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This article outlines essential troubleshooting steps for users of the CATI (Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing) system. If you're experiencing issues with connectivity, login, dialing, or interview flow, use the guidance below to identify and resolve common problems. Start by checking the Forsta system status page.
If no system-wide issues are reported, continue with the steps in this guide to determine whether the problem is local, survey-specific, or related to your dialer connection. This guide is designed to help you get back up and running as quickly as possible.
1: Check the health of the Forsta environment on the status page
Open the link below to see if any issues are currently reported for your environment:
https://status.hxplatform.com.
If there is an issue reported here it means that Forsta are aware of an issue and working to fix it as soon as possible. Continue to check here for further updates.
If nothing is reported here it could indicate a more localised issue, so please proceed with the following trouble shooting steps. If, however you are confident the issue is not localised please contact Technical Support.
2: Problems while interviewing with CATI console
Press F5 in CATI Console to refresh connection to see if the UI reloads successfully
Make sure network connectivity is stable (between interviewers and the server environment)
One quick way to do this is to ask interviews to observe the connection status in the bottom right corner of their UI:
If the network connectivity looks OK:
Test access to a web survey (web surveys utilise the same core engine as CATI)
Is the web survey available?
Can question responses be submitted without long delays?
If not, contact Technical Support.
3: Problems while logging in or dialing
Check if all interviewers are affected in Supervisor > Activity View > Interviewers List
Check if the problem is impacting multiple surveys or just one?
If it is just one survey, carefully examine the set up of this survey, sample and schedule for issues.
If no surveys are working proceed to the next step…
4: Check the dialer connection status
If the system is not working, it may be because the connection between the CATI system and the CATI system and the dialer system has failed. This could lead to errors like this when attempting to open a survey:
To check the state of the connection:
Open the ‘Resources’ tab in the CATI supervisor to see if the dialer is reporting as connected (in this case you will see that is not).
From here, right click on the dialer and you can then choose the option to Connect/Activate it. Try this and then observe to see if the connection is successfully re-established.
If the connection is successful, resume interviewing
If this fails, raise a ticket with the Technical Support team or if you host your own dialer please refer to the section below…
5: System Recovery Process (for sites with server access)
WS Server: IIS Manager > Application Pools: Stop ‘GenericDialerAppPool’
CATI Supervisor: Resources > Dialer: wait (up to 3 minutes) until you see the message ‘Dialer disconnected’ in red
Sytel Users:
Sytel CallGem (dialer) server: Under Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services:
Stop ‘Softdial Forsta Plus Tunnel’ Service
Start ‘Softdial Forsta Plus Tunnel’ Service
Invade Users:
Invade dialer: Reboot dialer server
WS Server: After either Softdial Tunnel service or Invade dialer has been restarted, go to IIS Manager > Application Pools and Start ‘GenericDialerAppPool’
CATI Supervisor: Connect and activate the dialler in CATI Supervisor > Resources > Dialer > Click on “Connect and Activate Dialer” button (see step 4).