troubleshooting user complaints

Vocera is a wonderful product, I prefer working on it over every other system I install because it performs very well and I have personally encountered very few bugs in it. So if we have a solid system that is correctly configured, and our end users are getting furious about "I'm sorry, I didn't understand" what does that mean? I see the same few things over and over:
1) wireless network issues
2) database issues
3) user training issues
4) hardware issues

To make things just a little more tricky, normally there is some amount of each of these at play. Lets look at each of them individually.

Wireless Network Issues
The very first thing we need to issue a command from the badge to Genie is a wireless network to carry our request. How do we know if we have wireless network problems? Here are the hints:
- Genie responses have gaps in speech
- VRS report on "low recognition by access point" shows some AP's well below the average
- red lights on the top of badges
- badges display shows "Searching for Access Point"

If we have the symptoms what do we do? My usual recommendation is to log into a badge as a user with Administrator rights and "play test tone." Stick a headset in the badge and walk the areas reporting problems. Listen for dropped packets, slow roaming between access points, or completely falling off the network. If you expereince any of these you know you have wireless issues to tackle.

Next step is to run a full wireless survey that includes a spectrum analyzer looking for sources of interference. The old Airmagnet views will show channelization problems, dead spots, misconfigured AP's, etc. The Cognio type of component will help you find the things that are scrambling your frequency range and disrupting your badges from functioning correctly. I won't delve any deeper into wireless, if you have symptoms of wireless problems they must be addressed so we can troubleshoot deeper problems.


Database Issues
It's amazing to me how many database problems I find out in production systems (we are talking about absolute show stoppers.) If you want to sniff out these issues, my suggestion is to start thinking like Genie. When you look at group names, Address Book Entries (ABE) and Alternate Spoken Names (ASN) you look at them phonetically. Make sure that when you sound it out it will sound like what your users will say. Vocera has a built in feature to check out your data integrity, you should run this to look for obvious problems!

When you are ready to check the database, login to the admin console, choose the Maintenance menu, and click the tab for Data Check. Select the items you want to check and click the Check button. Take a good read through the output. Think like Genie and see what names are similar or identical, check ASNs and ABEs for conflicts.


User Training Issues
With a voice grade wireless network in place and a clean database available, we have removed the easily fixed items from the list so now we have to deal with users.

First thing we need to know is who is having problems and how bad the problems are, so I hope you have a Vocera Report Server. Log into your VRS and run a low rec by user for the last week, this will tell you who is having problems, how many commands they have issued and what percentage was successful. After putting on some kevlar it's time to go out and meet the users and ask some questions:
- Do you have more trouble in some places than others? (wireless network)
- Are there people or groups they call that it never seems to understand? (check name and ASNs in the database)
- What commands do they commonly use? (Call? Get? Find?)
- What accessories do they use? How do they wear the badge? If used, how does their headset sound?
- Ask them to recreate some scenario that typically fails and observe.

I found this one recently where "call I C U" never works, the group is in the database as "ICU" with no ASNs. Sometimes you can catch this in your database check but other times it's the users who have to lead you to them. I have one client where many users did "learn a name" for a group that needed an ASN. A year later none of the new people could ever call that group and wasn't taught the "learn a name" command in their onboarding training. All the users knew was that Genie always understood it when someone else said the group name, but was broken when they tried it.

Gotta have thick skin to walk out with the target on your back, but if you've made it through the wireless and database and your users still have problems this is the only way.


Hardware Issues
Sometimes things just break, would we get those damage plans on our cell phones if we knew we would never drop them? We can miminize the risk of badge damage by using accessories, but some of them will be destroyed anyway. When a badge is 1/16th of an inch thick or in lots of little pieces it's easy to know it's bad. When it is cosmetically normal people expect it to work and that is sometimes a mistake. Older badges can be damaged internally and look fine on the outside. I've seen bad badges cycle in and out of shifts where one unlucky roulette player gets to hear "I don't understand" all shift.

Again we have a case for having a VRS and running reports for low rec by badge. If badges are being passed person to person it's very easy to find a bad device. Things get a little slippery when people have a one-to-one badge ratio. It's a GREAT approach for inventory to have people keep their own badge and be responsible for it, but what we then find is that the low rec by user and the low rec by badge gives us duplicate data.

Batteries do wear out and when they do they should be pulled from service. The current shipping batteries have expiration dates on them, not an exacting science, but a rough indicator of when they should be replaced.


Conclusion
Vocera is a great system but it does require ongoing maintenance to be sure the wireless coverage doesn't change over time, the database has all the utterances it needs without conflicting extras, the users are staying sharp with their usage, and the badges/batteries/accessories performing and being used correctly. What else should be on the list?