This article will advise you on the steps to take if you see slowness or errors when using Spektrix. We understand that Spektrix is a key part of your daily processes and that, without it, you can be really stuck. Following the steps below will help you to quickly understand what might be happening and, when needed, will help us troubleshoot problems with you to get you back up and running at full speed.
First Things First
If you’re experiencing any unusual activity on your Spektrix system such as slow speeds or an unexpected error page, the first thing to do is to check our Status Page. If there is an issue across Spektrix systems, we will always update this page to let you know what’s going on and why.
Status Page - https://status.spektrix.com
The majority of the time, if you check out our Status Page you’ll see that everything is operational - just how we like it.
If there is an issue, however, we’ll make an update on there so you can see exactly what’s happening and what we’re doing about it.
We’d recommend you subscribe to alerts for individual components in the system so you’ll get an email or a text message if any part of the system you’re interested in starts to experience an issue. Read this article for more information on how to subscribe.
For most users in venues, you’ll likely want to subscribe to the Spektrix System and your payment provider, as well as dotdigital and our Support Services if you wish.
We also use the Status Page to let you know about any periods of system maintenance that we’ve got planned. We sometimes have to make the system inaccessible for a short while, usually so that we can make upgrades to switch on new features we’ve been working on. While we always do this outside of business hours so that we affect the system as little as possible, we still think it’s important that you know about it.
Next Steps
If there are no updates on our Status Page then a specific issue might be present on your system and we will need to undertake some more investigation as to what is happening.
NOTE: please contact the Spektrix Support team if your issue is urgent
If the issues you are seeing are critical and stopping you from using the system normally, then please let the Support team know, either by emailing support@spektrix.com or giving us a call:
- +44 (0)20 7183 3586 (UK and Ireland)
- +1 (646) 569-9097 (US and Canada)
However, recording some additional information as outlined below will often help us get to the bottom of the situation more quickly, so if possible please do read on before picking up the phone.
Log everything in detail
When issues occur, it’s very helpful for you to be as specific as possible in letting us know about them. Following these steps is always a good start:
- Try to record everything that is happening when the issue presents itself.
- If the system is responding slower than usual, take note of whether this is happening in particular Interfaces or when performing specific tasks such as running reports.
- If you’re seeing error messages in unexpected places, try to record the wording of the message, the exact date and time that these messages presented themselves and what action prompted the error message to occur e.g. clicking on a particular button within an Interface.
- If you’re able to reliably reproduce the issue then please record the steps that you are taking to do so.
Information such as this will help us to identify what’s happening faster.
If the issue is taking place outside of the purely client-facing areas of the system, such as on your website, then the above guidelines for logging information are all still applicable. You can also help further by recording some additional information, including:
- The browser in use at the time of the error and the version of that browser.
- The device in use at the time of the error (PC, phone, tablet etc.).
- The operating system of the device used at the time.
Various platforms can be used to assist with this - our preferred provider can be found by following this link: http://www.supportdetails.net/. This will take you to a page where details relating to your setup are displayed:
Saving screenshots of this page and including them in your email will help us determine whether there are patterns in the issues that are presenting themselves, if they are being experienced by more than one system user or customer.
If your customers are also experiencing the issue it’s really helpful if you are able to capture this information from them as well. We understand that it can be difficult to ask customers to record this information when they may already be frustrated from encountering the issue in the first place. Because there is such a wide variety of reasons that issues can crop up, however, this kind of information really helps us to get to the bottom of things much faster, so we do ask that you try to obtain this information from customers where possible.
Additional tests for system slowness
If you’re seeing errors in the system then usually a record of when these occurred and what you were doing at the time is enough for us to investigate further, assuming the issue hasn’t already been addressed on our Status Page.
System slowness, however, can be harder to troubleshoot. There can be a number of less tangible reasons as to why this arises and not all of them relate to Spektrix itself, so further testing is always useful.
Firstly, and it may sound obvious, but do check that it’s just Spektrix that’s behaving slowly. If all web pages are slow to load then this is likely due to an issue with your internal network setup and you should contact your network administrators for further assistance.
If it’s just Spektrix behaving slowly, then one thing to try is to open up your browser’s network information and to take a screenshot from there. In most browsers you can press F12 to load Developer Tools, which will allow you to do this.
In any browser you'll see something like this, showing all the requests on the page and how long they are taking to execute:
Try clicking around both inside Spektrix and on unrelated web pages and checking how long each action is taking. If any request seems to be taking a lot longer than others, please note it down and take a screenshot.
You can also perform a traceroute test, which will tell us how long your computer takes to communicate with the Spektrix servers (if it is able to at all). To do this click the box below depending on whether you're using a PC or Mac:
-
- Click the Windows/Start button in your taskbar and type CMD to bring up the Command Prompt.
- Type in tracert system.spektrix.com
- Press Enter
The test should take around 30 seconds.
Take a screenshot and Contact Support when reporting the slowness.
-
- Open Spotlight on macOS by pressing the Command + Space keys.
- Type in Terminal and press Enter
- In the Terminal window that appears, type traceroute system.spektrix.com
- Press Enter
The test should take around 30 seconds.
Take a screenshot and Contact Support when reporting the slowness.
Slowness with hardware
If your issues are more related to slowness with hardware, then you might be best off troubleshooting the Box Office App. Detailed information on how to further investigate these issues can be found in this article.
Thanks for your patience
Hopefully you won’t need to refer to this article too often. There may be times, however, when the system isn’t working as quickly or efficiently as it usually does, and by working together we can ensure that the impact of any system issues is minimised.
If you have any further questions regarding how best to troubleshoot any issues which do arise, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Spektrix Support team.