Migration from CA to Broadcom support site

[Michael A. Lowry]

The content of the CA support site was also migrated, from Salesforce to Wolken Service Desk. Below I will track problems with the new site.

• File attachments are not working.
• Comments by Broadcom staff are not visible.

[Carsten Schmitz]

Screenshots for existing cases are apparently missing.

(edit): actually, let's clarify this:

Screenshots for old tickets are not shown. Instead, there is a text item with an sftp:// URL which I probably can't access (I can not test it because of firewalls, but I have no username nor account, so I'm practically unable to see screenshots.

[Clifford Dawkins]

Not seeing prior site threads in community and I thought prior content would port over​

[Harriet Kim]

Slow performance.  The support site just spins for a long time, trying to load the page.  Is anyone else experiencing this?

[Carsten Schmitz]

​​Within reason.

It's certainly no racehorse, but judging by the yard stick of "modern" websites, it's quite okay for me. Except for the ideation, which spins forever and won't load at all.

Shot into the blue: Are you using a proxy server? The whole Automic/CA stuff was unbearably slow for me at the time before I convinced my company into a proxy exception, mostly because it loaded an ungodly amount of Javascript. If you're on a proxy, can you test without?

Best,
Carsten

[Frederic BERGERON]

no one responds to my incidents anymore......
The answers by email do not appear and my reminders remain unanswered......

[Philippe RENAULT]

I can't find my old (CA) case. The worst migration I've known.

[Judith Gitahi]

I know! I was working with support earlier this week and was told that they only migrated cases that are less than 18 months old. -_

[Carsten Schmitz]

​I couldn't exactly say if this is an issue with the migration, as I had support tickets that were unanswered for very long times (and subsequent reminders ignored) before the migration, too. I wager this is an over-arching matter.

But yeah, I feel your pain.

[Carsten Schmitz]

fwiw, today it's almost unbearably slow for the first time in days ...

[Harriet Kim]

I reached out to my Account Manager with my feedback.  I recommend doing the same to your Account Manager so they are aware of the issues with the support site.  Good luck!

[Michael A. Lowry]

Another serious problem:

• In support tickets, comments from Broadcom staff do not appear. Only our comments are visible.

[Carsten Schmitz]

Michael already said file attachments are not working.

I can't even find any functionality for file attachments. I can, however, paste screenshots from the clipboard to the editor, but even small images will make the editor bog down entirely (Chrome-based browser).

[Ruth Wunderle]

When you open the case details in the Support portal you should have buttons at the top and below of the case details thread where you can add comments entitled "File attachments", "Raise Concern", "Close Case" and "Send". The "File attachments" button should then open the directory structure "files from customer" and "files from broadcom" (in case of issues raised since the platform migration where issue number starts with 2000.....) or "files from ca" if it is a migrated case that existed already under CA Support portal.
If you are not seeing this, then please let me know (email: [e-mail]) and would suggest we have a brief webex to review.

Regards, 

Ruth Wunderle

[Carsten Schmitz]

Hi Ruth Wunderle,

Thanks for getting back!

I was making an mspaint collage about all the screens and them having none of these buttons you mention, but before posting it quizzed a a colleague to play arround with the support site, too, and after he once or twice said he's ready to give up, I'm happy to report: some additional and mostly random clicking about eventually brought up the buttons.

For anyone who may suffer from the same blindness I did: The buttons only show up once one clicks on the case ID. Not the line with the case ID but the actual case ID.

So in principle, that's settled.

But the amazing thing to me is, this is imho in no way self evident. You can, and in fact I did, fully make a support case and take it from new to completion and leave comments in them without ever clicking on the case ID and thus discovering this "other" view on the case editor, which has the added buttons. So my take on this is, this is no doubt a usability issue.

Out of curiosity then, I attempted an impromptu usability test with my other colleague who is supposed to be able to file support cases as well, being the teams backup admin for emergencies and such. But he didn't even manage to log in to the support portal. He was stuck in a single sign-on mess of repeatedly having to type his password at the Octa login page, his password is accepted (we know for sure, we also tried resetting it) but then the support portal redirection says "Message: unauthorized". I looked into my CA/Broadcom user admin panel, but can only enable or forbid him from from doing downloads, and he was already granted that right, so no dice.

So I am very sorry to say that after some remarks from my colleague about the single sign on and the CA/Broadcom websites in general which I can not possibly reproduce here, he grew frustrated and gave up without ever reaching the support portal. His name in the system is "Dustin QsO8cnN0aW5naGF1cw==" by the way, which seems not to have improved his mood much.

There's simply too many problems here, you deal with one problem and that opens a can of worms with a handful other problems that want out.

But you probably don't know the full extend of the background. As I believe I said before, others and myself have worked with Automic and CA a LOT to report broken things for them to get fixed. We had so many meetings with key accounters and top people (who are all gone by now) telling us things will improve, it beggars belief. We have spent loads of time collecting examples for broken tools, broken processes, bad support cases, bad documentation. We have reported broken links (which I regularily find on the major websites and once in mails from a CEO!) all the while thinking that a self-professed automation champion should be able to employ a link checker tool. We have put things in "ideation" which currently gravitates between barely usable at best and plain broken at worst.

And at FOKUS 2019, we have again listened to very many promises by Broadcom personel that things will soon improve substantially and Broadcom will be meassured by this. At this time, the outlook for these vocal promises in my book is very dire.

Sorry for the harsh words, but Broadcom needs to get the mess they inherited under control, and that means cutting through the cruft, not integrating the Automic/CA fluff, including the ever more convoluted and marketing-driven web presences by replacing a few logos and glueing everything together with web redirects. And above all, it means being proactive. Why can't the person running the migration script catch that my colleague's last name has been set to QsO8cnN0aW5naGF1cw==, and the myriad of other things?

Regards,
Carsten

[Carsten Schmitz]

Curiously, I made a test ticket and someone from Broadcom responded. I received two emails about that and I was able to see his comment inside the ticket in this instance.

Possibly it's somehow a conditional problem?

[Michael A. Lowry]

I opened case 20010310 about the problem with file attachments.

[Heena Tabassum]

Hello All, 

Sorry for the inconvenience. If you have any issues related to Support Website (casupport.broadcom.com), please contact our customer care team on 1800-225-5224 or if calling from outside North America, visit ca.com/phone for regional contact numbers. 

You can also report these issues or post your inquiry on CA Customer Care community page.

Regards, 
Heena Tabassum

[Michael A. Lowry]

File attachments are not working.
Comments by Broadcom staff are not visible.

Michael Lowry,  06-06-2019 11:14 AM

File attachments started working once I cleared the cache and cookies in Firefox.
Broadcom seems to have fixed the problem with visibility of comments by support staff

[Michael A. Lowry]

There are still big problems with the new support site.

• Comments by Broadcom support staff are once again not visible.

• When I add a comment to a case, I get an email with a copy of my comment, and the heading: "We are writing to you to let you know your case has been updated by the Broadcom Technical Support team."

[Keld Mollnitz]

In addition to what Michal Lowry reports: when I upload a file to a case, I get an email with the heading: "We are writing to you to let you know your case has been updated by the Broadcom Technical Support team."

[Frederic BERGERON]

Hi,

Also here I don't see all the comments from the support.
No way to upload a file to the boxes.
I have the impression that the support team does not see all the answers I am forced to restart several times my tickets to finally get an answer from the support...

[Michael A. Lowry]

Right now, the subject line of notification emails about support tickets contains mostly useless information. We do not memorize which case number is associated with each problem. The product name and internal Broadcom product code do not particularly help us know what the message is about.

{Case#12345678} ## for AUTOMIC WORKLOAD AUTOMATION - AAUTEN has been updated.

The subject line of notification emails about support tickets should contain the subject of the case.

[Gregory Kelly]

Carsten, we can certainly revisit the format of the message although the formats were carried and modeled after the former system messages.  That's why we also include the information in the body of the email as well.

Greg Kelly

[Carsten Schmitz]

> Carsten, we can certainly revisit the format of the message

Those credits actually go to Michael Lowry :) but cheers regardless!

[Carsten Schmitz]

On a side note, I would also appreciate if someone from Broadcom could elaborate where the data from support tickets is physically stored.

This is actually an issue we're somewhat concerned about: Broadcom inherited the GDPR agreements we've had with CA, which stipulate the storage must be in line with GDPR. This can be achieved by storing data under agreements with third parties in the EU, or in Privacy Shield countries like the US. Since we potentially upload trace files with memory contents, virtually any enterprise data can be subject to support cases, so this is a rather big legal concern.

Even though it evokes a german vibe with it's rather ingeniously chosen name, Wolken is an indian company, and I note they have absolutely no statement about data security whatoever on their website?

Thing is, Broadcom is solely responsible for adhering to the contracts that result from the CA takeover, including GDPR compliance and doesn't need to reveal details on their agreements with subcontractors to us (afaik), only ensure they're kept. But we'd certainly rest easier with some reassuring statement on this matter.

[Gregory Kelly]

Carsten throughout the website, at the bottom there are links to the Terms of Use and Privacy links describing what you are asking about.  We definitely follow the GDPR requirements as mandated.  

Gregory Kelly
Manager, Technical Support

[Carsten Schmitz]

Hi Greg,

Cheers. By that, do you mean Broadcom or Wolken Software? Again, this is probably not strictly required in a legal sense since we don't have a direct contract with them but only with Broadcom. But we'd sleep a lot better if Wolkensoftware had some sort of reasonable privacy statement.

Best,
Carsten