How do I work with Support for defect analysis involving CPM customization(s)?
Environment:
Process Designer, Custom Processes (CPM), Service Process Model (SPM)
All product versions
Resolution:
In the case of CPM customizations, a product defect will exist if observed product behavior does not meet the behavior described in product documentation and otherwise available on the support site in knowledge base answers. This includes the following of established best practices, and for such information specific to CPM customizations see Answer ID 8392: CPM Process Designer Best Practices.
The Technical Support (TS) team will assist in defect analysis involving CPM customized scripts under certain circumstances, and when provided with appropriate information. From a basic sense, customers are responsible for troubleshooting and debugging customized code within CPMs themselves, and should engage TS when all available options in determining the root cause of the problem have been exhausted. In cases where customers do not have resources with the necessary technical expertise available to them for performing the work, customization support, setup, troubleshooting, and maintenance can be obtained from Oracle through either Oracle Consulting Services (OCS), or otherwise through the Oracle Partner Network (OPN).
Before engaging TS in a product defect investigation, customers (or otherwise a consultant acting on the customer's behalf) are required to investigate for a software defect themselves. If a defect is found and can be reproduced on-demand in testing using a specific set of steps, an SR should be submitted to TS that contains those detailed steps. This set of steps is sometimes referred to as a "Hello World" example of a defect. The TS team will then confirm those steps on a clean test site and report a product defect (or otherwise identify one already existing). For further information see Answer ID 6925: Submitting 'Hello World' examples of customizations for defect analysis.
In the case of issues that cannot be reproduced on-demand, such as intermittent issues that only occur in production environment, customized logging is often required to determine the source of the issue. The primary cases where TS will need to be engaged further in such an investigation are if a) logging shows the script is not running when it should, or b) logging shows the script is running but the appropriate use of PHP try/catch (including generic PHP and CPHP types caught) is failing to produce details that are necessary in determining the cause of the problem. In such a case an SR should be submitted to the TS team with details on the issue, including details on why it is not possible to determine the problem outside of the TS team.
