Atlas Support Services SLA

This article is referenced from within your Atlas Service Order and outlines the detail of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) for the Standard or Premium Atlas Support & Maintenance services. 

Main topics in this article

• Hours of support 
• Response Level 
• What is provided 
• How to request support 
• Customer supplied information 
• Incident Process 
• Acceptance of a resolved incident 
• Reporting 
• Restrictions 
• On-going Customer Success 
• Product Updates 
• Release States & Support Impact
• Release Cycle
• Escalations
• Changes to this SLA 

Hours of support 

• ClearPeople shall provide the Services during the following hours of service - 09.00 to 17.30 UK local time (“Working Hours”), Monday to Friday, which for clarity excludes Public and National Bank Holidays in England and Holiday Coverage (“Working Days”). 
• Holiday Coverage is the period from 24th of December to 1st January each year (both days inclusive), during which the Maintenance and Support Services shall be provided on a reasonable endeavors basis and response levels shall not be measured. 
• Services at other times or days shall be by prior arrangement. 

Response Level 

Response time: 
 
ClearPeople shall use reasonable commercial efforts to respond to any issue raised within 24 hours.

Resolution commitment: 
 
Within the agreed response time ClearPeople will (where relevant and possible) provide an estimate for the time to investigate the incident and where necessary an estimate of the time to develop a fix if required. Unless critical (and agreed as such between both parties) bug fixes will generally only be released in line with the Atlas release cycle (currently quarterly). If the incident reported is found to be the responsibility of the Customer or any Customer appointed third-party suppliers, ClearPeople will update the incident ticket accordingly and shall relay relevant information to the Customer or such third parties and no further action will be taken by ClearPeople. 

What is provided 

The following support services shall be provided within the relevant Service Order: 

• Break fix support
• Access to the Atlas Knowledge Base
• Access to Uservoice for Atlas
• Queries and How To's
• 24H Response SLA

It's not always easy to understand what is in our out of scope of your Atlas support and therefor we put this article together with some examples: Atlas Support Scope

 

How to request support 

The Customer may request support in relation to the Products. ClearPeople will provide the Customer with 24x7 access to an incident management platform (currently Zendesk) for this purpose. 

• Before raising a ticket the customer should first review the provided Products knowledge base by logging into the help centre https://clearpeople.zendesk.com and verify if the answer is available there. Where an answer cannot be found the Customer may raise a support ticket by sending an email to [e-mail].  
• A ticket number shall be assigned and this number will be quoted automatically in all correspondence regarding the incident. 
• If the incident severity is deemed to be urgent – where the Products are unavailable or are materially unavailable or not working materially as prescribed, then the customer can add “URGENT” in the subject of the email. This will automatically escalate the ticket. 
• The Customer shall inform ClearPeople of any factor or modification that could affect ClearPeople’s ability to resolve an incident such as third-party modifications. The Customer shall also provide ClearPeople will any other relevant information relevant to the specific incident, in order to assist ClearPeople in responding. 
• To classify the issue as a bug the issue must be of a nature where it cannot be resolved by a skilled user or Product administrator and where the Product does not conform to the relevant Product guidance or specification.  

Customer Supplied Information 

The customer must make reasonable efforts to provide information as detailed below for each incident where such information may be relevant. 

• Description of the issue including any steps to reproduce the issue in the browser, application or other relevant Customer application. 
• Steps taken to troubleshoot the issue, such as:
  • Can the issue be repeated consistently on a user’s browser?  
  • Can the issue be repeated on another user’s browser? 
  • Screenshot(s) from user’s browser or relevant Customer application. 
  • Browser version(s) and Customer application version where relevant. 

Incident Process 

• All incidents raised on the support desk will be monitored by members of the ClearPeople support team during Working Hours.  
• The Customer can track the progress of each ticket using the “My Activities” view when logged into our Help Centre ( https://clearpeople.zendesk.com ) or by following up on the email chain raised for a specific ticket.  
• ClearPeople will update the Customer regarding the progress of the ticket by updating the status and comments in the ticket, which will also automatically provide the Customer an update via email. 
• The support desk and the email chain maintain a full log of all actions and changes to the ticket and can be viewed online at any time. 
• Should additional information be required, ClearPeople will update the ticket accordingly and provide details. 
• ClearPeople shall work on incidents logged during the specified Working Hours. If ClearPeople is notified of an incident at the end of a working day, then ClearPeople shall continue to address the incident on the subsequent working day. 

Acceptance of a resolved incident 

• On the delivery of a resolution to an incident, ClearPeople will update the Customer and mark the incident as “Solved”. 
• The Customer is expected to test, confirm, and accept that the functionality conforms, in all material respects as per the details of the incident ticket and its resolution. 
• The Customer has five (5) business days after this notification to review, test and accept such resolutions, such acceptance not to be unreasonably withheld or delayed. Acceptance shall be made by the Customer’s designated point-of-contact. Acceptance by the Customer shall be deemed to have occurred if, within five (5) working days of its notification the Customer does not provide its acceptance or otherwise.  
• Following acceptance, the incident shall be considered resolved and the incident ticket closed and updated as such. The ticket will contain all information about the work undertaken by ClearPeople in resolving the incident. This will include any documentation, details of changes to any code libraries, installation process and details of the resolution. 

Reporting 

• The Customer can at any time view the details of any tickets using the web-based help centre. 
• ClearPeople will on request prepare a quarterly report listing all tickets raised in that calendar quarter for use in service review meetings that may be held from time to time. 

Restrictions 

Support does not include the diagnosis and rectification of any fault resulting from: 

• Improper use, operation or neglect of the Products by the Customer, including use of unsupported browsers or devices; 
• Alteration or modification by the Customer to the source code of the Products; 
• Failure by the Customer to allow ClearPeople to implement any new release, fix or patch; 
• Faults which cannot be reproduced where ClearPeople has used all reasonable efforts to diagnose and/or reproduce the fault; 

If ClearPeople is required to provide services in respect of any matters excluded in this section then ClearPeople shall be entitled to charge supplementary fees for such services according to its Rate Card. 

On-going Customer Success 

ClearPeople will assign a Customer Success Agent (CSA) to the Customer who will: 

• Be responsible for creating and managing Change Authorisations; 
• Become the escalation point for any incidents that require urgent attention; 
• Provide a once per month review of Atlas activities. This will consist of a one-hour online meeting with a relevant customer representative (typically one of the project stakeholders); 
• Provide a quarterly review of the Atlas roadmap. This will consist of a one to two-hour online meeting with a relevant customer representative (typically one of the project stakeholders). 

Product Updates 

From time to time additional features will be made available within the supplied ClearPeople Products and where these Products have been purchased and where the Product license has not been terminated, then these additional features shall be made available to the Customer during the Term of the relevant Service Order. 

Typically, Product updates are provided every three months. ClearPeople will agree with the Customer when the Product shall be upgraded but this shall be no later than 3 months from the availability of the new release in order to maintain support of the Product and ensure all fixes are supplied in good time. 

The Customer may wish to purchase additional Services for configuration and training in relation to any upgrades. These can be discussed with the Customers appointed CSA and account manager before any upgrades are applied to the Customer production environment. 

Release States & Support Impact

Since we allowed our clients to be in control of when they want to upgrade their Atlas, we have introduced Release States. The definition and corresponding support impact for each of the release states is clearly described in this Atlas Release States and Support Impact article.

Release Cycle

The Atlas Release Cycle overview provides detailed information on the current state for each Atlas version, and on the dates when the state for each version changes. It is very important to make sure your Atlas version is at least on a legacy state to ensure we can fully support you. We are not able to provide proper support for Atlas versions in an "unsupported" state.

Escalations

Your first point of call is always your CSA who will be reacting on the ticket raised to [e-mail]

As explained in this SLA, your ticket will be handled within 24h max but in case you need urgent assistance please send an email to [e-mail] 

Changes to this SLA 

It may be necessary from time-to-time to amend this SLA and ClearPeople reserves the right to amend the SLA having given three months' notice in writing to the Customer whose consent to any such change shall not be unreasonably withheld.