Contacting Technical Support

Manifold Technical Support provides support through email using English language. Please review the main Support page before contacting tech support. That page provides links to quick information that can assist you right away in most cases.

This page provides instructions for contacting technical support for Manifold System. Technical support is available only for the current release of Manifold System with the latest update installed on machines fulfilling all requirements in the Requirements page. Please follow these instructions carefully to make the best use of your tech support incidents.

Very important: Technical support for Manifold System can be obtained only by using a technical support token using the instructions below. Attempting to obtain technical support through contacts of any kind outside these procedures will only waste time, cause frustration and might waste tech support tokens. Any question of a technical nature, no matter how trivial, requires use of a tech support token.

Holidays: See the Holidays page for a list of holidays observed by Manifold. Technical support is not available on holidays.

No token is required to send in a bug report, provided you do not ask a tech support question as part of that bug report or ask for a reply. For information on how to submit bug reports, please see the Bug Reports page.

Step 1: Determine Technical Support Category

Any question of a technical nature falls into one of four categories. Determine which of these three categories describes your question:

• Standard Email Support - Questions regarding interactive use of Personal Edition features and extensions. Excludes questions on Enterprise, Database Administrator or License Server features, geometry linked from external sources, scripting or programming, IMS or web applications, customization, runtime licenses and SQL.
• Developer Email Support - Questions on any Manifold System feature in any edition, including any questions excluded from standard email support.
• Standard Telephone Support - Same questions as covered by standard email support, but discussed in a telephone call with a tech support engineer. Available in English language only to telephone numbers in the 50 US states. Requires a voice telephone support token at a minimum fee of $295 per incident.
• Free support on installation, serial numbers or activation - Licensees writing from the original email address specified for a license may be able to obtain free support with no tech support token required by following the procedure specified by the Installation and Activation page. To qualify for free support you must provide all information required by that page and you must otherwise follow all requirements of that page. Standard support tokens automatically will be charged for contacts not cooperating with the free process. If you intend to use this option, please follow the procedure in the Installation and Activation page.

Step 2: Obtain a Support Token

You must have a support token of the required type for each question you ask. Standard tokens cannot be used for development category questions, and email tokens cannot be used for standard telephone support questions. A support token is a long string of upper case letters and numbers that looks like a Manifold serial number. See the About Technical Support Tokens page for examples and information on tech support tokens.

A Manifold System license includes two tokens for Standard Email Support, which are provided in the same email message that provided the serial number for that license. If you do not have any tokens available, you must buy the tokens you need from the Online Store.

A token can be used once, for one question. If you do not recall whether you have used a particular token, check the status of that token on the Status Page to make sure it has not been used, revoked or is not the required type.

Step 3: Collect Necessary Information

Tech support needs to know important details about your system to help you rapidly and effectively. You must collect the following information to provide to technical support. Write this information down in a text file as you will not be able to send screen shots to tech support.

Launch Manifold System and choose Help - About in the main menu. Write down the following information from the About Manifold® System dialog box exactly as reported by the dialog:

• Manifold System edition (first line in the dialog).
• Build number (second line in the dialog).
• Extensions listed (if any) in the installed extensions box.
• Serial number ending in a series of X characters.
• CPU.
• Physical memory.
• Operating system.
• Running mode (32-bit or 64-bit).

Step 4: Contact Tech Support

When using a standard email or developer email support token, compose and send an email to tech@manifold.net using the following instructions:

• The subject line must begin with the words Manifold Support Request followed by a hyphen and a few words summarizing the subject of the question. Example: "Manifold Support Request - Shapefile projection problem"
• Use English language for your email.
• Do not cc: any third parties on the email.
• Do not request any email system receipts or flag the email as important.
• Do not attach any attachments of any kind (images, vcards, etc.) to the email.
• Do not use HTML formatted email. Send email as ordinary, PC standard text.
• Send email only from an email address that can accept a reply from manifold.net email addresses.
• The first line of the body of the email must include the technical support token you will use for this question.
• The next few lines of the body of your email text must include the information collected from the Help - About dialog.
• Ask one question to which you wish the tech support token to be applied. This question should be specific and include complete and detailed information on anything you did from which the question arises. For example, if the question has to do with importing a particular file, state exactly how you have attempted to import that file including a step-by-step description of each command or dialog you have used and the settings employed in each such command or dialog.
• If your question involves a problem that can be duplicated by using a drawing or data set that can be downloaded from the Manifold website, give an example using a file from the website (provide a URL) and give a step-by-step description of how the problem can be duplicated using that file.
• Conclude your question with a list of Help topics you have read to try to find the answer in Help.
• To avoid wasting tech support incidents, please utilize an email account that does not block, discard or reject emails from manifold.net email accounts. See the Email Problems page for tips if you suspect any problems in your email system. Please note: manifold.net does not provide consulting assistance on resolving email reception problems. If you don't know how your email account is configured or how to resolve problems, ask whoever is in charge of your email system to assist you.

Using telephone support tokens: When using a telephone email support token, compose and send an email to tech@manifold.net exactly as above except that you must also include a telephone number in the US to which the responding tech support engineer can place a call during business hours. Make sure you include a valid, unused telephone support token you have purchased.

Using a telephone email support token does not remove the need to provide complete details, by email, on your installation and on your question as required for an email support token. The benefit of a telephone email token is that an engineer can reply to your question by telephone and clarify any uncertainties by voice instead of by follow up emails.

Very Important: All of the above information is important. Without all details an engineer cannot solve the problem quickly. Please provide all of the above information within a single email. If you do not provide all of the above information or if you otherwise send in a non-conforming support request and receive a form letter from tech support asking you to provide all required information or pointing out some other problem that prevents processing your request, please re-submit your question as a new, complete, standalone email that includes all of the above information in a single letter. Tech support will not try to parse threads you forward from other people as that leads to errors. Please contact tech support using a new, original email message so all information is clear.

Additional Information

Tech support may contact you with questions as part of the processing of an incident. Please respond within two business days to those questions, answering all questions asked. Incomplete responses or tardy responses will result in an incident being closed.

To get the most value from a technical support token, please make sure to provide full information as required above. Requests for tech support that do not provide required information will waste the token being used.

Make sure to ask only one question with each support incident. Requests for support that ask more than one question will have only the first question answered. Do not pose rhetorical questions: tech support must treat all questions equally and cannot guess when you are serious about a question and when you are not.

Tokens are automatically charged in some circumstances, usually after a courtesy reminder. For example, Manifold provides free updates on the condition any questions about free updates require an incident, providing a clear notice in the updates page: "If you have any questions regarding the download or installation of an update, that requires a technical support incident." As a courtesy to users, questions about an update which do not include a token will normally receive a reminder that a token is required and that a token will automatically be charged if the user continues the thread. Continuing the thread in any way will use up a token.

To preserve free and low cost support service products for users who honor their product agreements, support tokens will automatically be consumed in some circumstances. For example, users who have not procured telephone support services but who attempt to obtain telephone support, ignoring courtesy information provided in dial-in telephone lines, will automatically be charged a support token to be reminded of the process they should use. Please see the Support FAQ for other examples of automatic consumption of support tokens.

Users must write from an email address that can receive email from manifold.net email addresses. If users write from an email address they cannot use to receive email responses from Manifold, tokens will end up being automatically charged to deal with the resulting chaos. See the Email Problems page for tips.

See the Support FAQ for answers to frequently asked questions regarding technical support and additional information.

Questions?

Please contact us at sales@manifold.net. We would like you to be happy with your licensing of Manifold products, so please do not hesitate to ask any questions before placing an order.