Technical Support

Lauren Moran, Manager, Technical Support
Ashley Simmons, Engineer, Technical Support

HTRI’s Technical Support staff is dedicated to providing timely and accurate answers to member questions about Xchanger Suite^® and other HTRI technology. Our daily immersion in HTRI products allows us to maintain a thorough knowledge of our research and software. This knowledge, along with broad experience in the process industry, ensures that members receive “best-in-class” advice.

Technical Support is a user’s ultimate resource, and we respond to every inquiry within three business days. We are able to assist with explaining program inputs, interpreting outputs, clarifying warning messages, and discussing the impacts of service packs and software updates. We also keep track of possible program bugs and suggested improvements that come from support cases. The graph below shows the monthly distribution of support inquiries for fiscal year (FY) 2018, where we averaged 263 inquiries per month.

All of the Technical Support staff perform additional duties at HTRI, which further broaden our expertise. Support personnel conduct training events, complete contract work, and perform software QA tasks. We also manage the online help documents and prioritize what errors to fix and what new features or methods to include in future software releases. Our close relations with other HTRI staff (software developers, researchers, and subject matter experts) mean we can call on the knowledge and experience of the entire HTRI organization to cultivate the best possible answers to member inquiries.

Technical Support also plays an integral part in the Research-to-Software process, as we represent the members’ point of view to sort and prioritize implementation of methods and software fixes. Member inquiries to Support are a prolific source of software feedback. A single support inquiry can spark an investigation, leading to a new research project, a new method, a new software feature, or something else. In fact, member inquiries led us to include 20 new or improved methods in Xchanger Suite 8, which will be released to members later this year.

Technical support is available to all members. To raise a support ticket, email [email protected]; be sure to include your corporate affiliation to avoid response delays. Remember that we are here to help you get the most out of your HTRI membership, so please do not hesitate to contact us.

Meet the support group

Lauren Moran