Sitecore Support Program terms


Description

Sitecore Support Program is available at two different levels:

Standard Support and 24x7 Premium Support. Such service levels do not apply to any beta or technical preview software programs or solutions Sitecore makes available to Customer.

Sitecore shall provide the following Support to Customer for the licensed Software:

Support Portal. Sitecore provides a staffed support portal to support Customer’s Named Support Contacts. See "Support Cases" below for more information. "Named Support Contacts" means a Customer representative who has completed a training and passed IT Administrator or Developer certification, subject to applicable fees, if any, for the appropriate Sitecore software.

Sitecore Community Forum. Sitecore Community Forum is an active online community of Sitecore users. This forum offers a wealth of shared experiences among the many Sitecore certified developers worldwide, with fresh and historical insight available 24x7.

Documentation Library. The Sitecore Documentation site includes information for business users and developers to work successfully with Sitecore products. There is procedural and conceptual information, as well as walkthroughs, FAQs, and troubleshooting topics. For developers in particular, you can find code snippets, API references, and integration information.

Support Cases. Incidents and questions should be reported through the support portal at:
http://support.sitecore.com/.

Support Cases can be opened 24x7, and each Support Case will be responded to in accordance with the Service Levels set forth in Table 1 below. For sake of clarity, only Customer Named Support Contacts may open Support Case, and Customer may only have up to eight (8) Customer Named Support Contacts at any given time.

The Support Case shall contain, to the extent known, applicable and/or possible: (i) the name of the Solution to which Customer is subscribed; (ii) the name/type of affected equipment; (iii) Customer contact name, email address if available, telephone number; (iv) the nature of the problem, a description of the problem and Customer's classification of the problem.

Customer will provide Sitecore with as much information as possible to enable Sitecore to investigate and attempt to identify and verify the reported maintenance issue.

Customer will work with Sitecore support personnel during the investigation of Support Case, as reasonably needed and in a timely manner.

Software Maintenance for Sitecore XM/XP/XC: A valid and current Sitecore maintenance or subscription agreement for the Software includes access, at no additional charge, to all new versions of the Software to keep Customer’s implementation current. This includes all Upgrades and Hotfixes (previously referred to as “Patches”). “Hotfix” means a specific, targeted fix to a problem in the use or functionality of the Software that Sitecore in its sole discretion defines to constitute a “Hotfix” and may from time to time provide to Customer. “Upgrade” means a new version of some or all of the Software, or an improvement in the use or functionality of the Software more substantial than a Hotfix, that Sitecore in its sole discretion defines to constitute an “Upgrade” and may from time to time provide to customers enrolled in the Sitecore Maintenance Program. Customer expressly acknowledges that Upgrades and Hotfixes may change functionality of the Software and integration with other systems, and may not work with some or all of the Software modules, or be backward compatible with earlier versions of Software. Installation of Hotfixes and Upgrades is the choice and responsibility of Customer. To the extent that operation of the Software is affected by problems in standard software, including, but not limited to, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Windows, SQL, SharePoint and the Microsoft.Net Framework, then Customer shall install updates to such standard software per Sitecore’s specifications in order to resolve these issues. Sitecore has no control over such standard software, and cannot assure that problems with such standard software will be corrected, or that such corrections will be made in a timely manner. Sitecore shall support any master release and its sub-versions in accordance with the Sitecore Product Support Lifecycle policy, which can be found at: https://kb.sitecore.net/articles/641167. In the event a Customer is upgrading XP or XM or XC product, Sitecore may grant the Customer the time-limited use of an additional and temporary license for the sole purpose of facilitating the migration or upgrade.

Severity Levels, Target Response Times, and Support Ticket Resolution

Sitecore shall categorize Support Tickets based on the business impact of the incident or question to Customer using the Severity Levels described in Table 1 below.

Target Response Times

Sitecore shall provide an update on the investigation, resolution, or escalation of the Support Ticket within the response times set out in Table 1 below based on the Severity (as defined below) of the Support Ticket.

Table 1: Severity Levels and Target Response Times

Severity Level Criteria Standard Support 24x7 Premium Support
Critical
P1		 Meets all of the following criteria:
  • Impacts the production environment; 
  • A continuous or near-continuous site outage, a performance issue that severely inhibits usage of the site, or poor buying experience impacting revenue;
  • No workaround is available.
 1 Business Day 1 Hour
High
P2

Meets one of the following criteria with no workaround available:

  • In a production environment, an issue that highly affects business operations or critical marketing capabilities; 
  • In a production environment, an issue that causes severe but intermittent impact on visitor experience;
  • In a pre-production environment, an issue with immediate impact severely affecting imminent production project plans.
 1 Business Day 2 Hours
Medium
P3

Meets one of the following criteria:

  • In production environment, does not critically affect business operations;
  • In production environment, impact of the problem is alleviated by the availability of a workaround;
  • In a non-production environment, causes impact on development or implementation activity, such as affecting future project plans, or preventing the development or implementation team from working on the project.
 2 Business Days 1 Business Day
Low
P4

Meets one of the following criteria:

  • In a production environment, causes minor or no impact on business operations or visitor experience;
  • In a non-production environment, causes moderate or minor impact on development or implementation activity;
  • Documentation related queries or requests for product enhancements;
  • Issues that do not meet any of the higher severity criteria.
 3 Business Days 2 Business Days

 

Support Ticket Resolution

Sitecore will seek to find a resolution to a Support Case in accordance with the standards set out in Table 2 below. Upon the Effective Date of the Support Agreement, Sitecore shall provide Customer with contact information for issue escalation.

Table 2: Severity Levels and Support Ticket Resolution


Severity Level

 Standard Support 24x7 Premium Support
Critical Sitecore will make best effort to work on the problem during Business Hours until it has been resolved or a workaround has been provided. Sitecore will continue to work on the problem until it has been resolved or a workaround has been provided.
High Sitecore will make best effort to work on the problem during Business Hours until it has been resolved or a workaround has been provided. Sitecore will continue to work on the problem until it has been resolved or a workaround has been provided.
Medium Sitecore will make reasonable efforts to resolve the problem or provide a workaround. Sitecore will make reasonable efforts to resolve the problem or provide a workaround.
Low Sitecore will make reasonable efforts to resolve the problem or provide a workaround if such a problem has not been resolved in the next maintenance release of Sitecore Software. Sitecore will make reasonable efforts to resolve the problem or provide a workaround if such a problem has not been resolved in the next maintenance release of Sitecore Software.

 

Business Hours

Business Days are calculated as any day other than a Saturday or Sunday.

Business Hours are calculated as follows: