When you need to contact the Precision.BI Support Team, the fastest and most effective way to get your issue, question or suggestion to us is by sending an email to customer.care@precisionbi.com.  This address is special because it directs your message to our online case-tracking system, FogBugz by FogCreek Software.

Even though the system’s name has “Bugz” in it, it’s not only for tracking bugs!  It also helps us to organize and assign support requests to appropriate support team members, track progress on various internal projects and changes to our product, as well as to keep records of past support issues for historical information and reference.

As soon as FogBugz receives your message, a case for your issue is automatically created and is assigned a case number so that your issue can be referenced and tracked easily.

If you’ve sent mail to us at customer.care@precisionbi.com before, you’ll have seen an automated reply come back to you with the case number contained inside parentheses in the subject line of the message.  FogBugz counts on seeing “(Case ####)” (where #### is the actual case number) in the subject line so that it can maintain the ongoing “conversation” about your particular case, so please don’t take the case number out of the subject line when replying about that particular issue!  Since it’s easiest to simply choose to “reply” in your email program, the case number in the subject can easily be preserved.

In the automated reply you receive, you’ll also find a link to your case in FogBugz so that you can review any responses and follow-up messages that have been exchanged between you and PBI about your issue.  This can be convenient if you want to quickly review the status of the case without having to sift through your emails.

Note that while we will still receive your message if you send it directly to a member of the PBI Team or to the generic address support@precisionbi.com (not recommended),  more than likely it will still need to go into FogBugz.  Even if the recipient is the right person to handle your issue, they will probably still send the message to customer.care@precisionbi.com to document it – it’s not a big deal to forward it, but that means that they will receive the automated confirmation email from the system, not you.  It’s still possible for them to forward the case email to you, but it adds a couple of extra steps in between your submission of the issue and us responding (we strive to send a reply from a human within twenty-four hours of receiving a new case, but in urgent situations you should still feel free to call us directly).

Your newly-entered case will show up in the FogBugz Inbox.  There is always someone monitoring the Inbox so that we know when we receive new cases.  That person will evaluate the issue and decide which one of the PBI Team is the most appropriate person to help with the particular content of the case.  That person will have the case assigned to them and will contact you soon about your issue.

Now your issue is on its way to being resolved!

To recap, here are the important things to keep in mind when submitting and following up on a case:

1. Send your issue in an email to customer.care@precisionbi.com;

2. Detail as much relevant information as we will need to help with your issue/question.  This can include the Precision version number, your computer’s operating system, the name of the saved object that’s giving you trouble, the results you get vs. the results you expect, the steps to recreate the problem you’re having, and more.  Remember, the more information you give us up front, the less time we’ll need to spend on extra follow-up questions!

3. Reply via email making sure to preserve the case number in the subject line;

4. Call PBI Support instead of emailing if you feel your issue needs immediate attention;

5. Enjoy the convenience of seeing the entire history of your case by using the link provided in the messages sent to you from the FogBugz system.