Tech support rant - apologies in advance.

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pfainc
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Tech support rant - apologies in advance.

Post by pfainc »

I have called tech support on numerous occasion for various issues and I am generally grateful and satisfied. They definitely have a grasp on many issues that occur and how to resolve them.

However, lately my experiences have been less satisfying, had less resolution, and much more frustration.

My recent calls into tech support have been related to the native text messaging app. My first call was regarding text message onboarding, where onboarding an unrecognized phone number into an existing customer account muddles with the phone numbers (mainly duplicating a HOME number into an empty cell# field) and being told this is 'Normal behavior, and working as designed' and not a bug, but said they would submit a feature request. A feature to not muddle with the phone number field when onboarding.... Hmmm Most recently I have a problem where I cannot delete text messages. I have been using the text messaging since it was introduced and find it very helpful for sure, but I found that having many messages from many customers severely negatively impacts the performance of Teamworks SE, sometimes making it barely functional. I have learned to tidy up my un-needed message threads to boost my program performance. I delete the message and POOF! It's gone. At least 2x in recent months this behavior changes temporarily. Like yesterday and today, when I delete the messages, they seem to delete, but on the next refresh, all the deleted messages come back! I called tech support and they said that they system prevents deleting messages until they are over 24 hours old, this is how it is designed. This is contrary to the behavior 99.9% of the time. Why is it normal to be able to immediately delete messages and also normal to not be able to delete messages?

I realize it isn't the individual themselves, these answers come from higher up the chain. I don't fault the messenger per se. Why is Mitchell telling them to say this?
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Re: Tech support rant - apologies in advance.

Post by timbre4 »

Bruce - I know that you've been discussing this with Dan (Silky7), he'll return next week. I will share with support dept. management towards re-grouping with you upon his return.

Apologies for the inconvenience and misunderstandings.
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Re: Tech support rant - apologies in advance.

Post by Rich »

I have also started to have the issue of not being able to delete text messages. I noticed that issue starting yesterday for us.
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Re: Tech support rant - apologies in advance.

Post by timbre4 »

From Silky7 (in meetings most of today)

"The rule about deleting texts less than 24 hours old has always been in effect. If the threads are older than that, we should direct these into support. They can see if the delete operation is failing, or the delete is successful, but then be re-downloaded."
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Re: Tech support rant - apologies in advance.

Post by Rich »

Guess I have never paid that close attention. My hate for clutter has made me delete them as soon as I see them. I am pretty sure some have been less than 24 hours.
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Re: Tech support rant - apologies in advance.

Post by pfainc »

timbre4 wrote:
Tue Jul 14, 2020 7:34 am
From Silky7 (in meetings most of today)

"The rule about deleting texts less than 24 hours old has always been in effect. If the threads are older than that, we should direct these into support. They can see if the delete operation is failing, or the delete is successful, but then be re-downloaded."
This is exactly the problem.

Since text inception I have always deleted texts the same day (before 24 hours) successfully.
On about 3 occasions, after deleting text before 24 hours, they re-download and I have to wait 24 hours to delete them.

Are you saying that 99.9% of the time it's broken?
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Re: Tech support rant - apologies in advance.

Post by Silky7 »

Hi Bruce,

Sorry for the delay getting back to you. I guess no more vacations for me - too much piles up! :P

Regarding deletion, as I was able to briefly share with Tim, there's a rule about re-downloading messages from the last 24 hours. In the event your database was corrupted, we wanted to ensure you had a mechanism of retrieving those messages that might have come during the outage period. Now, because there's several service calls and a database involved, the stamping for receipt acknowledgement may cause some variance in the timing of having them re-appear.

HOWEVER, tweaking that behavior is not my hope for a long term solution. I know that when there are a lot of messages, it slows down Message Center, and as Rich mentioned, contributes to a general clutter. Ideally, I want to implement an "Archive Conversation" feature that essentially moves those messages out of the active window into a History tab/area. That way, you can maintain a cleaner UI AND keep messages you may actually need later (proof of approvals, etc.) instead of deleting them.

This, like many other customer requests, has to be balanced against feature innovation and bug-fixing for priority. We've simply not had the resources to circle back to that yet. However, I'd like both of you (as well as any other users following this thread) to share your thoughts on the concept I've laid out.

Regards,

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Re: Tech support rant - apologies in advance.

Post by pfainc »

Silky7 wrote:
Tue Jul 14, 2020 2:36 pm
Hi Bruce,

Sorry for the delay getting back to you. I guess no more vacations for me - too much piles up! :P

Regarding deletion, as I was able to briefly share with Tim, there's a rule about re-downloading messages from the last 24 hours. In the event your database was corrupted, we wanted to ensure you had a mechanism of retrieving those messages that might have come during the outage period. Now, because there's several service calls and a database involved, the stamping for receipt acknowledgement may cause some variance in the timing of having them re-appear.

HOWEVER, tweaking that behavior is not my hope for a long term solution. I know that when there are a lot of messages, it slows down Message Center, and as Rich mentioned, contributes to a general clutter. Ideally, I want to implement an "Archive Conversation" feature that essentially moves those messages out of the active window into a History tab/area. That way, you can maintain a cleaner UI AND keep messages you may actually need later (proof of approvals, etc.) instead of deleting them.

This, like many other customer requests, has to be balanced against feature innovation and bug-fixing for priority. We've simply not had the resources to circle back to that yet. However, I'd like both of you (as well as any other users following this thread) to share your thoughts on the concept I've laid out.

Regards,

Dan J.
Silky7 wrote:
Tue Jul 14, 2020 2:36 pm
Hi Bruce,

Sorry for the delay getting back to you. I guess no more vacations for me - too much piles up! :P

Regarding deletion, as I was able to briefly share with Tim, there's a rule about re-downloading messages from the last 24 hours. In the event your database was corrupted, we wanted to ensure you had a mechanism of retrieving those messages that might have come during the outage period. Now, because there's several service calls and a database involved, the stamping for receipt acknowledgement may cause some variance in the timing of having them re-appear.

HOWEVER, tweaking that behavior is not my hope for a long term solution. I know that when there are a lot of messages, it slows down Message Center, and as Rich mentioned, contributes to a general clutter. Ideally, I want to implement an "Archive Conversation" feature that essentially moves those messages out of the active window into a History tab/area. That way, you can maintain a cleaner UI AND keep messages you may actually need later (proof of approvals, etc.) instead of deleting them.

This, like many other customer requests, has to be balanced against feature innovation and bug-fixing for priority. We've simply not had the resources to circle back to that yet. However, I'd like both of you (as well as any other users following this thread) to share your thoughts on the concept I've laid out.

Regards,

Dan J.
I apologise for repeating myself but..

If the intended behavior was to prevent deletion before 24 hours, and nothing has changed on the program side to modify this behavior, why has it worked contrary to intended behavior 99.9% of the time?
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Re: Tech support rant - apologies in advance.

Post by Silky7 »

Bruce,

To expand on the technical aspect: There is communication between our texting service and your database. Then another communication occurs via the SMS provider via their API, and all of that is recorded to another database here. Then additional communication occurs via the texting service database and your local database to know how to treat the message re: "The 24 hour rule."

Now to be clear, we made no intentional change in regards to that behavior of the service recently. It is possible there there is some new delay (I would assume temporary as it usually is in such cases) in one of those elements in the loop. Please do monitor the situation over the next couple of days and let us know if it continues. We may need to address the issue on the back end with the SMS provider.

I'd still appreciate any thoughts on the archive concept though, as I value user input before committing resources. :)
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Re: Tech support rant - apologies in advance.

Post by pfainc »

Silky7 wrote:
Tue Jul 14, 2020 3:24 pm
Bruce,

To expand on the technical aspect: There is communication between our texting service and your database. Then another communication occurs via the SMS provider via their API, and all of that is recorded to another database here. Then additional communication occurs via the texting service database and your local database to know how to treat the message re: "The 24 hour rule."

Now to be clear, we made no intentional change in regards to that behavior of the service recently. It is possible there there is some new delay (I would assume temporary as it usually is in such cases) in one of those elements in the loop. Please do monitor the situation over the next couple of days and let us know if it continues. We may need to address the issue on the back end with the SMS provider.

I'd still appreciate any thoughts on the archive concept though, as I value user input before committing resources. :)
Good morning!

It would be nice to be able to archive the messages to the customer record in some way - just to be able to access it in the event there is confusion at a later date. A general archive would soon be cluttered with a tremendous amount of conversations and become a burden.

I hope the deletion behavior goes back to 'normal' soon as my daily text threads generally exceed 15 and having this many severely slows down Teamworks SE making it hard to use.

Thank you!
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Re: Tech support rant - apologies in advance.

Post by ShopManTim »

[quote
It would be nice to be able to archive the messages to the customer record in some way - just to be able to access it in the event there is confusion at a later date. A general archive would soon be cluttered with a tremendous amount of conversations and become a burden.
[/quote]

Excellent idea! I have been following this thread and I second that concept.
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Re: Tech support rant - apologies in advance.

Post by sbebenelli »

I'd like to have a purge message option like we can do with estimates. Would that be a possibility?
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Re: Tech support rant - apologies in advance.

Post by ricmorin »

I like archiving vs deletion. Having that 'paper' trail can save you sometimes.
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Re: Tech support rant - apologies in advance.

Post by Silky7 »

Thanks for the feedback everyone. My initial plan was to make the archive an extension of the Message Center, but moving it to the Customer screen should work better for performance when accessing an archive, so thanks again for the idea!
sbebenelli wrote:
Wed Jul 15, 2020 1:13 pm
I'd like to have a purge message option like we can do with estimates. Would that be a possibility?
Perhaps. I like the idea of an "Archive All older than 'x' number of days" function, but we may have to limit the feature to individual conversations due to complexity (development time).
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Re: Tech support rant - apologies in advance.

Post by Rich »

8.3.1.36

It's broke again. Can't delete. :cry:
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Re: Tech support rant - apologies in advance.

Post by Silky7 »

Rich wrote:
Thu Jul 08, 2021 7:35 am
8.3.1.36

It's broke again. Can't delete. :cry:
Rich, can you elaborate? This is one of the more difficult areas for me to test, since I only have a couple of phones and not a bunch of customers like you guys. :)

So questions would be:
  • Do you mean you can't delete at all? Or that the messages return?
    Have you tried the archive function? If so, is the behavior the same?
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Re: Tech support rant - apologies in advance.

Post by Rich »

What? with only 5% of the info you cant fix it? Sorry

I can delete the text, but they come back a short time later. Does not effect anything other than i hate clutter
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Re: Tech support rant - apologies in advance.

Post by Silky7 »

Have you tried archiving them? I'm curious to know if it's the same behavior. I expect it might be.
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Re: Tech support rant - apologies in advance.

Post by Rich »

Testing this now.....
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Re: Tech support rant - apologies in advance.

Post by Rich »

Archiving seems to work. THANKS!
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