Support Guidelines

WikiOraApps support is provided by users and consultants in their spare time - nobody is paid to do this. So it's important that you provide enough information in your support question to resolve your problem in an efficient way - hence these guidelines.

'How do I do this?' Questions

Questions about whether the Oracle Applications can do something are fine and don't need all the installation specifics. However, please supply the version you are using, the application module(s), and the category of your question.

'Something is not working' Questions

For all other questions, please read the rest of this page and supply full details.

Don't Add Your Question to an Existing Page!

Adding questions to an existing question page is not the way to go - this tends to result in a rather confusing page, and the follow-on questions never have enough information. Create a new question page, starting at SupportHome (once you've read the existing questions, done a search, and so on) and create links to existing questions that seem similar (or from existing questions to your new one, perhaps).

The result is that we can see you did your homework and that your question really is different from one that's already asked. This also means your question is less likely to be missed, as many people only look for new question topics.

Finally, questions added to an existing page are frequently missed since they are often under AnsweredQuestions whereas people who are helping with Support look at AskedQuestions.

Ask Yourself the Right Questions

Any support request that just says "it's not working" or what am I doing wrong is difficult to answer - it doesn't help anyone understand exactly what is going on, which is an essential step to fixing your problem.

Some key questions to ask yourself are:

• Have I Searched? Look for answers before writing your question. Previously answered questions remain available forever and if your's has already been answered, that's your fastest way to a solution. If you can hyper link to an already answered topic and describe how your situation is different, you are well on your way to a solution.
• What happens? Symptoms are good to include, but what are the exact messages the system is giving you?
• When does the problem happen? What were you doing? Can you repeat the problem consistently?
• How are the configuration parameters that affect your situation set at your site?
• What is working? Eliminating what is operating correctly can narrow and focus a problem.

And of course, please read the AskedQuestions page and search for similar problems!

Finally, once your question is answered (or someone has answered it for you) please mark the question as answered using the form at the bottom of the edit page. Otherwise others end up wasting a lot of time revisiting questions that have already been answered.