Support and Lawmaker support portal

This page contains help and guidance on using the Lawmaker support portal. You can access the portal at support.lawmaker.legislation.gov.uk.

You can also access the portal from Lawmaker by clicking the drop-down menu in the top right corner and selecting ‘Lawmaker Support’.

When is support available?

The portal is always available for you to log an issue but the support team will only respond and work on issues during our support hours. Those hours are:

• 8am-6pm, Monday to Friday for all issues and requests,

• 24hrs a day, Monday to Friday for critical issues that require an urgent resolution.

(Support is available at weekends by prior arrangement only.)

As well as raising raising issues via the portal, you can also send an email to Lawmaker.Support@smc.leidos.com

Urgent issues can be raised by phone on 0333 456 4786.

Accessing the portal

You will need to log into the portal to raise a ticket or view existing tickets. If you haven't used the portal before, set up your account by selecting "forgot password?”. This will prompt you to enter your username and email address. Please use your email address for both. You will then receive an email with instructions and a link to set your new password.

Finding your way around the portal

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Use this to search across the portal. It will return known issue pages and open tickets that relate to you search term. It will also show relevant request forms (for example search for “new user” and you’ll get the the form to request a new user account).

Checking whether your issue has already been raised by someone else or addressed on a Known Issue page before raising a new ticket can help resolve things quicker.

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Use this if something isn’t working properly or if you think you’ve come across a bug. For example, if you get an error when you try and generate a PDF, use this form to report the issue. See below for some further guidance on including screenshots, PDFs and other information to include to help us resolve the issue quickly.

When you raise an issue, it is helpful if you can assign it an Urgency level so we can prioritise a response appropriately. The four possible levels are:

• High: use this for issues that you can’t work around and which need to be resolved the same day, e.g. if you are working on an SI which needs to be issued for signing that day but you can’t generate a PDF or if you have problems publishing an amendment list which needs to be published that day.

• Medium: use this for issues that cause significant disruption to your work but that you could wait up to a week to resolve, e.g. because you’ve found a way to work around the issue or because the deadline for the document affected is a couple of weeks away.

• Low: use this for issues that you’re able to wait a couple of weeks for a resolution on, e.g. because you have an easy way to workaround the issue.

• Standard: use this for something you’ve spotted that isn’t quite right but doesn’t impact on your work in any meaningful way.

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This section contains a range of forms for different circumstances, including:

• Use this if you require assistance or guidance from the Lawmaker team, e.g. advice on how to achieve a particular format or structure of provision using Lawmaker, or how to resolve a document check error (Advice and Guidance).

• If you’re having problems logging in (e.g. because you no longer have access to the device that you setup MFA on), use this to request a reset of your account (Reset Lawmaker Account).

• It is also possible in this section to request the creation of new user accounts in this section. Note that only authorised requests will be actioned (New User).

• If you would like to suggest a new feature for Lawmaker or an improvement to an existing feature, you can do so here (Feature Requests and Improvements).

Help with reporting issues

How to take screenshots and add them to a portal ticket

It is often useful to include a screenshot to illustrate the problem you are experiencing.

A quick way to grab a screenshot of a portion of your screen is to do the following:

1. Press Shift+windows key+s. This will bring up the Snip + Sketch tool and you should see a little toolbar at the top.
   
   

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2. If not already selected, click on the first icon on the toolbar.

3. Hold the left mouse button down and drag a rectangle over the part of the screen you want to grab. As soon as you let go, the selection will be copied to the clipboard. (Or use the fourth icon to copy the whole screen in one go.)

4. In the Detailed description field of the form, place your cursor inside it and paste the screenshot by pressing ctrl+v:

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How to add PDFs of Lawmaker documents to a portal ticket

If the problem you are having relates to the format or content of a PDF, including the PDF in the ticket is generally useful.

To include a PDF in a ticket:

1. Open the PDF in Lawmaker (either generate a new one or view an existing PDF snapshot).

2. Save the PDF to your computer by clicking on the disk icon.

3. On the form in the portal, click on the Add attachments button at the bottom of the page:
   
   

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4. Upload the saved PDF.

Copying links to Lawmaker projects and documents

If the issue you’re raising relates to a specific Lawmaker project or document within that project, if you include a link to that project/document, it can help the support team investigate the issue and resolve it.

To include a link to the whole project:

1. From the dashboard, open the project you want to link to (it will open on the project tab).

2. Copy the URL from the browser address bar, using ctrl+c to copy it to the clipboard:

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3. Paste the copied link into the Detailed description field on the support portal form.

To include a link to a specific document:

1. From the dashboard, open the project you want to link to.

2. Open the document you want to link to in the Editor (from the project tab or an amendment tab).

3. Copy the URL from the browser address bar for the tab containing the document, using ctrl+c to copy it to the clipboard:

4. Paste the copied link into the Detailed description field on the support portal form.