Contacting QA Cafe Support

The QA Cafe Support team is here to help you get the most out of CDRouter. This article covers how to reach us, what to send so we can help you quickly, and what to expect once you’ve contacted us.

Before you contact support

To receive technical support, you’ll need:

You may find a quick answer to your question by searching this site or browsing the User Guides.

How to reach us

We provide technical support by email at support@qacafe.com. We’ve found email works best because most issues require us to look closely at your system and test setup before we can offer a solution or feedback. Email provides an easy way to send us test results and other files, and gives us time to analyze them thoroughly.

Follow these tips when contacting support:

  • Start a new email for each new issue. Each email opens its own support ticket.
  • Reply to the existing thread for follow-ups. This keeps the full history of your issue in one place.
  • Copy any colleagues who should stay up to date on the issue.

Support hours and response times

Our support hours are 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM US Eastern time, Monday through Friday. We handle support requests in the order we receive them, and we typically respond within 24 business hours, often much sooner.

What to include in your email

The more we know up front, the faster we can help. Every email should include a description of the issue. Depending on the issue, you may also need to send one or more of the following:

If your issue involves… Also send…
A test run or test case An export archive
NTA hardware, system startup, interfaces, licensing, or upgrades A cdrouter-diag.tar.gz archive
Anything else Your CDRouter version and System ID

Always: a description of the issue

  • What you’re trying to do and what you expected to happen.
  • What actually happened, including the exact text of any error messages.
  • Whether the issue is new, and anything that changed recently, such as a CDRouter upgrade, new DUT firmware, or a change to your test setup.
  • The names of any test cases that are failing unexpectedly.

For test failures: an export archive of your test results

If your question is about a test run or test case, export the result with packet captures included, and send us the original .gz export archive.

A full export archive includes the package, configuration, device, test logs, packet captures, and system details from the test run. We need all of this to analyze the result and find the root cause of a failure.

Please don’t extract the archive or send individual log, capture, or configuration files instead. Individual files can’t be imported into CDRouter and make it much harder for us to analyze the problem.

For system issues: system diagnostics

For issues with the NTA hardware, system startup, interfaces, licensing, or software upgrades, please also include a cdrouter-diag.tar.gz archive. See Generating cdrouter-diag Output for instructions.

If you aren’t sending an archive: your system details

Export archives and cdrouter-diag.tar.gz files already include your system details. If you aren’t sending either one, please include the following in your email:

  • CDRouter version, shown on the Basic Info tab of the System page.
  • System ID, a 32-character string also shown on the Basic Info tab of the System page. The System ID identifies your system and license.

Sending large files through Hightail

Export archives with packet captures and cdrouter-diag archives are often too large to send by email. For larger files, you can upload them to us securely through Hightail:

  1. Go to https://hightail.com/u/CDRouter.
  2. Add your files and enter your email address.
  3. In the message, include the subject line of your support ticket and anything else that helps us match the upload to your request.
  4. Send the upload.

Once the upload is complete, reply to your support ticket to let us know your files are on the way.

What to expect after you’ve sent your email

  • We’ll reply by email. All communication about your issue happens on that email thread.
  • We may ask follow-up questions. Depending on the issue, we might ask for more information, additional test results, a cdrouter-diag archive, or for you to try a configuration change and rerun a test.
  • Bug reports and feature requests. If we confirm a bug in CDRouter or identify a feature request, we’ll let you know. Fixes and new features are delivered in CDRouter releases, which are announced in the release notes.
  • Closing your ticket. When your issue is resolved, we’ll close your ticket. However, if you have any follow-up questions or if the issue comes back, just reply to the same email thread and we’ll reopen the ticket automatically to continue the investigation.

We look forward to working with you! If you have any questions about this process, just send us an email at support@qacafe.com.