Support
Something has gone wrong
Sorted by symptom rather than by department, for someone with a class starting shortly. Three of the four routes are not a ticket at all.
First, the one question that decides everything
Is this a question about the work, or a fault in the environment? Helix Coach answers the first inside the lab, in seconds. The second belongs to the support team. Coach draws that line itself rather than attempting both, and that is what makes its answers worth trusting on the questions it does take.
Coach answers
- Subject specific questions about the work happening in the lab.
- A next move when you are stuck, narrowed rather than answered outright.
- Related suggestions it predicts you will need, offered after the first question rather than after the third.
- Answers that name the controls on the screen in front of you, rather than a general procedure.
Coach declines
- The finished configuration for a step you are being asked to build.
- An environment that will not start, which it hands to the support team instead.
- Opening a ticket on your behalf.
- Anything outside the work in the lab. Coach is not the technical support channel and does not present itself as one.
Coach is the fastest route to an answer for a learner who would otherwise open a ticket. When the question genuinely belongs to support, the handover is specific rather than a shrug, and the evidence goes with it.
The four destinations
Every line in the triage list below carries one of these. Read them once and the list reads faster.
- The lab windowThe controls beside the work
- Most of what Helix Labs does is a control within reach of the task, so a good number of things that feel like faults are settings. Nothing here needs a ticket or an answer from anyone else.
- Helix CoachIn the lab, and in the account portal
- Subject specific questions about the work in front of you. Coach guides, hints and explains at the moment a learner is stuck, and its knowledge base was built from the questions the support team is actually asked.
- The support teamStaffed 24 by 7
- Technical faults: an environment that will not start, and anything Coach turns down as outside what it covers. This is the channel for work that is already live.
- The classroomThe administrator or instructor who created it
- Access, dates, seats and instructors are all properties of the classroom rather than of a learner account, so the person who created the classroom is the fastest route to a change.
Find your symptom
Written the way the problem arrives rather than the way the product describes it. The route is on the right of each line, and the second column says what to do now.
The environment will not start
The support team
What to do now
This is a fault rather than a question, and Coach will say so rather than guess. Take it to the support team, which runs 24 by 7.
What to send with it
The screenshots you took from the lab action menu. They collect in the lab footer with a count beside them and they attach to the ticket, which turns "it did not work" into the screens it did not work on.
I am stuck on a step and the environment is not doing what the step says
Helix Coach
What to do now
Ask Coach, inside the lab. It answers from a knowledge base built from real support questions, so the answer names the controls on the screen rather than describing a generic procedure.
What to send with it
Nothing. Coach is already in the environment, so you do not have to leave it, lose your place, or describe your screen to someone who cannot see it.
I asked Coach for the finished configuration and it would not give it to me
Helix Coach
What to do now
That is the product working rather than failing. Coach guides, hints and explains, and it will not hand over the thing a step exists to prove you can build. What it will do is narrow the problem: which settings are already correct from an earlier step, and which one the step calls out by name.
What to send with it
Ask again for the narrowing rather than the answer. A learner who leaves the turn with less to search and the same amount to do is the outcome Coach is built for.
The lab timer will run out before I finish
The lab window
What to do now
Time can be extended when a task needs longer, so a session two steps from the end is not lost to the clock and the environment does not have to be restaged to give the time back. Who performs the extension is one of the facts listed as outstanding below.
I had to stop halfway through and I do not want to start again
The lab window
What to do now
Save and resume. The session restores at the step it was left on, so an interrupted lab is paused rather than abandoned.
I cannot find the cloud credentials for the exercise
The lab window
What to do now
They are in the info tab, the second tab on the right rail, and they appear there once the lab has launched. Cloud Express Pass generates Azure, AWS and Microsoft 365 accounts for the learner, and the Azure credentials carry subscription level access, so you can create your own resource groups inside the exercise.
I am waiting for a code to redeem and nothing has arrived
The classroom
What to do now
There is no code. The classroom puts the labs on the learner's account, so if they are not there the classroom is the thing to check: that it exists, that its dates are right, and that the learner is in it.
The labs were on my account and now they are not
The classroom
What to do now
Lab access runs for 180 days from the classroom start date. If that window has closed, the access ended rather than broke, and extending it is a decision for whoever owns the classroom.
Another instructor needs to get into the classroom
The classroom
What to do now
A classroom names up to three instructors, and they are set on the classroom by the administrator or instructor who created it. A fourth is a change to how the delivery is arranged rather than a permissions fault.
The classroom will not take another learner
The classroom
What to do now
Student numbers are capped by the credit vouchers on the account, so a class that will not admit one more learner is a question about the account rather than a fault in the classroom.
I want Coach when I am not inside a lab
Helix Coach
What to do now
Coach runs in the account portal as well as in the lab. It sits in the bottom right corner, just above the support chat icon, and it is the same companion working from the same knowledge base.
What makes a ticket answerable
Screen capture is taken from the lab action menu, and the shots collect in the lab footer with a count beside them. They attach to a support ticket, which is the difference between a report that describes a screen and one that shows it.
Lab notes are the other record worth using. Notes are written against each lab module, saved, downloaded and shared with the instructor, who can read them in real time. A note written at step four is readable by the person teaching before the learner reaches step five, which resolves a good number of problems before they become tickets.
What is not settled yet
No ticket address, no response time and no regional hours. The support team runs 24 by 7 and that is documented, but the address a ticket is raised at, what is promised on a reply, and what happens when a ticket stops moving are operational commitments the company publishes, and they are not settled in this product yet.
Printing a plausible version of any of them would be worse than leaving them out: a person following a wrong address on the morning of a delivery loses the thing this page exists to protect.
If none of the lines above is yours
Say what you are actually seeing rather than choosing the nearest available category. A request that names its own subject is routed faster than one that has been squeezed into a heading, and the contact page routes by need rather than collecting everything in one place.