Run Diagnostic Tests to Verify, Troubleshoot, and Analyze

When an error occurs, you can try to diagnose it yourself by running diagnostic tests, before following up with your help desk.

You can also use diagnostic tests to take preventive measures and identify potential issues before running into real problems.

Note: You can run diagnostic tests only if you have roles that let you do so.

Health Check

This example shows running a diagnostic test to verify that data is correct before starting a large-volume task.

1. You are a general ledger manager, and you periodically run diagnostic tests to check on data, setup, and configurations, especially before closing the period.

2. You open the Diagnostic dashboard and run the General Ledger Misclassified Accounts Validations test, to make sure that all accounts are correctly classified.

3. You review the test results and confirm that the accounts are ready for the period close process.

Troubleshooting

This example shows running a diagnostic test to start the troubleshooting process.

1. You are a general ledger manager, and you run into issues with the period close process.

2. You open the Diagnostic dashboard and search for diagnostic tests using tags, with Financial Control and Reporting as the tag name.

3. You browse the search results for tests with Close Ledgers as the tag value.

4. You find and run the appropriate test, General Ledger Closing Validations.

5. The diagnostic test results can show issues that you can't fix yourself: validation errors in setup, configuration, or data integrity. In this case, it's incomplete accounting setup.

6. You notify your help desk about the diagnostic test results and describe your issue.

   If the test results have no validation errors, but there are issues that you can't fix yourself, you can submit an incident. The help desk reviews the incidents to identify the cause of the issue.

7. Your help desk troubleshoots the issue, suggests a fix, and asks you to rerun the test.

8. You repeat steps 4 through 7 until the test completes with no issues identified.

Data Analysis

This example shows running a diagnostic test to collect data for analysis.

1. You are a purchasing agent and you notice discrepancies in a specific purchasing document.

2. You search the Help for information related to purchasing documents, to see if you can find any relevant troubleshooting information. You find a list of predefined diagnostic tests, and you check if there is a relevant diagnostic test.

3. You open the Diagnostic dashboard and run the appropriate test: Manage Purchasing Documents Lifecycle - Validate.

4. You review the test results that contain all the details about the particular purchasing document.

5. You identify the reason for the discrepancies and resolve the issue yourself.