This topic explains several ways to contact technical support, as well as how to prepare and send "support archives" that help the technical support team diagnose any problems you are experiencing.

In this section:

Obtaining Live Online Support (Windows only)

The Parasoft support team is available online to answer your questions. This live support allows you to chat in real-time with the support team and perform desktop sharing if needed. To receive live online support, go to https://www.parasoft.com/support/. This live tech support feature currently supports only the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Creating a Support Case

You can file a support case directly at http://www.parasoft.com/ticket.

Contacting us via Phone or E-mail

USA Headquarters

Tel: (888) 305-0041 or (626) 256-3680

Email: [email protected]

Other Locations

See http://www.parasoft.com/contacts.

Preventing SOAtest from Running Out of Memory

To prevent SOAtest from running out of memory, add memory parameters to the script or shortcut being used to start SOAtest. The two parameters are the initial size of the JVM (Xms) and the maxi-mum size of the JVM (Xmx). Typically, both are set to the same size (for instance, 256MB). However, if you have occasional problems but don't want to always allocate a large amount of memory, you can set the parameters to different sizes (for example, 256MB as the initial size and 512MB for the maximum size).

Examples:

SOAtest standalone: soatest.exe -J-Xms256m -J-Xmx256m
SOAtest plugin for Eclipse: soatest.exe -vmargs -Xmx384m

Note that the maximum size you can set depends on your OS and JVM.

Preparing a "Support Archive" and Sending it to Technical Support

If you are experiencing testing problems such as build failures, the best way to remedy the problem is to create a zip archive containing the source file(s) that caused that failure (if applicable), as well as related test information, then send that zip file to Parasoft's support team.

By default, an archive is not created when testing problems occur. You can either manually prepare and send a support archive when needed, or you can modify Parasoft archive creation options so that the product automatically prepares and sends an archive when testing problems occur.
To configure the product to automatically prepare and send archives when testing problems occur:

Open the Technical Support panel by choosing Parasoft> Preferences, then selecting the Parasoft> Technical Support category.
Check Enable auto-creation of support archives.
Customize additional options as needed. Available options are:

Option	Description
Send archives by e-mail	Tells Parasoft Test to send the archive automatically. If you enable this option, be sure to set the e-mail options in Preferences> E-mail if you have not already done so.
General> Environmental data	Environment variables, JVM system properties, platform details, additional properties (memory, other).
General> Application logs	Various platform/application logs.
Enable verbose logging	Includes verbose logs included in the archive. Note that this option cannot be enabled if the logging system has custom configurations. Verbose logs are stored in the `xtest.log` file within the user-home temporary location (on Windows, this is `<drive>:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Set-tings\Temp\parasoft\xtest`). Verbose logging state is cross-ses-sion persistent (restored on application startup). The log file is a rolling file: it won't grow over a certain size, and each time it achieves the maximum size, a backup will be created.
Enable source control output	Includes output from source control commands in verbose logs. Note that the output could include fragments of your source code.
Advanced options	If the support team asked you to enter any advanced options, check this box, then enter the options here.
Archives location	If you do not want to use the listed archive location, specify a new one.

4.Click Apply, then OK.

To manually create a support archive:

Choose Parasoft> Preferences, select the Technical Support category, select the desired archive options, then click Create Archive.

To open the Technical Support Archive Manager, which allows you to review, e-mail, or delete recent support archives:

Choose Parasoft> Preferences, select the Technical Support category, then click Browse Recent Archives.

When creating a support archive it is best to ensure that it contains all the info which is relevant to the problem and does not contain any unrelated info.