FAQ: Solver Technical Support and Maintenance Policy

Summary:

This article details the Solver Support Contract and Maintenance Policy. With a new purchase of either Solver Cloud or Private Host, Solver Support services are included. These services include:

• Full access to the support site with
  • 1000+ knowledgebase (KB) articles on the Solver product.
  • Unlimited support ticket submissions and access to previously submitted tickets.
• Access, via phone and ticket submission, to professional, highly trained Solver product support representatives.

Solver, Inc. has a dedicated, fully trained support staff for the Solver Suite. This team is here to assist you with your questions and troubleshooting in regard to installation, configuration, proper usage, migration of data, and general use of the Solver Suite of products. Additionally, with the purchase of the Support Contract, anyone in your organization has access to reach out to a trained Solver Support representative for their Solver needs. 

Article Sections:

• More Information
  • Eligibility
  • Support Hours
  • Technology Used
  • Service Level Agreement
  • Service Details
  • Bug Fixes
  • Not Included in Support Contract
  • Billing & Confidentiality
• Properties

More Information:

The Support Contract is not included as part of the Maintenance Contract. Maintenance is for upgrades, fixes, and receiving the most current versions of the software (“downloads”). "End of life" maintenance dates may differ from end of support dates. 

• Solver 3.x →  while not officially supported, Solver Support will attempt to assist you with your BI360 questions. If Solver Support cannot quickly resolve your issue, you may be asked to upgrade your software. 
  • NOTE: If you are using Data Warehouse 3.x, the upgrade to 4x is a significant upgrade and must be reviewed. Please contact your partner or Solver.
• Solver 4x → extended support through 2024 (please refer to our Product Lifecycle for more detailed information on this.
• Solver Private Host (5x) & Cloud → fully supported. 

Eligibility:

Solver Support services are available to customers who have purchased one of the following options:

• Solver Cloud Customers have support included in their purchases.
• New purchases of Solver Private Host customers have support included in their purchases.
• Existing customers (purchase prior to Solver Private Host release) must be current on Annual Support Contract subscription.
  • Solver Support Contract is available for purchase at 7% of the cost of the software license purchase or $1,000 USD, whichever is higher.

Should a customer choose not to purchase a Support Contract, all requests will be billable, at a predetermined, agreed-upon rate. If the issue submitted is determined to be a bug, the customer will not be charged for time spent on the ticket. Solver’s Development team will determine if an issue is a bug and will be communicated to the customers. Missing features are not considered bugs and may be billed to the customer.

If you are unsure of your access to Solver Support services, please contact support@solverglobal.com. We are happy to verify this for you. 

Support Hours

Normal support hours are Monday - Friday from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM Pacific Standard Time, excluding US Federal Holidays and Solver provided holidays. All Solver Support office closures are communicated via the Current Solver Holiday Schedule page.

After-hours support will consist of any support that is outside normal operating hours of the Solver Support Department, which are non-holiday weekdays, 6 AM to 6 PM Pacific Standard Time. After-hours support may be available at the discretion of the Support Manager and must be scheduled in advance.

After-hours support is not available as an on-call service and any requests made outside of normal support hours will be responded to on the next business day.  Weekend support must be scheduled in advance and may be billable at the time and a half the consulting rates previously agreed upon (subject to availability). The Support Consultant will notify the customer of any possible charges before work begins.

Technology Used

Solver Support utilizes the following resources while assisting our customers:

• Tickets: submitted through support.solverglobal.com
• Phone: 310-691-5300 
• Screenshare (when needed): GoTo Meeting and Microsoft Teams. 
  • Should you wish to use your own screensharing software, a web client is needed. 

Service Level Agreement

Solver Support strives to provide our customers with the highest level of customer service and product support. Customers will receive a reply back to their request within six (6) hours of submission of their ticket, within Solver Support operating hours, excluding federal holidays, company holidays and weekends.

• Production critical issues are determined by the Solver Support representative via communication with the customer and are escalated. These tickets will receive immediate attention.
• Timelines for ticket closure cannot be provided due to varying levels of difficulty with each support ticket.
• Solver Support cannot provide any estimated time of arrival (ETAs) for any bug fix as this is outside of support. Any timelines provided are an estimate and not guaranteed.

Additionally, Solver, Inc. reserves the right to change any details of its provided services at any time.

Service Details:

The following services are included with the purchase of a support contract. There are no restrictions to the number of tickets that a customer can submit within the support contract dates.

• Technical support via email, telephone, and remote support.
  • General "how-to" and usage questions about the Solver Suite.
  • Troubleshooting error message received while using the Solver Suite. 
  • Report design questions and assistance.
• Support cases can be created and viewed through http://support.solverglobal.com.
  • There is a one-time registration requirement for access to the support site. Registration requires the user’s email to be of the same domain as the company and requires account registration verification.
• Access to knowledge base, downloads, tips, tricks, and sample reports.

Bug Fixes

Your Solver Support representative cannot give exact estimates on the availability of a fix to a particular reported bug. Any date, if provided, is a rough estimate on when a bug may be fixed but is not guaranteed.

Not Included in Support Contract

The following requests are outside the services provided by Solver Support but may be done at an additional, hourly billable rate.

• Installations and installation troubleshooting. Solver support offers assisted installations at a billable rate. Should you need assistance with your installation, time spent is also billable.
• Report creation and advanced reporting issues.
  • Due to the complexities of financial statements, it may be determined that a customer’s request is best handled by Solver Consulting. Solver Support makes all attempts to keep reporting issues within support, but certain requests must go to Solver Consulting services to be completed at a billable rate.
• Creation and/or troubleshooting of SQL Server Integration Service (SSIS) packages.
• Creation and/or troubleshooting of custom business rules. Issues with Standard business rules, found here, are supported at no cost. 
• Data care and maintenance are the responsibility of the customer. The customer takes full responsibility for maintaining a proper backup of databases, disaster recovery protocols, and other standard data integrity measures. Data must be backed up by the customer before a Solver Support representative will make changes, upgrades, modifications, or customizations of the software.
  • Solver recommends that backups are performed prior to any technical support actions. Additionally, Solver recommends that customers maintain a dedicated development environment for the Support Staff to implement and test changes or solutions to tickets.
  • Solver Cloud customers may request database backups via a Support ticket. Solver maintains customer backups for a total of 10 days (this includes weekends and holidays). Customers' backups are not maintained for longer than 10 days.
• General consulting and Solver Implementation
  • General consulting involves work outside the realm of technical support. This can include but is not limited to, analyzing a budget model and the business’ financial setup and implementation of the software.
  • Implementation of Solver, and all add-ons. Solver Support can discuss the best practices to implementing Solver but the implementation of Solver is a consulting service.
• Solver and add-ons that have not been purchased.
  • Third-party application changes may affect the usage of the software. It is the customer’s responsibility to understand the third-party systems deployed in their environment that affect the Solver Suite. Please contact Solver Support should you have any questions before upgrading your systems.
• Solver Meta Designer: This is an advanced tool that is not supported by Solver Support. All support is done as a consulting service and is billable.
  • Please note that consulting services for Meta Designer are limited and based on availability.
• Custom software modifications: Custom modifications of the software done by the customer are the responsibility of the customer. Any work done by the Support Staff to adjust or workaround the custom modifications is strictly billable.

Any customization to the software is not supported. If a customization is found, all time spent troubleshooting this issue may be billable. Unfortunately, customization may not be found immediately and therefore, no notification of billable work and time may be provided.

ERP configuration for compatibility with Solver Integration ("Connectors") requests are outside the scope of Solver Support services. Please contact your ERP vendor for information on making the data inside your system available to Solver Cloud.

Note: Solver Support website may periodically be inaccessible due to site maintenance. 

Billing and Confidentiality

Billing will be on a Time and Materials basis billed in 30-minute increments with a minimum charge of 30-minutes, whether or not the initial 30-minutes are completely used.  Support can be paid by credit card, wire transfer, or invoicing. For more information on this, contact the Solver Accounting department.

All non-disputed Invoices must be paid in full on a NET 30 basis.  Disputes over billing rates or hours will be directed to the Solver Accounting Department and/or Support Manager.  All disputes must be presented to Solver within 15 days of the invoice.

All data and information provided to Solver Support will only be shared with those individuals involved in the troubleshooting process. Data provided will be immediately removed from our system if it is deemed that the data is no longer needed. Backups of data, reports and other customer-specific resources will not be held on the customer’s behalf. To provide the customer with added security, customer-related user information, such as FTP logins, should not be shared.  A signed Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) is available to provide security to both the customer and Solver, Inc. upon request.

Properties:

General