Introduction

Hi, I am a technical support engineer. My job is to help out customers having issues on windows desktop such as Office applications, networking and GPO management.

I would like to share with you how to clarify technical issues.

Clarifying the issue

For the sake of my job, I receive many technical inquiries and most of users' issue descriptions are such as "Office application crashes", "Outlook has an account issue" and "IE is not working".

These descriptions are not so good because 5W1H (Who, What, Where, When, Why, How) are not included. I believe clarifying 5W1H helps all types of engineers communicate better when an issue occurs.

Who:

How many users are affected by the issue.
ex, 5 users of 100 are affected.

What:

What version of the software are showing the issue.
ex, Windows 10 Version 1909 (18363.778), Office 365 ProPlus Version 2003 (12624.20466)
Note that typing "winver" in search box shows your windows OS version.

Where:

Where are the users affected by the issue.
ex, Inside the company network as other not-affected PCs.

When:

When users see the issue.
ex, once in a day.

Why:

Why users see the issue.
ex, this configurati*on modified recently.*

How:

How to reproduce the issue.
ex, provide a screenshot.
PSR may help to share the reproducing steps.

Hope this article helps your technical communication better.