6 months' case data in the Case Tracker

I always switch directly to Advanced.  If i need to know details about a case LESS THAN 6 months - it is likely in my email and easily found.  So I never need to go to the case tracker.  I only go there when I need to find out details for very old cases.

So ... using the mindset that I need to find very old cases, I always set my FROM date to some very old year so that it searches everything.  Then I'm browsing through the list - looking at the titles - to see if something pops up as a potential for what I'm looking for.  Then I have to click into the case to read more details about it (like symptoms or errors).

Finally, usually when I'm searching, I'm just looking for the case number.  From there, I can look in our email archive system using that case number, and then download the archived email.  There I can see the full case history in email format, with all of the embedded images and color-coded java or other languages in the email.

Summary:

• I only use this for very old cases that I can't readily find in my email.
• I wish I could search the "symptoms" or "error message" attributes of the cases in the Case Tracker.
• I use it to find the case number so that I can take that number and then go search my archived email.  Looking at an old case in the browser is nearly useless for me since it only logs a bunch of plain text.  This is a separate topic - but I wish Case Viewer was MUCH IMPROVED and displayed email contents much better instead of plain text.

Now that the cases are listed in the My Cases widget on the support home page I seldom need to go to the case tracker page.  The two things I would find helpful are (1.) the ability to download anything attached to the case and (2.) the ability to see more than just the first 20 cases in the "My Cases" widget.  (Add page numbers at the bottom of the widget.)

I too hardly use the case tracker unless I'm looking up an older case or one by someone else in our company group. Even then, most of the time I end up in advanced.

The one thing I don't like about the advanced search is the 2 stages to the search. First select some items, which to an extent are re-listed on the secondary page. Imagine typing a search in google and then having to tell it you want to search webpages and click search again to actually get data back. Searching should be a single page form.

I'm not sure how your database is formed, but I would expect these could all be consolidated to a single search page defaulted to 6 months and by user/company. Or if the tabs were kept, a bit more interactive that it just pre-selects the basic data for the advanced search. Click tab and search or change the criteria and search.