1) Diagnosing application problems can be a tricky issue. The #1 support call received here at HermeTech about ANY of our UltraPort is because of a lack of knowledge of UAC (User Account Control) and how it is used in the MS Windows operating systems particularly beginning with MS Windows XP service pack 2 and MS Windows Server 2003. For more info on UAC click HERE. Certain code elements might trigger UAC and cause Windows to block the application from executing. If this happens verify that UAC is not the culprit first!

 

2) Firewalls and 3rd party network monitoring software, including the Windows Firewall as well as Norton's and Symantec's virus scanning and network protection suites can cause problems depending on how they are configured.

 

3) Sporadic or intermittent connection problems can be be caused by slow or unstable network / VPN connections. Tweak the Connection Timeout value in the Global Settings. If your profiles are not receiving HL7 acknowledgements when they should OR are sometimes sending a message multiple times before receiving an HL7 acknowledgement tweak the values in the acknowledgement settings area of your router profile (click here for more info).

 

4) Integrating Proxy Applications. Sometimes even software professionals forget how TCP/IP connections work. When you enable the 'Proxy' functionality in your optional profile settings, you are effectively turning that profile into a customized TCP/IP LISTENER Application which tries to 'bind' to the interface port number you selected. Verify that this port number does not conflict with any other listener applications (HL7 Listeners or other types of listeners) on the computer.

 

5) Using Network Drives, Mapped Drives or Virtual Drives. Let us guess, it works fine when running locally BUT when running as a service it will start BUT doesn't appear to be receiving messages. The #2 support call we get here is from customers who want to use network shares / mapped drives / virtual drives to host the data folder in their router profile. This will cause issues for you because MS Windows Services are unable to access network resources. The thing to remember is that when you are creating your listener profiles or running your profiles locally you are logged into your network. Thus you can see all of the 'My Network Places' which you have access to and any mapped drives which are part of YOUR login script. The UltraPort Router MS Windows Service on the other hand is (by default) running under the "Local System" account which exists ONLY on your computer, doesn't have any access to network shares or to ANYTHING which resides in a login script (like mapped drives). This is done on purpose because your service needs to be able to start when the computer BOOTS UP and before anyone logs in (thus you're protected from power outages in the middle of the night). If you absolutely must use network shares then you will have to go into the MS Windows Services, right click on the UltraPort Router service and select "Properties". In the properties tab you can configure any windows service to run as a particular domain user. This is NOT our requirement here at HermeTech, it's a requirement of MicroSoft. Getting this to work is notoriously tricky because so much depends on your own network security policies regarding user access/logins. It's because of this that this is one of the things that we can't help you with. If you need to contact HermeTech for support and your listener profiles are using network drives for the data folder the first thing we will instruct you to do is to use a local drive and try again.

 

 

See also: Frequently Asked Questions