Business Plus Upgrading fiasco

[Confused Sally]

No it doesn't switch off the link it closes Business down completley! It is a time-out on the whole system - yes it is crazy

[guccij]

Also I have a concern about the 24hr time limit on the Business Plus, that it switches Actinic off, however the whole idea is to have a dynamic link, continuously maintained.

You mean it switches off the link between your Actinic software and Epos? This sounds very strange.
We don't have Epos so obviously our experience is very different. But we often leave Actinic running for days at a time. It doesn't switch off or do anything we wouldn't expect it to do. Mind you, we don't have automatic downloads enabled, so perhaps this is why.

[Confused Sally]

Hi
the problems of it crashing remain unresolved although I believe support are making progress,

re the failure of the ordering system which does now seem to be working although traffic is very low, as I understand it - here goes.
The Main PC has Business Plus and EPOS sitting on it and not much else. Actinic was upgraded on there so there was also an old Actinic v8. That PC has 2 drives C and D - this is the computer sold to me by Actinic with the EPOS till system. The C drive had become completely full, this was not allowing downloads, because I couldn't download orders the system stopped taking them. I may have complelety misunderstood how this was explained to me and this probably demonstrates my lack of computer savvy.

The answer was to remove unwanted programs - so the old Actinic 8 went and various other bits of programs we never use (like games - honstly didn't know they were on there!) and to transfer some stored stuff on to the D drive which was almost empty. Compact and refresh - so I guess for geeks incredibly simple, for me I had no clue where to start or what was causing the problem.

The crashing remains an issue.

Also I have a concern about the 24hr time limit on the Business Plus, that it switches Actinic off, however the whole idea is to have a dynamic link, continuously maintained. We close at 5pm on Sat and do not reopen till 10am on Mon, so every Sun the link is down, this is also our highest internet sales time, so it seems ridiculous to me that I cannot change this setting, but i have to wait for an upgrade apparently!

[guccij]

I wonder if it would be possible for Actinic to share how they solved the problems with Sally's website? It appears to have been an extraordinary series of unfortunate events, and enlightening the rest of us might help *us* should the worst happen.

[Confused Sally]

I am pleased we managed to solve the problems with the website, so at least you are now taking orders again.

I don't want to seem ungrateful but isn't that the basic function of your system if you can't make that work - well whats the point?
In order to get to the point where I could take orders again I was unable to use my main till all day, so queues and a member of staff looking like a spare part , my laptop was tied up, and I spent lots of time either on the computer or on the phone or both. I am pleased I can take orders but please don't pat yourselves on the back for this one!

[pmsupport]

Hi Sally,

I am pleased we managed to solve the problems with the website, so at least you are now taking orders again.

I have spent all afternoon trying to recreate the crashes you are having with Business Plus and EPOS link, but so far with no success.

I am passing these findings onto our developers who are working on this in parallel.

I will keep you updated on this.

Paul

[Confused Sally]

Thanks Ian,
I am sorry this occaisionally reduces me to a gibbering wreck, I am usually the 'completely in control' person! Support are still trying to sort out all the underlying problems. I am probably at the end of my relationship with Actinic, if not I shall be in touch as I didn't realise I had an expert on my doorstep and a bit of local contact would be really useful.
Sally

[I-CC]

Hi Sally,

Glad that you have at the very least a working website, so one less thing to contend with I guess.

As you are functional now, no point me popping in to try and resolve that for you.

All the best and hope it all works out for you.

Keep your chin up.

Ian

[Confused Sally]

I have now stopped crying and after almost 2 hours of support remoting into my computer my site is accepting orders - the first one within minutes of the problem being resolved - how many I missed we shall never know although I do know about the 4 who emailed.
However the problems relating to the link and operating through the network are still there. I bought this system so we could have multiple users but at present it cannot tolerate that if the EPOS link is switched on. Everything that does work continues to work painfully slowly. As I write, starting to feel weepy again - ho hum! Still unable to operate site in the way expected or promised.

[Confused Sally]

Thanks,
Support are working remotely now, but then they have been doing that for 4 weeks!. I have my doubts that popping in for half an hour would do it, but you are welcome to try. I am so tired (no sleep) and so tearful about this now (hate crying but seems to be how my body responds - ridiculous and girly and so frustrating) that you may not want to be here, my staff are certainly avoiding me and I am hiding from my customers in my office, so nothing is good.
But i don't want to turn down any offers of help.
Sally

[I-CC]

Hi Sally,

I am across the road in Kempston today, so could pop in for half an hour before going back up the M1, to see if we can track down your gremlins if you want.

Ian

[pmsupport]

Hi Sally,

I am sorry to hear about the experience you have been having. Our development team have been working hard on these problems for you.

I am having a look into this issue for you now so we can work towards a faster response.

We will keep you updated.

[Confused Sally]

[QUOTE=guccij;330075]This isn't normal. QUOTE]

We were told it was by support and remotely demonstrated that all files sit in all folders and are replicated - but it falls over when we do it!

I am considering moving to Volusion at least they have 24 hour contactable support. Anyone with any experience of them or transferring to them please contact me with your experiences.

I think every penny i spend with Actnic is good money thrown after bad. I feel when I contact Actinic Support they always assume I am doing something stupid, this might on occaisions be right but we do not have a complicated site and I deserved a lot more help a lot earlier.

Yes the CGI bin has always been with tnphosting, I have never moved my hosting as hostinguk have always been brilliant and responded within hours to any issues, they ast least deserve my loyalty.I have never been told by support that this is a problem I will certainly have had help from support when it was initally set up (2002/3) so they will have advised me, I can't do that sort of thing on my own - no techy know how at all!

I am not technical, I am completely out of my depth and feel completely let down. The only time Actinic seem to respond quick is when i complain on the forum so here i am complaining again!

[Mike Hughes]

Hi Sally,

I can't believe this hasn't been sorted yet. Is there no fallback solution with Business Plus? Normally, worst case, you can install a clean copy of actinic onto another PC (or do a clean install of Actinic) import your snapshot and off you go again.

The customers will calm down and come back. They're probably just as frustrated as you are. You might want to consider taking the site down temporarily until things get sorted and leaving a short message explaining the situation. At least this will avoid customers getting frustrated and feeling that they're wasting their time.

Has this been escalated higher within Actinic? I assume you have actinic cover and this is supposed to provide fast track response for critical issues and a guaranteed escalation procedure. By now I'd expect CB to be on the case.

I wish there was some way I could help but this isn't the kind of thing I know about.

Mike

Ps. has your site always been like this? the cgi-bin isn't on the same domain as the site: tnp.hostinguk.com?

[guccij]

And to the rude potential customer, ignore them. She's probably horrible to everyone in real life.