CiraConnect strives to bring managers, residents and community executives, collection attorneys, and title agents first class cloud-based software to administer all aspects of community association living and management. However, with a scope that broad, things break.
How do you let us know when you are experiencing a technical issue with any of the CiraNet portals? This tip sheet is provided to step you through exactly where to go and what we need to get things back on track as efficiently as possible.
Table of Contents
First Things First: Identifying Your Resources
The CiraConnect User Support team is here to help with technical support issues directly related to CiraNet Portals, CiraMobile, and CiraBudget. Our purview stops there. Therefore, we recommend finding out in advance what your resources are for all other software (word processing and spreadsheet software, file sharing programs, etc.) and hardware (printers, scanners, phones, etc.) before issues arise. Also, work with your leadership team and/or Account Manager to identify frontline resources to verify if an issue you may be having is a true technical support issue, a configuration issue that can be resolved from another resource, or simply a matter of understanding the system behavior. As an example, if you are concerned that you are not seeing late fees apply to accounts with eligible balances, evaluate the situation first to see if they fall into any of these common circumstances:
- The community association is within the first two months of onboarding, where late penalties are deferred by default to give owners ample time to receive the new information and change their payment methods accordingly.
- The owner conveyed within the last two months, which also allows for a temporary grace period for them to settle in and receive the billing information for their new account.
- Was the suspend collections flag enabled for an individual? Late penalties will not apply to their account for the period the account was suspended.
- Or is the community within the grace period allowed between the late penalty published date and the actual post date?
If after doing that level of analysis on any of the issues you are seeing you are still in doubt, all clients utilizing the CiraConnect Shared Services Groups for their back-office accounting have access to a Financial Manager. That individual would be an excellent resource to check with first with all accounting-related questions such as the example here. This is just one scenario, but we do recommend identifying the resources you have at your disposal to ask if you are unsure why you are seeing, or not seeing, something you expect to within the CiraNet family of portals. Training leaders and supervisors of course are at your disposal first and foremost, but also even peers who have been using CiraNet for a while. Often you will find they know the solution and can couple it with your company’s unique protocols that our team may not even be privy to.
How to Effectively Troubleshoot
However, if you have checked in with your team and still believe you have an issue, CiraConnect provides a ticketing system to allow users to submit requests for technical support directly from the CiraNet Board / Management Portal and the CiraNet Management Portal, and we will be stepping you through that process. However, before you proceed, if you suspect a technical problem when using any of the CiraNet portals, we find that taking these few simple steps resolves many, if not most, issues. Please try them first.
- Clear your browser cache and cookies.
After you have done this, completely close the browser and start over with a new session.
- Log directly into CiraNet without using a bookmark. Simply type in "ciranet.com" into your browser and proceed to login from there. Sometimes if people use bookmarks or "recent website" link to access CiraNet, the link can include an old session ID which causes the browsing experience to be dramatically slower.
- Clear your cookies in CiraNet. CiraNet stores certain settings that may not be deleted in step 1 above. To clear your cookies in CiraNet, click on Preferences at the top right, then click "Delete Cookies." If, at that point, you still experience the same issue, you can proceed to report it using the steps detailed below.
Accessing Technical Support
CiraConnect has chosen to employ a robust ticketing system powered by Jira Service Management. There are several advantages for both your team as submitters and the User Support team as recipients, primary among them being the ability to allow submitters to be participants on the tickets they create and to see the ticket progress and be alerted to any status changes. The system also allows for a communication chain between the ticket participants so that information is always directly linked to the open ticket. Access to the ticketing system is reserved for internal users only. From the CiraNet Board / Management Portal, click on User Support, which is an icon found along the bottom of most pages, to open to a new page. From there, click on Technical Support.
From the CiraNet Management Portal internal users can click on the 🛟 lifebuoy icon found on the bottom of the navigation bar.
From that point forward, the process is the same from either location.
From there, it’s simple:
- Fill in your company email address
- Click on the button Send link to have an email sent from CiraConnect Self Service
- Click on Sign up button in email.
This final step takes you to a page to enroll your full name and set a password to complete the sign-up process.
RealManage, GrandManors and CiraConnect team members use a single sign-in login, meaning they use the same password across all software programs, which will include the Jira ticketing system, so use your current password to enroll, but in subsequent visits when logging in those users will be alerted to the single sign-on.
Submitting the Ticket Successfully
Once logged in, users will see several options to choose from and should select the one that best suits the issue they are experiencing. One of the advantages of this ticketing system is we have provided pertinent self-help articles related to those choices that just might answer your question. If, however, you cannot find what you need, you will see the option to raise a request.
Please be prepared to tell us this information as you work through the form:
- Provide a helpful summary to tag the request. Example: “CiraNet Management Portal CiraMail Not Allowing Attributions” as opposed to “CiraMail broken”.
- Please walk us through the steps you took to navigate to the point of the error in as much detail as possible Example: From My CiraNet, I clicked on My Portfolio and then My Tests
- Describe the unexpected outcome you received and or the error message you received.
- Provide a screenshot of the error if possible. Snag the entire screen, including the URL.
- If you are requesting a change to a property, such as a legal address, please provide substantiating documentation to verify the request.
- Please identify the environment you were working in. Tell us if you were on a mobile device (and if so, Android or iOS), PC, Mac, and the browser. If you can identify the version of the browser you are on, that is also great information.
You can attach multiple screenshots and/or documents. The more detailed information you share in this system, the more efficiently we can assist you.
What Happens Next?
Once the ticket is submitted, you will immediately see a ticket number issued. Look for an acknowledgment email in your inbox, aliased as being from CiraConnect Service Desk. The email will reference the ticket number and have a link to View request. Note: You also have the option to turn off notifications, but we recommend leaving them on.
If the support team needs more information from you, they will comment on the ticket, and you will receive another email that will contain the comment/question and generally will change the status of your ticket to Waiting for Customer, along with the same View request link you see in the initial email.
Please be sure to respond promptly. If we do not receive a response after five days, the ticket is automatically closed.
Users with open items can also access any that they are participants on by logging in to the Jira ticketing system and clicking on the small button on the upper right-hand side of the page. If you want to add a comment or look at a ticket, just click on the Reference or Summary to link to the request.
Tickets can also be shared with certain other registered users, which allows teams to be aware of items that might impact their entire department and allows supervisors to be fully involved in issues their staff are experiencing.
