Working with Aveksa Customer Support

The preferred method of opening a support case is to use the support portal at  http://www.aveksa.com/what-we-do/customer-support.cfm  Use of this portal allows for search of the existing knowledge base articles to understand current resolutions are workarounds in place. The support portal also provides guidelines about artifacts needed to move the case forward rapidly.

At the time of initial reporting, a specific support engineer may be assigned to coordinate the resolution of the reported problem or question. In the interests of efficiency and timeliness of resolving the case, the customer contact that reported the issue must work solely through the assigned support engineer unless otherwise directed. Any contact with Aveksa Customer Support must be made by calling the Aveksa Customer Support Center number or emailing support@aveksa.com ; not by contacting the assigned support engineer directly. All correspondence with Aveksa Support must be carried out via the Self-Service Web Portal or by emailing support@aveksa.com and not by emailing an engineer directly. The Case Number and ReferenceID in the email Subject line will append your message to the existing Support Case.

In order to verify an Error, customer shall provide a complete description of the Error to Aveksa Customer Support, including sufficient information to enable Aveksa Customer Support to reproduce the case.

Customers are responsible for all actions required to verify and substantiate the existence of an Error, and to ascertain the conditions under which the case may be duplicated. After a case is opened, the case management entails moving towards resolution of the issue reported through the following 3 levels. The case will begin at Level 1 where initial data is gathered for the case to be actionable, after which the case will be moved to the Level 2 queue where a customer support engineering to assume ownership of the case until it is resolved. Level 3 support is called in as an escalation mechanism if the case is not resolved at Level 2.

The details of the levels are as follows: 

Level 1 Support

The level 1 support team is the initial contact point for all incoming customer issues or questions.

The Level 1 customer support team will:

• Open new cases in Aveksa's case management system for any issues phoned into Aveksa support
• Respond to any new cases that have been opened through email sent to support@aveksa.com or opened directly by a customer using the customer support portal
• Ensure that all cases contain accurate and complete information including:
• The customer contact information
• The version of the product being used and operating platform information
• An accurate description of the problem or question requiring support assistance including, when applicable, steps to reproduce or at least a description of the activities leading up to the reported issue
• Determine the type of support case based on the following list: (Question/How to, Enhancement request, Product error condition, User is experiencing unexpected product behavior, or Performance issue)
• Assign the issue the appropriate severity based on Aveksa's problem severity definitions. [These can be found in the Aveksa Customer Support Policy document]
• In the case of product enhancements, they will assist the customer with the process of opening a change request with Aveksa Product management for consideration in a future release
• In the case of product errors, unexpected behavior or performance issues, they will work with the customer to gather any necessary artifacts required to further research the issue by level 2 support including but not limited to: ASR (Aveksa System Report), product logs, screenshots, diagnostic reports, data dumps, any recent modifications to the system configuration or environment, and reproducible test cases
• Search the Aveksa support knowledge base for information to help resolve the customer's question or issue, provide a work-around, or determine next steps towards resolution
• Provide the customer with updates to their case as it is being worked and setting clear expectations on estimated timeframes for resolution or next steps in the case handling process
• Provide the customer, when possible, a resolution to their issue and close the case. A resolution is generally one of the following: an answer to a customer question, information around product capability and behavior, or a workaround to a product issue including potentially product upgrades that resolve a previously reported issue or other steps to avoid the product issue. When an acceptable resolution is not available and all of the above responsibilities have been met then the level 1 support engineer can escalate the case to level 2 support for further handling. They will also inform the customer that the case has been escalated to level 2 support

Level 2 Support

The level 2 support team handles all escalations from the level 1 support team when a resolution or workaround cannot be determined by level 1 support.

The Level 2 customer support team will:

• Notify the customer when their escalated case has been assigned to a level 2 support engineer
• Review the escalated case for accuracy of description, analyze the artifacts provided by level 1 support, and potentially ask for additional information necessary to research the case further
• Provide the customer with updates to their case as it is being worked and setting clear expectations on estimated timeframes for resolution or next steps in the case handling process
• Attempt to reproduce the issue based on the information provided using internal support environments and resources
• When necessary and feasible, work directly with the customer provided data dumps to attempt to reproduce the issue
• When necessary, work remotely over webex with the customer on their environment to further troubleshoot or observe the issue
• Attempt to provide workarounds to address the problem within the target resolution times documented in the Aveksa Standard Customer Support Policy document
• In situations where the product is not operating as documented, the support engineer will report the problem to Aveksa's Engineering team to be sized and targeted for a future release. In some cases Aveksa may provide a "hotfix" to correct issues with currently supported product releases, and where there is no reasonable workaround, subject to technical feasibility, and at its sole discretion. Hotfix releases are typically not subject to rigorous QA, and will only be provided in response to P1 severity Errors
• When an acceptable resolution is still not available and all of the above responsibilities have been met then the level 2 support engineer can escalate the case to Level 3 support
• Work closely with Level 3 engineers to analyze, understand, and resolve difficult issues. In these circumstances, the level 2 engineer is still responsible for case management and providing all updates to the customer on the status of the issue as well as working with the customer to obtain any information or artifacts required by the level 3 support team
• Provide the customer, when possible, a resolution to their issue and close the case. A resolution is generally one of the following: an answer to a customer question, information around product capability and behavior, or a workaround to a product issue including potentially product upgrades that resolve a previously reported issue or other steps to avoid the product issue.

Level 3 Support

The level 3 support team works closely with the level 2 support team to address difficult customer issues that cannot be easily or feasibly reproduced or proven to be a clear product defect that can be escalated to engineering to be addressed.

• Work closely with the level 2 support engineer, product source code, and (where applicable) case reproductions to understand the customer issue and identify a root cause and potential workarounds or resolution
• Provide direction to the level 2 support engineer regarding additional information that needs to be obtained from the customer and / or their environment to help identity the root cause of the issue
• Provide guidance to the product engineering organization on the customer use cases and root causes of the issue and possible product changes to resolve the issue.

Once the case has reached a status where there is no further action pending from the customer support engineer assigned to the case, the case will be closed. These typically include situations where a resolution was provided, a fix was delivered or the issue has been deemed to be fixed as part of a future release that the customer can obtain, when available to resolve the issue.