Basic Troubleshooting

1. Have the correct users been targeted?

Open the item in the Content Manager and navigate to the Target Users screen. Confirm the users have been specifically targeted or are part of a group which has been targeted. Check the group isn't partially selected (indicated by a shaded box) which means that only a few users in the group have been targeted and the user in question may not have been selected.


 

2. Is the Target Date and Time set correctly?

Open the item in the Content Manager and navigate to the Target Dates screen. Check the target date has been set to the present day or that the current day is between the Published from and Published until dates. Ensure the date and time has not already elapsed if sending to a client in an earlier time zone.

Note: If the Publish From date is in the future the content will not display until that time.

Also check the Notification Times of Day. If this is set to a very limited time-frame or outside of office hours, the content may have downloaded to clients but not displayed - this is because the users will need to be using their computer between the times set here.


 

3. Are the users able to connect to SnapComms?

Navigate to User & Groups >> Users (or Machines). Find a user that isn't receiving content and check the Last Connected column. If the date and time is not recent this indicates the users client has not contacted the server recently and a network connectivity issue is likely to blame. Ask one of the users to get the log files from their SnapComms client - see step 7 for instructions.


 

4. Is the item being downloaded?

Navigate to the folder the item is located, click on the Reports button next to the item, then select Content Display Report.



Check the Is Read and Num Popups fields to begin with. The report displays how many people out of the targeted group have downloaded and read the article. If they have not yet read the article, it will display the amount of times a popup was displayed on screen.


 

5. Check the client polling frequency

By default this is set to 120 seconds but this may be different in your organisation (check with your administrator). If set to a longer value such as 1 hour, this may be why the content has not yet appeared. To test this, click on Settings within the SnapComms client and click Get Latest Content Now.

Note: If you do not see Settings within your SnapComms client, the settings option may be disabled by your administrator.


 

6. Could it be an AD / group issue?

Issues can arise because changes to AD have occurred and the groups Admins thought were relevant and up-to-date have been discarded in favour of newly created groups – this can occur when Admins are unaware of changes being made to AD by the IT team. The result of this is that Admins are targeting obsolete groups that are not updated with current users.

When manual groups are being used, Admins may forget to update them for new users, thereby omitting the target users they think they are reaching by selecting the group in the first instance.

7. Check machine was not off or in sleep mode when message was sent

If a client machine was switched off, in sleep mode, full screen, or screensaver mode at the time the message was scheduled to appear, The message will be displayed in the Message History, however a Pop-up Notification will not advise the user of any new messages when they restart their machine until the next Recurrence time (set on the Advanced screen, the default is 45 minutes).

To check if this was the case, use the User Event Report to identify if Downloaded, PopupReadLaunch and PopupTimeout events were logged against the user.

8. Collect log files from affected users

SnapComms Client

Open the Message History Window and click Settings > Diagnostics > View Log File...
If requested by SnapComms Technical Support click Save to file... and forward this to us.

Manual Log Retrieval

If the Settings option is not there it may have been disabled by your Administrator and you will need to manually navigate to the location of the log files.

Click Start > Run > Type the following:

%TEMP%\SnapClient\%USERNAME%\Logs

The SnapComms Client log file shows events that occur while the program is running. These events are recorded line by line and we're looking for lines marked with an asterisk (*) which show an error has occurred.




Alternatively, select all of the log files using Ctrl + A > Right click > Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder and forwarding the resulting zip file to SnapComms Technical Support.

9. Check Error codes found in Logs

A list of common error codes can be obtained via the following article, which provides an explanation of the error and how to go about resolving it:
https://support.snapcomms.com/hc/en-us/articles/19361019318043-SnapComms-Server-Retrieving-Logs-Resolving-Problems