Top Support Questions & How to Avoid Them: Virtual Brew 6/20/2024

Transcript

Introduction

Hector Jimenez
Hi, folks — I think I see a few familiar faces out there, I’ve spoken to some of you before, but if we haven’t: my name is Hector Jimenez, and I’m over the technical support team here at AI. Many of you have probably spoken to some of my team members throughout your time using our products and services, so it’s a pleasure to be here to talk about some of the top inquiries we get, how you can avoid them, best practices, and some of the symptoms you might encounter.

This is really a curated list based on situations we’ve seen in our day-to-day interactions with customers — really identifying where you could avoid these pitfalls on your own, before even having to reach out to us. Let’s get started.

Common Issue: RMU Not Communicating

A very common one is your RMU not communicating. Some symptoms you might encounter: missed scheduled communication, where something scheduled for today or tomorrow just didn’t come through; a read-on-demand that failed to transmit — maybe you’re testing your unit to see if it’s operational, and that read-on-demand fails; and general commands, like interrupt commands, not acknowledging. I’m sure some of you have run into one of these at some point — it’s actually pretty common, especially during installation.

I’ll go into best practices in a moment, but has anyone here had an RMU just stop communicating and wondered what was going on? Curious how many hands would go up. Feel free to chime in with questions as we go along.

Best Practice: Ensure the Unit Has Power

Our first best practice — make sure the unit actually has power. That sounds obvious, but we get into a habit of assuming our unit is always on and always working, and the last thing we think to check is the cord itself. This is really one of those situations where you just need to confirm it has power — sometimes that requires a field visit — and check the battery for appropriate voltage. The unit might have power, but not enough power.

There are minimum voltage requirements for the batteries in some of these units — specifically, for the 4014 and 4150, it’s 12 volts. For the RM5 series, the dome itself has a 4-volt requirement, and the power supply — the relay that’s getting power to the RMU for the RM5 series — is 13 volts minimum. Make sure your technicians are actually checking that, not just for power, but for an adequate amount of power being delivered to those units.

Best Practice: Check for Physical Factors

Our next best practice is physical factors — obstructions to the dome, damage to the cell and satellite wiring from the elements, or physical damage to the unit. You might find a rat’s nest in your unit, especially out in the field where it’s prone to animals. We’ve even had situations with bullet holes in a unit, where someone thought it’d be funny to use it for target practice. You don’t always factor those things in, especially when you’re monitoring remotely, which is the big benefit of remote monitors — but it’s something you really have to see in person.

We highly encourage you to go through all your wires with a fine-tooth comb to check for damage — it might even be at the base of a wire, where it’s hard to see if you’re just spot-checking. We often hear that a rat got into an enclosure, or there’s ants, an anthill, or a colony of wasps or bees inhabiting an RMU — not an uncommon situation. Make sure your technicians, or you yourselves, are checking for physical factors causing the issue.

Best Practice: Bullhorn Tools and Firmware Updates

Our next best practice: we have an application called Bullhorn Tools — our diagnosis and upgrade application for RMUs. It can check the signal strength of the unit, reset the unit, and check for updates. You might be in an environment where your unit has communication, but very poor signal quality, which can hamper its reliability to communicate at regular intervals — similar to your cell phone, where you might have a bar or two but still wonder why a message didn’t go through. These units are still subject to cellular and satellite provider conditions, and while a low signal might be adequate to communicate, it could cause obstructions to effective communication.

As an additional step, make sure your technicians are using Bullhorn Tools to check signal quality, and run through general troubleshooting like resetting the unit — if it’s having issues sending commands, a reset can restart that startup process. It’s the same as the classic IT advice, “did you reset your computer” — that troubleshooting step applies the same way to a lot of technologies, including RMUs.

Lastly, firmware updates — we release firmware updates to make major improvements, both to communication ability and efficiency. Some improvements include auto-recovery processes for backend failures, or battery preservation processes. If your unit is due for a firmware update, Bullhorn Tools will prompt you to do it — we highly encourage keeping current with our most recent firmware, since we’re making improvements not just for new features, but for reliability. If you ever need help with that, our support team is happy to assist.

Q&A: Bullhorn Tools Saves Time

Any questions in the chat? By the way, this is our last slide on RMU not communicating.
Mike mentioned he had a call last week that took over 40 minutes to resolve — if the tech had Bullhorn Tools, it would’ve been a five-minute call.

I’d take five minutes over 40 minutes, how about you all? Bullhorn Tools is extremely beneficial for diagnosis — we highly encourage your technicians to have it installed on their phones, and just like firmware, make sure it’s up to date, since new firmware updates often come with new Bullhorn Tools functionality for diagnosing your RMUs. It’s similar to a mechanic having an OBD2 scanner — my dad was a mechanic, and he needed that for basically every repair job. We often ask, when we get a call about someone being at their RMU, “can you install Bullhorn Tools?” — it just helps us assist a customer that much more effectively.

How to Access Bullhorn Tools

You can download Bullhorn Tools through the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store. Once installed, it’ll prompt you to allow Bluetooth access. For our RM5 units, you essentially just swipe a magnet over the I/O marking on the RM5 — it’ll go into pairing mode, and if you have Bullhorn Tools open, you should see that RM5 available to connect within the app. It’s that simple: swipe the I/O with the magnet, open the application, and connect to the unit.

Right off the bat, you’ll see information about your unit — the firmware version it’s on, its signal quality, and some of the voltages and readings it’s collecting. That’s all information coming directly from the unit, so it’s more reliable, since you’re right in front of t and not relying on a communication being sent out to Bullhorn Web — you’re getting that information straight from the source.

Common Issue: DVM Not Connecting to Your Device

Our next common issue is a DVM not connecting to your device. Symptoms include: your DVM doesn’t display as a connection option in PCS field data collector, and your Bluetooth isn’t finding your DVM.

Best Practice: Bluetooth and Connecting Through FDC

First best practice, kind of obvious, similar to checking power — just make sure your phone or device running PCS field data collector has Bluetooth enabled. If it’s a controlled device managed by your organization, also make sure there are no restrictions on what Bluetooth can connect to.

Second, your DVM should not be connected to your device through the device’s Bluetooth settings — it should be connected through the FDC application itself. In our screenshot, you can see the DVM as a connection option — this screenshot shows it already connected, but you should connect to your DVM through the application, not your device settings, since that’s how PCS field data collector recognizes the device. If you’ve connected it through device Bluetooth settings but it’s still not connecting within PCS FDC, I’d recommend forgetting the device from your device’s Bluetooth settings and re-pairing through the application itself.

Best Practice: Charging Your DVM

Second, make sure your DVM is adequately charged. If the light is pulsing, it’s in low-power mode — it should still function without issues in low-power mode, but depending on how low the battery is, it could be subject to communication issues, similar to your phone running in low-power mode, where performance can dip. To rule that out, make sure it’s adequately charged at all times.

To charge your device, connect it via USB-C. A solid power light doesn’t mean it’s fully charged — a blinking light means it’s still charging. We highly recommend a wall charger — you can charge it from your Mesa device or your own device, but that’s slower. The recommended charging method is a USB-C wall charger.

Q&A: Charging Time and Charger Quality

Question: how long do you need to charge it to be fully charged?

Good question — I don’t know off the top of my head, part of it depends on the rate your charger can output, but I can’t recall exactly. Sarah — sorry, Lon — I think you’re in chat, and I saw you respond, do you happen to have an estimate?

(Answer from chat: around six hours.) Good to know.

Question: does the quality of your charger cable really matter?

I don’t have a specific recommendation, but the quality of your charger absolutely matters. I’d recommend the one that comes with the DVM itself, or — take this with a grain of salt — anything that costs more than $10 if you’re buying a charger. You can buy dollar-store chargers, but I wouldn’t recommend connecting anything to those, let alone a DVM, which can be a pretty pricey loss if it malfunctions due to a bad charger.

Q&A: Geode Connectivity

Mike asked about connecting the Geode — I don’t have too much information on that, but I’d be happy to get with you and package up that info for you and your users.

Common Issue: Unable to Import Survey into PCS

Our next common inquiry is being unable to import a survey into PCS. Symptoms include getting an error message on import, or your data just not being present. Error messages vary depending on your specific data, since everyone has their own unique data set, so your message might be unique to what you’re trying to import.

Best Practice: Validate Survey Data Against PCS

First best practice: validate your survey data against PCS — make sure any unique IDs within the survey aren’t already present in PCS. A unique ID should not already exist in PCS unless it’s meant to tie something back to your data. Duplicate IDs can cause PCS to essentially not know what’s valid, creating a conflict that spits out an error message. That error message gives a general idea of what unique ID or data is causing the issue, but it can be tricky to troubleshoot from either side, since it requires a pretty deep understanding of your data as a whole.

Best Practice: New or Modified User-Defined Fields

On a similar note, new or modified user-defined fields in PCS can cause issues. For example: say a PCS administrator in the office makes changes to some database fields, but there are surveys out in the field built against an older version of that database — importing that data can run into conflicts, because the database has changed relative to what those surveys were built on. This is probably one of our most common scenarios: a change made to PCS logic without vetting it against what’s currently out in the field, causing a mismatch between what’s being validated and what’s actually out there.

The best practice — and I’ll mention this again later — is to make sure you understand what you’re doing with your data and how it could impact field crews. If you’re planning changes to user-defined fields or PCS logic, make sure nothing currently being surveyed will conflict with that, and vice versa — otherwise you’ll run into a situation where you simply can’t import that data because of the conflict you’ve created. If you’ve already made that change, we’d advise either rolling it back temporarily so you can import your data and then reimplement it, or deploying a survey that already has the new logic built in from PCS. This is another area where understanding your data thoroughly matters — it can get tricky, especially if the person calling in doesn’t know the data well.

Best Practice: Changes to Hierarchy

On a similar note, changes to your PCS hierarchy — if you’ve changed hierarchy selections and where data should live, a survey out in the field may try to import into a section of PCS that no longer exists, and you won’t be able to import it, because you’re essentially telling it to import somewhere that’s no longer valid.

Best Practice: Check Your Survey Manager Integration Token

Best practice: if you use Survey Manager, check your integration token in PCS — make sure it’s present in the integration field, under Tools, Options, Integration. Sometimes a user with access to that options folder accidentally deletes it — it’s not uncommon, in fact I bring it up because it’s happened more than a few times, so just spot-check that it’s there.

Best Practice: Confirm Job Services Is Running

Best practice three: make sure job services is running — that’s what’s required to actually process imports. If it’s not running, it won’t be able to process import or export jobs. Make sure the device running job services is powered on and has appropriate network permissions. If everything looks clear — permissions checked, network good — and you still don’t understand what’s going on, we’re here to help troubleshoot alongside you.

General Best Practices Recap

For the most part, what I’ll leave you with are these general best practices: always check for product updates, both software and firmware — we’re making improvements not just for new features, and we want you staying on top of those. Communicate with your survey team, especially around PCS-related changes — your field technicians should be informed about what’s going on with their data and what they need to collect. A lot of pitfalls can be avoided with a higher level of communication, which I think is true for any organization.

Understand changes to PCS before making them — a thorough understanding of your data goes a long way toward avoiding headaches. And lastly, stay sharp — we have a lot of good training material that should be reviewed at a regular cadence, especially right before survey season. If you need help accessing that, or want more information, we’re happy to provide it. Ultimately, do right by your folks and make sure they’re prepared for what they’ll encounter in the field.

Closing

That’s it — I know we’re at time, and I apologize for the hiccup there, but thanks for being patient with me, everyone. Thanks, everybody, for joining us today, thank you.