will just press the Finish button to close the wizard window and exit.

Whether eDeliver showed an error dialog or not, a failed send attempt will return a status to eSupport that will cause it to automatically go to a Finished… page that looks like this:

Note the bright red text at the bottom of the window image above.  It informs the user of the failure and directs them to manually send an email to Syscob Support with the “zip” file, named in the “Archive” field at the top of the page, attached to that message.  In this case also attaching the eDeliver.log file, which is in the same folder, would assist in identifying communication problems.  Also notice that the Back button is disabled after a send failure (the send has already failed, so there is no reason to try it again).

When the user did not press the Send... button on the Completed… page, but pressed the Next button to skip a send attempt (for manual sending of the support request), then they will go directly to a Finished… page that looks like this:

Note the bright red text at the bottom of the window image above.  It informs the user that the support request was not sent and offers a choice.  Either use the Back button (which is disabled when a send was attempted and failed) then try a send or they may press the Finish button and then manually send an email message to Syscob Support with the file named in the “Archive” field attached to that message.  Also note that the “eSupport Request Submission Log” pane is empty as further confirmation that no attempt was made to automatically send the support submission.