Support and Development

Support and Development Categories

Support and Development requirements break up into three categories, each carrying different priorities, timelines and expectations for how they may be addressed.

Production

  • Production means your 'live' applications, 'business-as-usual', as they were defined at commencement or since the last development was deployed
  • Your expectations are that your applications are online, functioning as per defined requirements, and performing to the speed at which they were tested when deployed
  • Should you have a problem e.g. a feature not working as expected, you may raise a support ticket (mark high or urgent if mission critical - normal rates will apply for production support)
  • We will respond and if high/urgent priority escalate resources to resolve as soon as possible (see SLA below for a guide to response times)
  • Our Commitment - your applications' functionality wil be restored as soon as possible to working order as specified in service agreements, or development specifications

Development

  • Develop means to add, build or enhance features of your application to a defined specification
  • This assumes all the requirements are 'known' and specified, and we have an agreed budget
  • The may be a need for contingency but this is usually only if there are a few 'unknowns' (if extensive, see Discovery)
  • Our Commitment - to deliver your application developments on time and on budget

Discovery

  • Discovery means exploration of new ideas, features, possibilities for which the exact specifications or impact are not fully known by you or us
  • For example, you've heard of a feature or seen something on a competitors site that you think might work
  • We first need to research and test the available options in order for us all to become more informed as to the viability and effectiveness of the feature
  • This may be at our cost or your cost depending on whether the benefit is to everyone on the Audienceware platform, or bespoke to your application
  • Our commitment - to invest time and resource to assess how the features may work, the development effort required, and time permitting to conduct a demonstration

Support Ticket System

All requests are raised via a support Ticket system by the client online (recommended) or via email.

  • Clients prioritise their own tickets, so that Audienceware will work through the tickets in the order set by the client.
  • Audienceware will classify requests as being Support or Bug (production help or system fault), Development, or Feature Request (Discovery).
  • Responses will be via the ticket system with a status update which will send a notification email, to which clients may respond by following the link online (recommended) or via email

Service Levels

The following is a guide to Response Times in line with priority

  • As a general rule, by working 'ahead of time' to get requests to us early, more of your work can be delivered comfortably within the Low/Normal SLA range - greater flexibility for us means better value for you.
  • In practice these may be tailored to meet the specific needs of the business.

Priority

Issue type

Response Time

Optional Development Escalation Price Loading

Urgent

Web, CRM, Mail server down

within 4 working hours

Normal x 2

High

Current Problems e.g. posting content, existing events, bulk emails, user issues, functionality not working

within 8 working hours (same or next working day)

Normal x 1.5

Normal

New additions e.g. upcoming events, configuration changes, new permissions/roles, enabling/disabling features

within 5 working days

Normal

Low

General support, minor requests

within 30 days

Normal or as agreed

Notes

  • All requests will be graded using this or an otherwise agreed table, and response times will be applied accordingly.
  • Whilst issues may not always be resolved in the expected time due to variables outside Audienceware's control, every effort will be made to ensure that the appropriate level of resource is assigned to the case for resolution.
  • If the client has multiple items at the same priority level, the SLA applies to the first item, and the following items will be worked on in sequence which may be outside the SLA depending on the time to resolve the preceding item/s.
  • Optionally the business may escalate requests beyond the SLA as may be specified in agreed commercial terms - price loading applies (not applicable for Audienceware escalations)
  • Low priority rate may vary as agreed in commercial terms
  • Clear delivery process is offers benefits in time, cost, avoid reworking etc - clients are expected to confirm delivery to spec when work is done, or advise non compliance to spec in order for production scope to include that work and be  'supported'
  • Change requests post delivery must be clearly defined and may be additional scope to the original work

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