So an issue has occurred with Bp Premier, and you need to call Best Practice Software Support. Our Support team will always open with a standard set of questions when you first call, to identify your practice. Further questions will try to pinpoint which Bp Premier function was in use at the time of error, and what the user was doing.
Before you call Bp Support, there are some things you can do so you have the information Support need ready to go, including grabbing some Bp Premier and Windows log files ready to email. This can really help reduce resolution times and get your practice running again.
Mandatory Information
Support will always ask for the following information first, to ensure that we are speaking with a genuine contact at your practice:
- The contact’s full name
- The contact’s Job Role and contact details at the practice, including best telephone number and email address
- Site ID
- Version of Bp Premier installed
Select Help > About in the software to find out your Site ID and the Bp Premier version. If you click System Info in the same screen, you can also see a lot more information about the database and operating system that Support might ask about.
Running an Older Version?
If you are running a version of Bp Premier that is older than the current version (Saffron Service Pack 1), the issue may have been resolved in a later version. Select Help > Online to open the Bp Premier Knowledge Base and search for ‘known issues’ to run an eye over the most recent known issues.
Best Practice Software understands that upgrading must be planned around your practice hours and often involves expenses such as IT support. However, upgrading often is one of the best ways to resolve issues that occur, particularly performance-related issues, and also ensures your practice is up to date with the most recent developments in the industry, such as Electronic Prescribing and Active Ingredient Prescribing.
Help Us Help You
Support will ask different questions based on which function was being used when the error was generated. The areas we tend to drill down on are:
- The database or your whole practice
- The word processor
- The patient clinical record
- Check for payments and online claiming
- The appointment book
You are likely to be asked some common questions around recent configuration activity, and the size and type of the error:
- Have you recently run a Program Upgrade or Data Update, and if so, which one?
- Roughly how many users were logged in when you saw the error? About the same number as logged in on a typical practice day?
- Do you know how many patient records were open at the time?
- Do you know how many providers your appointment book page was set to show?
- Have you taken a screenshot of the error, if there is a Bp or Windows error message?
For a more detailed guide on what sort of information would be useful to Support based on which part of Bp Premier you were in, select Help > Online to open the Bp Premier Knowledge Base and search for ‘call support’. Our guide Managing general errors provides more information on how we drill down to identify the issue. This guide also contains resolution actions for some general issues that have been recently identified.
Gathering Logs
Bp Premier and Windows logs are invaluable to our Support team in identifying the issue. The good news is that you absolutely don’t have to be a technical wizard to get these!
This Support Guidance article explains how to download a utility that automatically extracts Bp Premier’s logs. Download the utility on the server or workstation causing the problem, run the utility, tick the items as indicated in the article, and you have a ZIP file ready to send!
This Support Guidance article explains how to obtain relevant Windows system logs that give our Support team more information about what was going on at the time of error. The instructions are very easy for anyone to follow, but your Windows user account does need permission to access the Windows Event Viewer, which may not be granted to all users. Follow the instructions on the server or workstation generating the error and you’ll get three sets of log files, which can zip up ready for emailing.
Tips for Memory Management
Finally, Support have come up with a set of recommendations for good memory housekeeping that will help prevent slowness and ‘out of memory’ issues. Just a few small daily actions can keep Bp Premier running and avoid the risk of data loss due to records closing prematurely:
- When you save a document you know will be imported into Bp Premier, change the document format to TIFF file type rather than PDF. TIFF files (also known as TIF or .tif) utilise much less virtual memory than PDF files when stored and opened in Bp Premier.
- Set the default document view for PDFs in the document viewer to Fit to Height.
- Larger PDFs of several MBs in size can be opened externally from the document viewer. This will normally open the PDF in a browser or Adobe Acrobat viewer.
- Don’t open PDF reports in the Dr’s Inbox in the Document Viewer by double-clicking the file in the inbox.
- Close open documents in the document viewer that no longer need to be open.
- Shut down Bp Premier completely at the end of each day, and restart the next morning. If crashes or errors continue to occur, try closing and re-opening Bp Premier on the affected computer once throughout the day, for example, at the start or end of a lunch break.
For more information around memory housekeeping and Bp Premier, select Help > Online to open the Knowledge Base and search for ‘memory’.
Authored by:
Jay Rose
Lead Technical & Content Writer at Best Practice Software
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