Hosted Service Client Support Policy

Policies

OVERVIEW

This is xMatters’ worldwide Hosted Service Client Support Policy that describes the support services that xMatters offers hosted clients who have paid all applicable fees and who are the Hosted Service in accordance with the Hosted Service Agreement between the Client and xMatters.

 

DESCRIPTION OF SUPPORT SERVICES

Telephone Support: xMatters will provide clients with 24x7x365 telephone access to its Client Assistance personnel. Weekend and holiday coverage are staffed by an answering service and an automated system which routes high severity calls to appropriate personnel. Client Assistance will respond to the client within the time goals below based on Severity.

xMatters User Community: xMatters hosts a community based knowledge portal called the xMatters Community. Clients may also use the xMatters Community to log requests to Client Assistance. xMatters Community also contains self-service knowledge based articles designed to help clients with the use and operations of xMatters’ products as well community forums, product downloads, on-­‐line documentation, and more. Product release announcements (major, minor, and patches) are sent through the xMatters Community notification mechanism.

Contact Support: Clients may log requests for support via our Community site.

MANAGEMENT OF CASES

Language Support

All support services are delivered in English.

Opening a Case

Authorized contacts of each Client who require assistance may call, email or visit the xMatters Community to submit the request. Unique Cases will be opened for each identified issue or request. The following items are required with each Case in order for xMatters to provide Clients with rapid and complete assistance.

 

  • Company name
  • Contact full name
  • Telephone number
  • Email Address
  • Clear and concise description of the problem / symptoms
  • Steps to reproduce the issue and / or details on where issue was observed
    • Including Event ID, date and time stamp of issue occurrence
  • Error messages and or screen shots (if applicable)
  • Business impact (Development, Test, Production instance)
  • Hosted Service URL

Depending upon the issue reported there are additional items to consider which may be requested by xMatters to further troubleshoot the request. Some items are time sensitive due to system archiving schedules and 3rd party considerations (provider or aggregator). Additionally screen-shots may be needed from a live event, for SMS (User phone #), local carrier information, etc.

Severity Levels

When a Case is opened, xMatters works with the client to assign the appropriate severity to the Case based on the criteria below. As the Case progresses, the xMatters Client Assistance team will inform the client if the problem no longer fits the definition of the severity level originally assigned to the Case, and may propose adjusting the severity level. The client is encouraged to provide feedback regarding any adjustment to the Case severity level. If xMatters is unable to contact a client after repeated attempts to discuss an adjustment in the designated Case severity level, xMatters may temporarily adjust the assigned severity level pending the client’s response.

Severity Conditions

Severity 1 Critical business impact. The client has a complete loss of Production service in a live production environment and work cannot reasonably continue or experiences real or perceived data loss or corruption or an essential part of the system is unusable for the client.

Severity 2 The problem seriously affects the functionality of the Production instance of the Hosted Service, but can be circumvented or the Hosted Service product as a whole functions but a certain function is somewhat disabled, gives incorrect results or does not conform to the specifications. Additionally, if during implementation, implementation has been completely halted due to the issue.

Severity 3 Minimal business impact. The client can circumvent the problem and use the Hosted Service with only slight inconvenience. For example, a small program error or small error in the documentation. . If during implementation the implementation is partially affected or if the issues affects a Test, UAT, pre-­‐prod or Development instance.

Severity 4 A problem where a client’s business operations have not been adversely affected or a minor condition or documentation error that has no significant effect on a client’s operations, or a suggestion for new features or an enhancement regarding the Hosted Service.

Initial Response Goals

These goals will apply to the currently supported versions of each Hosted Service product. xMatters will use commercially reasonable efforts to carry out the response related activities within the time frames defined below. For all reported Cases, xMatters’ response time goals are as follows: 

 

Severity — Acknowledgement Objective — Response Objective

Severity 1  1 hour 2 hours

Severity 2 4 business hours 1 business day

Severity 3 or 4  1 business day 2 business days

“Acknowledgment” is the amount of time between when a client reports the Case to xMatters via phone, voicemail, email, or web and the time that the client is given an identifying Case number.

“Response” is the elapsed time until a Client Assistance engineer is assigned and actively working on the Case.

 

Case Escalation

In the case of a Severity 1 Case, regular status updates will be provided to the client and the Case will be escalated by the responsible xMatters engineer to the xMatters Client Assistance Manager and to the Client’s Sales Account Manager. Client resources may be required to continue work on Severity 1 Cases. If these resources are unavailable, xMatters may lower the Case severity until Client resources become available.

Closure of Support Cases

Open Cases will be considered to be resolved and will be closed when:

Severity 1 The Case will be considered closed when the client receives a workaround or information that resolves the issue and the client agrees that the issue has been resolved.

Severity 2  The Case will be considered closed under one of the following conditions:

  • The client receives a workaround or information that resolves the issue and the client agrees that the issue is resolved.
  • If the Case results in a defect being entered and the client has been advised of this and has been given a defect number for future reference.
  • The client has not responded to xMatters after information was provided. The Case will be closed after 10 business days and a final message has been left on the client’s voice mail or sent via email. The Case can be reopened if the issue has not been resolved.

Severity 3 or 4  The Case will be considered closed under one of the following conditions:

  • The client receives a workaround or information that resolves the issue and the client agrees that the issue is resolved.
  • If the Case results in a defect being entered and the client has been advised of this and has been given a defect number for future reference.
  • The client has not responded to xMatters after information was provided. The Case will be closed after 10 business days, after a final message has been left on the client’s voice mail or sent via email. The Case can be reopened if the issue has not been resolved.

Product Defects

If the Hosted Service is not performing in accordance with the applicable product documentation, a defect number will be generated and the Case will be escalated to the appropriate xMatters product development team. Case defects are assigned a severity level and each severity level has temporary correction (workaround) and permanent fix goals as defined below: 

 

Severity –Temporary Workaround — Permanent Correction

Severity 1 Commercially reasonable effort until fixed or a suitable workaround provided, or until client agrees to lower severity level.

Severity 2 Commercially reasonable business hours effort or until client agrees to lower severity level.

Severity 3 In next feasible product release, client will be notified when a fix becomes available.

Severity 4 Feature requests are reviewed by the xMatters product manager before each major or minor release.

Within 30 business days. Within 60 business days.

In next feasible product release.

All features are considered, but may or may not be included in a future release.

Permanent Correction time goals are from the date on which xMatters reproduced the defect using a complete test case provided by the client and enters a failure record to escalate it to the xMatters product development team.

 

PRODUCT RELEASES AND ENHANCEMENTS

xMatters provides regular enhancements and feature additions to xMatters Hosted Service products. Additionally, patches and hot-­‐ fixes are provided on an as-­‐needed basis. Clients are encouraged to check xMatters Community on a regular basis for patches, updates, and upgrades as they become available. Clients who have an active Hosted Service subscription at the time of a maintenance release will be notified when major or minor maintenance releases become available. Maintenance releases are provided at no additional charge to clients who have an active Hosted Service subscription and include the following types:

  • Major Releases: Major releases generally occur approximately every 3 months, and include bug fixes, additional functionality and new features.
  • Minor Releases: Minor releases occur approximately every month, and include cumulative bug fixes from incremental releases and minor enhancements.
  • Hot-­‐fixes: Released as necessary to work around high severity issues.

SUPPORTED VERSION AND CONFIGURATION REQUIREMENTS

For dedicated instance clients, xMatters supports the current and prior minor release of such products. For more information on other Hosted Service product support lifecycle please refer to the xMatters Support Matrix online at xMatters Community.

Supported Configurations

A supported configuration may include operating system levels, browser type and version, custom developed scripts, and / or devices and is defined further in the Hosted Service product user documentation.