Intake and Troubleshooting Best Practices and Policies

Intake and Troubleshooting Best Practices and Policies

General Troubleshooting Guidelines


Intake: Defining the Issue

Whether you are a technical or an administrative team member, when performing intake on a technical issue, it is imperative that you define and document the nature and scope of the problem to every extent possible. 

This means being curious and asking detailed questions such as: 
  1. Are all users having the issue or only users at a specific location (a particular room or building)? Are all users in a given location experiencing the issue? Are all users in a given location not experiencing the issue? What about remote users vs. onsite users? 
  2. What is the exact problem? For example, if there is a "connection" issue: Are the effected users unable to connect to a server, a web site, or the internet in general?
  3. Is the issue specific to a particular cloud service such as Microsoft 365 or Todyl SASE? 
  4. Did the issue start at the same time for all affected users?
  5. What error messages are users getting? Are they all seeing the same error message? 
  6. Are all users experiencing the exact same symptoms (e.g., error messages, slowdowns)?
  7. Are there variations in how the issue presents itself among the affected users?
  8. Have any users tried restarting their computers and, if so, has that made any difference? 
  9. Specifically what other steps have you taken to troubleshoot, if any? 
  10. If you have restarted any network devices, which ones specifically? Router? Server? Switch? Wi-Fi access point? 
  11. If applicable (e.g., printing issue, email issue), does the issue appear across different applications?

Please do not simply cut and paste the questions above and send them to the customer. The questions you ask will be based on the specific customer's infrastructure and the issue at hand. Your questions must be context-sensitive. 

These questions are only a start. The team member handling intake must understand that each answer should prompt additional questions. Their responsibility is to gather sufficient information for the technician to effectively begin troubleshooting the issue.

Technician's General Approach

Once the issue has been defined, the technician should keep the following guidelines in mind. 
  1. As a rule of thumb, if you’re not making progress, don’t spend more than 45 minutes before asking for help. 
  2. Try searching in the Autotask KB.  Particularly for Outlook, we have good troubleshooting articles. 
  3. For issues with commonly used software (MS 365, RDP, Outlook), a quick Google search can be useful. For more obscure technical issues, Google is probably not going to be very useful. 
  4. After you have exhausted the above possibilities, you can either use vendor support when available or ask for help from senior staff. The option you choose will be based on the situation. The newer and less experienced you are, the more frequently and quickly you should ask for help. 


Customer Software Issues

It is important to recognize when it's necessary to receive support from a customer's vendor in order to resolve an issue. Customers need to understand that we cannot be experts in every Line of Business software title, and sometimes it will be necessary for us to contact vendor support. Some commonly used software (such as QuickBooks) can be extremely buggy and temperamental, and if an issue cannot be resolved quickly, it may be best to warn the customer. If you're unsure, it's appropriate to discuss these situations with senior technical staff. 

Customers often have to pay a vendor for a support contract or a support incident in order to get support from a vendor on the vendor's software. They are naturally averse to doing this, so they will push back. 

If you are not sure whether it is appropriate to advise customer that the work you are doing requires vendor support, ask senior staff. 

Generally, a customer's vendor contact info can be found in IT Glue in the "Vendors" flexible asset.


If you find vendor support contact info that is not already in IT Glue, you are responsible for adding it to IT Glue under the appropriate organization.


Here is verbiage you can use when advising the customer of the need for vendor support.


Internal Vendor Support

There are several articles in this database that provide instructions on getting support from our own vendors. Here are a few: 

  1. How to Get Vendor Support for Kaseya Products (Autotask, IT Glue, and Datto RMM)
  2. Vendor Support for Microsoft 365. In addition to contacting Microsoft directly, you can contact Pax8 support for MS 365 support for customers for whom we purchase MS 365 via Pax8. 
  3. Here's an Autotask KB article on getting product support for Intermedia VoIP and Exchange services.
To find other vendor contact info, search in the Vendor contact folder in the Public Contacts. 

Here's a useful guide to troubleshooting. All techs should read and follow the principles in this guide:


The key to troubleshooting is to narrow down the possibilities. The way to do that is to look for what works, not just for what is “broken.”

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