The following steps will help you troubleshoot issues that you or your users encounter in Infinite Campus.
Issue Qualification
The first step is to qualify or gain a full understanding of the issue by gathering information. This helps determine issue scope, aids in replication, and directs research. We recommend using the W questions to begin. The following examples may be used as a guide. The best questions to ask will depend on the issue.
| Who | Who is experiencing the issue?
|
| What | What calendar, course, section, term, grading task, etc. is impacted? |
| What has already been tried to fix this? | |
| What are your click-by-click replication steps? | |
| What is the scope of the issue? Does it impact the whole district, one calendar, one course, etc.? | |
| What is the end goal and what is required to accomplish it? | |
| What browser and operating system are you using? Does it happen in others? | |
| Where | Where is the issue occurring? |
| When | When do you need an answer by? Is there a deadline? |
| When did the issue begin? | |
| When does the issue occur? Under certain circumstances? | |
| Why | Why is this being done? |
| How | How can someone replicate the issue? |
| How do you believe it should function? |
Replication
Replicating an issue allows one to better understand it and the conditions under which it occurs. Using a Sandbox or Staging site can help avoid negative impacts to live data.
The following questions may be helpful when replicating:
- Can the end-user replicate, or did the issue only occur one time?
- If the end-user cannot replicate, the issue may be resolved.
- Is the issue sporadic, or does it occur under the same conditions every time?
- Establishing a pattern can lead to the solution.
- Can the issue be replicated in a different browser or on a different computer?
- If not, the issue may be specific to a browser, operating system, or setting. Check to see what is different between where the issue occurs and does not occur.
- Can the issue be replicated in the Sandbox?
- If not, this could mean that data changes made in Production since the Sandbox's last refresh could be causing the issue. Isolating that piece of changed data may help resolve the issue.
Research
Research is often required to verify that one's understanding is current and correct. It also helps confirm if the site has been configured correctly or if data is valid.
These tips can help guide the research process:
- Check Campus Community product documentation to confirm functionality. Do the user's expectations match the tool's design?
- If the user's expectations differ, Support Contacts may submit an enhancement idea via this survey: https://infinitecampus.wufoo.com/forms/w7vx3711ljt1sz/
- Verify that your Campus site is configured correctly based on Campus Community product documentation.
- If not, a setup adjustment may be required to resolve the issue.
- Check to see if data has been entered incorrectly or is missing, invalid, or corrupt.
- Many areas of Campus are interconnected and setup or data in one area may impact others. Check other areas of Campus that impact the tool being used.
- Scenario:
- None of the teachers are able to take attendance at Campus Middle School. Connie Contact confirms that teachers have the right tool rights and that they could take attendance yesterday. She works backward to check the setup that needs to be in place for attendance to function. She checks the calendar and sees that today is not set up as a School Day, but it should be. She makes the change to the calendar and teachers can take attendance again.
- Scenario:
- Is a third-party application such as Adobe Acrobat or Java being used? Are these applications up to date?
Other Troubleshooting Tips
- Have you taken a Campus version update recently? Updates contain fixes and enhancements that could resolve the issue reported. See Campus Release Packs for release notes.
- Hint: The current Campus version is noted in the top, right corner of the login screen.
- Are you currently running any large updates, like Windows updates? These can impact performance.
- Have you or your users cleared your browser cache and cookies? This can clear out old data that can cause issues.
- If you have database access, verify that what you see on the backend matches with the frontend of the application.
Additional Resources
- Role-Specific Resources highlight ways Infinite Campus can help you in your role.
- If you have database access and questions about how things relate to each other in the backend: the Campus Database Schema shows the relationships between database tables.
- If your state entity uses a State Edition of Infinite Campus: the Student Data Cleanup Process can help avoid any issues in syncing between State Edition and District Edition.
