Buttons lets you package everything a support engineer needs (version, service status, connection logs, and configuration) into one file, so you can get help fast without a remote session into your install. This page walks through gathering that evidence and getting it to the right place.
Before you begin#
Have access to:
- Settings → General, for version info and the Support section.
- Settings → Services, for service status.
- Connect → Connection, if a specific connection is involved: see Monitor and troubleshoot a connection for reading its status and logs.
Example: a service won't recover after an update#
A Buttons install runs unattended. After an update, something isn't right: a position isn't updating, or a colleague reports a control not responding, and nobody is on-site to plug in a keyboard and look.
- Open Settings → Services. The System Health banner at the top reads either OK ("All services are running normally") or flags a problem, and every service is listed with a status dot (Running, Starting, Waiting, or Stopped) and its Uptime.
- Find the service that isn't Running, or whose Uptime just reset unexpectedly.
- Select the restart icon in that service's row to restart it. This acts immediately with no confirmation step, so restart only the service you've identified as the problem, not services that are already running normally. (The key-value store's restart control, Valkey on macOS/Linux or Garnet on Windows, is disabled, since restarting it would affect every other service.)
- If the service comes back and stays Running, the install is healthy again.
- If it won't come back, or comes back and drops again, open Settings → General and select Export Support Package. This downloads a ZIP containing your database export (secrets excluded), every service's logs, and a data dump from the underlying key-value store (Valkey/Garnet): everything a support engineer needs to see what happened, without needing access to the machine itself.
Example: choosing where to send it#
Buttons has three separate channels, and picking the right one gets you a faster answer:
- The dashboard's feedback form ("Submit feedback") is for feature requests, bug reports, or general comments. It goes to a shared queue for the product team: useful for shaping what Buttons does next, but not for getting individual help with something broken right now.
- Email support (
support@bitfocus.io) or the Slack Community Chat, both linked from the dashboard's "We're here to help" section, are for personalized help with a specific problem. Attach the support package here. - If the problem is with a specific connection module rather than Buttons itself, use that connection's Bug Report button (on its Config page) instead: it opens an issue against that module's own GitHub repository, where its maintainer can see it directly.
Sending a broken-install report through the feedback form means it joins a queue with no guaranteed reply. Emailing support with the exported package attached gets it to someone who can act on it.
If you get stuck#
What you see | What to try |
|---|
You're not sure which service is the problem. | Check Uptime as well as status: a service stuck restarting will show a very recent uptime repeatedly. |
Restarting the service doesn't help. | Export the support package and email support rather than continuing to restart it: repeated restarts won't fix an underlying cause on their own. |
You don't know if this is a Buttons problem or a connection module problem. | |
Where to go next#
