On The Clock: Marketcircle / Daylite Tech Support

It is no secret that I have been a big fan of Marketcircle‘s Daylite for quite some time.  In fact, I have posted several articles (here, here, and here) promoting Daylite as a viable option for other attorneys.  I have used Daylite as our office’s case management program for almost two years, and it has done a great job during that time.  It is easy to learn, easy to use, and it just works without problems … until now, that is.

I downloaded Daylite’s new update  (v. 3.5.1) last Thursday, and since doing so I have had problems, which worsened on Friday.  These problems are of the type that make it very difficult to impossible to do any of my daily tasks/functions in Daylite.  When you have any software that becomes the part of the backbone of your practice, any problems quickly become major problems.

Daylite offers free technical support by email, but they state that they "aim to answer your emails within 2 – 4 business days."  I emailed tech support on Friday afternoon explaining the problems that we are having and to request assistance.  I received a somewhat generic email response within a few hours, but it seemed that the person that sent the email did not understand the problem I had described.  At least it asked me to supply additional information, which I promptly did.  I have not yet received any additional contact from Marketcircle.

I am posting this information to keep my readers informed as to how well Marketcircle’s tech support resolves these issues and enables us to resume working at full speed.  Hopefully, I will be able to post very soon that all problems have been resolved and how well their tech support people handled these problems. Either way, I will let you keep you posted on how things develop — good, bad, or other.

Update  ::  10.1.07

I received an email from Marketcircle Tech Support late this morning ago with some proposed solutions to the problems that we are having.  I have implemented the steps that they have recommended, and the results have been mixed.  It initially seemed that one of the main problems was fixed to the point that we could resume working in our database, but the problem has since returned.  I have updated Marketcircle as to the mixed results and ongoing problems, and I hope to get further updates and fixes from them.  Either way, I will keep updating this post as things develop.

Update  ::  10.2.07

I was not able to update the status again yesterday for two reasons:  (1) Mondays are always very busy in a family law practice, with yesterday being unusually so; and (2) these technical problems have hindered my efficiency, and it’s taking a lot longer to do virtually everything than it was before these problems began.

Marketcircle’s tech support called me a few times yesterday afternoon to have me attempt several possible resolutions and to get some additional information from me.  To their credit, they seem to be working hard to resolve these problems.  In fact, the tech support person that I spoke with stayed at his office until after 6:00 p.m. working on this problem.

The last thing I did last night was upload our entire Daylite database to Marketcircle so that they could try to get a better handle on the problems and come up with a solution.  I am simultaneously very appreciative of their efforts and very ready to have these problems behind me so that I can get my office back up to working at full speed.  I will update again later today after I hear back from Marketcircle.

Update  ::  10.3.07

Over the course of yesterday, two things happened:  (1) our problems got worse, to the point that we were not able to do anything in Daylite for a period of a few hours, and (2) Marketcircle’s tech support and software engineers worked steadily and diligently to find a resolution to these problems.

I am thrilled to announced that early yesterday evening, Marketcircle found a way to resolve the problems we were having, and we’re now back up to full speed as of last night.  I am not sure exactly what happened to cause the problems, and frankly I’m not sure that they are either, as my situation was apparently unique.  I am not so much concerned as the "why" it happened as I am glad that it is behind us.

I want to extend my sincere thanks to the folks at Marketcircle (particularly Matthew) for all of their hard work to solve this problem.  They stayed after hours on several days to find a resolution, and they even checked with me afterward to make sure that everything was working as it should.  Support like that is hard to come by in today’s world, and I want them to know how much I appreciate all of their efforts.