The WorkPool Support team will always advise you in advance of performing any billable support tasks. Billable work includes any work or special requests that fall outside of the normal WorkPool Subscriber or Service Level Agreement (where applicable). The WorkPool Support team will confirm in writing:

1. A brief description of the work to be undertaken
2. fixed cost or estimate of the time and/or material envisaged to complete the work.
3. Any other fees that may be applicable

Where required, a formal estimate/quotation document may be requested. On receipt of your written acceptance of the quote, a tax invoice will be issued to you for payment. Once confirmation of payment has been received and reconciled with your account the Support Team will then allocate and confirm the resources necessary to complete the work.

Examples of regular billable support requests:
Server moves or reinstallations. Performing data imports or data exports. Creating special/custom database reports. Performing bulk update operations on your database such as closing or moving of tasks in bulk. Special requests or manual labour required during WorkPool updates, upgrades or changes to your WorkPool server there this is not covered by your service plan. Issues caused by the action or inaction of WorkPool Users which are contrary to the advice supplied by a WorkPool representative or the WorkPool support desk, training documentation or any other published reference material. E.g. creating recurring tasks that trigger every minute, not managing emails in inboxes, never archiving signed off tasks, leaving activities open, etc.

Exceptions to this Policy:
Customers with a Service Plan or Service Level Agreement (SLA) that dictates the terms of support related activities and associated costs. Customers are welcome to contact their Relationship Manager or the WorkPool Support team should they wish to enter into a special Service Level Agreement specific to their company’s operational requirements for example to expedite support requests or address critical bugs.

In most cases the total cost is determined based on the time and effort it takes to complete a task. Requests for server installations and moves are typically at a fixed cost, where this cost is based on a specific internal process being followed and where the time and effort for the work is determined based on the average time and effort involved to complete such a task based on historic data. The WorkPool Support team or your WorkPool Consultant will communicate all costs to you and forward any supporting documentation for your attention that they require at various stages of the process. For ad hoc work or special requests where a fixed cost does not apply, the WorkPool Support team will provide you with an estimate based on the time and/or material envisaged to complete the work. In addition, the WorkPool Support team will offer you advance notice of any variables that could occur based on past experiences.

The standard WorkPool Support rate in South Africa is currently R425 per hour (excluding VAT). International customers will be quoted in their own local currency. Changes to fees will be published on the website with 30 days’ notice. Estimates are based on the actual/average time it takes a WorkPool Support resource to complete a specific support task type, which will include any time and/or material and/or travel. The estimate would include the full scope of effort including but not limited to: taking instructions, identifying the problems, testing (if applicable) and any other pre- or post-follow up actions such as communication and documentation. Travel and/or accommodation costs, where applicable, will be quoted as a separate line item in the estimate.

We actively seek ways to improve and streamline our Support service to ensure we manage costs and can offer a professional, efficient and cost effective service to our clients. Our ability to keep to delivery dates and remain within a fair margin of the estimates provided can be linked directly to the level of cooperation by and performance from both the client and or third party service providers. Some of the factors that affect these estimates are:

1. The detail and quality of the information provided to us as part of the client’s request. The more specific the information provided to us the better and more accurate the estimate will be. The client’s own experience and technical proficiency with WorkPool also plays a big role.
2. How standard the type of work or type of the request from the client is. I.e. the more unique and therefore less regular and less predictable the type of request, the more difficult it is to estimate all the variables. In cases where a process or formal structure exists to deliver on a specific type of request, the better these activities can be managed – as long as all parties follow the rules and steps of the process.
3. Delayed or non-delivery on commitments by the client and or agent service providers such as in making their resources available, keeping to deadlines and timelines, quality of their testing done on the solution, providing WorkPool with any information they require in a timely fashion, clear and concise communication and documentation, etc.
4. Scope creep.
5. Any unforeseen or unpredictable events with regards to the client’s I.T. environment or a lack of training on the WorkPool system.
6. Clients not honouring their payment commitments or not doing so in a timely fashion. This single variable is often the cause of significant delays both to the start and end of a support task. These unnecessary delays and additional communications to follow up payment can cause the costs to increase substantially past the original estimates.

 

In addition to our general company policy that WorkPool Resources do not work on risk, this policy specifically applies to Support-related work where a fixed cost is applicable e.g. installations and upgrades as well as for smaller ad-hoc jobs (e.g. less than 5 hours in effort). It also applies to any client whose account is currently in arrears.

We want to acknowledge that most of our clients honour their commitments for making payment and that many have a relationship with WorkPool that spans many years with an account in good standing. This policy was put in place to ensure that we can continue to offer our clients a cost effective service without introducing an additional cost layer for debtors. This is because we have lately had a significant increase in the number of clients who do not honour their payment commitments or delay in making payment, which includes incidents where:

1. Payment records have been tampered with.
2. Clients breach the subscriber agreement by withholding payment for service rendered to impose upon WorkPool resources to do extra work by adding new requirements or making changes to specifications after the fact (scope creep).
3. Client refuse to make payment before some other, unrelated issue, has been resolved that has no bearing on or was not part of the agreement.
4. Clients or their agent/s, service provider/s or contractor/s not participating or providing essential information and documentation, that form part of our processes, in a timely manner. As per the previous section above, delays caused by parties who no longer treat documentation as a high priority once the work has been completed can add a significant amount of extra time to the process, even when completing such documentation is in their best interest and will assist them to manage their risks.
5. WorkPool has needed to take legal action against clients as our only remaining means to recover costs, which typically results in a lose-lose situation for both WorkPool and the client.

Since these amounts are typically, relatively small it is neither cost effective nor practical to take legal action and incur further expenses in the collections process. Irrespective of the strength of our legal position, the client may be unable to pay due to cash-flow issues or taking such an action will take away valuable time from our key resources. As a result, WorkPool is left to either write off the debt, which will negatively impact upon the relationship due to a small amount that was illegally withheld or not paid, or, WorkPool will proceed to recover the full indebtedness including any legal fees from the client, in which case the relationship is typically irrevocably damaged from the client’s perspective. As maintaining good relationships with our clients is extremely important to us, this policy aims to prevent any unnecessary delays or non-payments and therefore removing any obstacles to maintaining a productive relationship.

Possible Exceptions to this Policy:

1. Where the client requests to pay for the work by means of a debit order and where the client has an existing debit order in good standing.
2. Clients with a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that dictates the terms of the work to be performed for them as well as payment for these.
3. Where the work to be performed forms part of a separated WorkPool project where the work has already been scoped and approved for payment as part of the project budget.
4. Where an authorised WorkPool Resource communicated an exception to this rule in advance, typically due to operational reasons.

 

An email message that originates from an application outside of WorkPool (i.e. external person or system) that WorkPool is attempting to download and import but is unable to do so because the content of the message has been compromised and it is irreparably broken. Messages can be compromised when:

1. The application sending the email does not comply with the international internet messaging format for email communications
2. Other systems and Internet Service Providers reading and then tampering with the body of the email during transmission (i.e. between the original sender and you the receiver)
3. Bulk messaging systems (spammers) sending “broken” messages as a way to exploit vulnerabilities and bypass spam and anti-virus filters

WorkPool makes use of Oracle’s JavaMail API component to process email communications. This component is mature and internationally recognised as complying to the various international internet standards set forth for email processing by the various industry bodies. In cases where the JavaMail API is unable to extract a message it is because it has tried all the options but, due to reasons above, cannot read and extract the entire contents. Therefore, in these cases, the email message will be classified as an “unsupported” message. In the vast majority of cases these messages are spam messages.

 

WorkPool will make various attempts and apply different strategies to download and import a message into the system. After about four (4) failed attempts WorkPool will notify the user of the email that is stuck in their mailbox by adding a new email message in their mailbox to inform them of the problem as well as displaying a warning message on the main email screen (in the header). Since many of our users use WorkPool’s email client exclusively for email management, it is essential that we communicate the situation to the user as soon as possible and in the same interface they use for emails. The downloading process is then temporarily suspended for this user so that:

1. They can investigate and address the problem. The most common solution is for the user to click on the warning icon provided to inspect the contents of their mailbox on the server. They can then identify the problematic email and delete it so the mailbox can be reactivated and downloading can continue. Alternatively if this is a valid, i.e. business related, email message they can ask the sender to resend the message in a different format or use an alternative email client to inspect the contents of the email message. The mailbox can be enabled again without the unsupported email being removed to download the other emails in the mailbox, however after 4 attempts will again disable the mailbox until action is taken.
2. The business is protected and does not come to any financial harm due to the potential bandwidth that can be consumed if WorkPool continuous to try and download this message from the mail server (i.e. endless loop). This is specifically applicable in cases where a small business is paying for bandwidth, have a fixed amount of data per month (fixed cap), or may be liable for additional charges from the email service provider for excessive bandwidth usage. By disabling the mailbox WorkPool protects the business and can avoid situations where an individual goes away on leave, or leaves their mailbox unattended for a few days, and the business incurs an additional expense due to bandwidth consumed.

What can I do to correct or prevent the situation?

1. We encourage our users to support us and the efforts of the open source community to work towards an environment where all software vendors follow the rules and apply the industry standards relating to email messaging by reporting the offenders. We understand that in some cases these rules are broken unintentionally, through ignorance or a lack of technical expertise, so reporting this could be as simple as contacting the original sender to inform them of the situation and asking them to address it.
2. If the source of the problem is spam (i.e. unsolicited email communication) or the sender does not honour your request to change their format to fix the problem you can inform your email administrator to block their email communication. That is if un-subscribing is not an option.
3. Should receiving this email communication be a business imperative or you wish to continue to receive this email communication and the sender is not likely to honour your request to fix the situation (e.g. in the case of newsletters or government notification services) you can subscribe to receive this communication in a different address and then forward it into WorkPool from an email client that is compliant to international standards.

 

The opening of documents from a WorkPool page, be it Word, Excel, PDF documents and even images are all controlled by and displayed by the software installed on the specific device you are trying to open the document on. A quick and easy test to see if your device is capable of opening a specific document type from WorkPool, is to right click on the document link (in WorkPool) and then download this document onto your device. Once downloaded onto your device, you can try to open the document with the standard program associated with that type of file, should the document still not open it would most likely mean you do not have a program installed on your device that can open this file type. It is recommended you contact your I.T. department or person for more information on which software to use or download and how to install this; however if you can open the document please read further as the issue is most likely caused by your Internet Browser.

The issues you are experiencing with opening PDF documents can be caused by (but may not be limited to) the 3 following reasons listed below:

1. The Adobe Reader (or other PDF viewing program) is faulty and can be corrected by un-installing and then reinstalling the program.
2. The PDF reader Plug-in for the browser is faulty and reinstalling this may resolve the issue for you but many times it is only possible to resolve this issue by stopping this plug-in from being used by changing the following setting (as per the links provided below) in the browser.
3. The installed PDF Reader can not interpret your PDF document correctly and must either be updated or changed to use another PDF Reader, please see the links below for further details.

Browser Specific Links:

Internet Explorer 8 and newer
Chrome
Firefox
Safari

Or:

Full Document

Please note that the links above have links to further pages which will also be of assistance, please do follow these to discover the solution to your issue.

Mozilla (the company that produces Firefox) will offer an Extended Support Release (ESR) based on an official release of Firefox for desktop, for use by organizations including schools, universities, businesses and others who need extended support for mass deployments. This version of Firefox is designed with stability, manageability and security in mind and only implements new features in major releases once they have been tested on the Firefox – for personal use (the bleeding edge version), as such the only updates that are made to a major version of Firefox ESR, are critical security updates.

You can read more about their plan here.

You can download Mozilla Firefox ESR here, please ensure that you select the relevant version for your operating system from the “English (South African)” option.

If you already have Firefox installed on your P.C. please uninstall this first by following these instructions, if you wish to keep your personal settings, history and favourites do NOT proceed past point 10. Then double click the downloaded file and follow the installation instructions, any favourites and browsing history should be preserved as Firefox ESR uses the same settings as Firefox Personal, provided you have not deleted them.

Below you will find a list of WorkPool Recommended and Supported Browsers, these browsers have all been tested with WorkPool and will work, except in cases where known issues have been documented. We have also added a short list of browsers which are unsupported, this list is merely informational as it is not practical for us to list all browsers.

Recommended Browsers:
These Browsers have been tested with WorkPool by WorkPool, in fact we use these browsers in WorkPool on a daily basis ourselves and any issues that have been found during testing are corrected as soon as possible. These browsers will give the WorkPool user the best user experience possible:

Firefox ESR download
Internet Explorer version 11

Supported Browsers:
These browsers are known to work with WorkPool i.e. they will not break WorkPool and you are welcome to use any of these browsers, they should give little to no issues, except in cases where there are known issues with a specific part or component in WorkPool. Any issues found with these browsers are logged by us and corrected as and when we are able to – this is treated with a “best effort” development priority and may or may not be corrected in the next release (minor or major) of WorkPool. It is for this reason that we separate the browsers between “Recommended” and “Supported”.

Firefox (personal use version)
Google Chrome (version 4.7 and newer)
Safari (for Apple Mac)

Mobile Device Browsers:
Firefox
Google Chrome
Safari

Mobile browsers, while carrying the brand name of their fully fledged desktop counterpart are NOT the same and only contain part of or a subset of the desktop version’s features and functionality. For this reason one may find that while Safari on a Mac laptop works fine, the same function in WorkPool, accessed on an iPad may yield different results. It must also be said that due to the vast operating system, hardware and performance differences between mobile devices and desktop systems, the mobile device may at times be the source of an issue and not the browser or WorkPool itself.

No Longer Maintained (Legacy Browsers):
Internet Explorer version 9, 10 and older.

Currently Unsupported:
These browsers may (or may not) have serious issues with WorkPool and are of such a nature that we do not recommend using them for WorkPool, use one of these at your own peril!

Microsoft Edge (the default browser for Windows 10)
Opera
Seamonkey
Any other browser not specifically mentioned or listed in the above sections may not be supported.

What does it mean when a browser is Unsupported?
Due to the sheer variety of Internet Browsers available to users it is not practical (even possible) for WorkPool to test and support all browsers and while the browser may work with WorkPool in most cases, we will not devote resources to correcting issues unless we (WorkPool) feel that there is a valid case for correcting a specific issue in an unsupported browser. In most cases issues range from severely annoying at the worst and “we have never heard of that browser before” at best and we therefore recommend that users rather stick to one of our Recommended browsers.