We are committed to building strategic relationships with our Subscribers by providing consistent, dependable and measurable services that effectively support the use of our products to meet and exceed our Subscribers' Contract Management needs.

Our Customer Support Department provides assistance with the diagnosis and resolution of defects and/or failures in our products subject to the product being installed and operated in a production environment in accordance with software specifications.

Our Standard Maintenance & Support Process provides coverage for the following items:

• General questions regarding product functionality
• Diagnosis and resolution of defects and failures in our products

• Contact with our Customer Support Department is through two to three specified designated Subscriber contacts who have completed the appropriate Product Training.
• Designated contacts are named contacts within the our Customer Support Portal contact list and must be registered with Customer Support prior to requesting service for the first time.
• To avoid interruptions in support services, Subscribers must notify Customer Support whenever its technical support responsibilities are transferred to another individual or if there are any changes in the contact numbers or contact methods.
• Designated contacts will have conducted analysis steps to resolve issues escalated from the First Level Support organization prior to initiation of a Customer Support request.
• For us to provide the levels of support noted throughout this process, it may be necessary for the Subscriber to provide remote access to the Subscriber's version of the installed product.  Such access should be granted on a limited basis for the time period necessary for resolution and should be immediately terminated.

Standard Maintenance & Support does not provide coverage for the following items:

• Training
• Enhancements
• Consulting or development services
• Support for the recovery of lost data
• Initial or subsequent set up or configuration
• Subsequent on-premises installations
• Modification of base code, addition of custom code, or modification of configuration unknown to us
• Support for Custom Development or Custom Configuration unless Subscriber has purchased a separate Custom Code or Connect Support Agreement
• Installation, configuration and technical support for equipment or operating systems
• Third party software or hardware
• Consultations or integrations to third party software applications
• Damage, defects or malfunctions due to misuse, abuse or accidents
• Defects caused by the combination of our products with third party software or hardware that we do not support
• Defects caused by the modification of our products by persons other than our employees
• Defects that are not reproducible
• Support or troubleshooting of base SharePoint installation.  Our software requires a SharePoint environment which adheres to Microsoft guidelines.  We are not responsible for troubleshooting a Subscriber's SharePoint installation unless that environment was installed by our team. 

Support Response Policy & Coverage Times

We provide 24x7 coverage for all Urgent Issues.  Coverage for all other case types is Monday through Friday excluding published holidays from 8:00AM to 7:00pm Eastern Time. 

All issues should be initially logged within our Customer Support Portal which can be found at support.contracts365.com.  Depending on case criticality, we may follow up with direct telephone contact. 

Case Types and Response Times

* We reserve the right to change the Case Priority if it does not meet the definition criteria noted above.

** Support and Maintenance for Development, QA or Test, or Staging Environments requires a specific/ separate maintenance and support agreement for these environments.  Not all Case Priorities are available for subsequent environments.

Issue Submission and Tracking Processes

In either case, the individual who has submitted the issue must be one of the three designated Customer Support contacts. For any case submissions, the following information should be provided:

• Description | At a high level, what is the issue which requires attention?
• Steps to Reproduce  | For Problems or Incidents, please include steps to reproduce the issue.
• Priority | Please designate whether the priority or criticality of the issue is Urgent, High, Normal or Low.
• Type | Note whether the issue is a Question, Incident, Problem or Task. An Incident affects several users while a Problem affects a single user.
• Attachments | Please include any necessary screenshots or logs which may be helpful in resolution of the issue.

Once the case has been submitted, our Customer Support Team will receive notification of the issue or question. The Customer Support Representative designated for the specific Subscriber account, termed the Lead Support Engineer or LSE, will assume responsibility for the case. The LSE will respond to the issue in accordance with the Case Priority and Response Times noted above. Throughout this process, email notifications will be sent to both the individual who submitted the case as well as the LSE each time a comment is added and/or the status of the case is changed. Kindly note that each Subscriber has both a primary and secondary LSE.

Issue Tracking
Once the case has been submitted, it can be tracked on a real-time basis through the use of the Support Portal. Authorized Subscriber Representatives can log in to the system to see specific case correspondence as well as a Case Tracking Dashboard which aggregates all open cases.

Additional comments may be submitted in support of an existing case, but existing comments and any document attachments related to the case cannot be edited after submission.

We will use commercially reasonable efforts to resolve cases in accordance with the specifications of this Standard Maintenance & Support program. Timely efforts must be made by all parties involved, and expedient responses will assist to more rapidly address open cases. If communication from the Subscriber ceases for a period in excess of five (5) business days, we may, upon notice, close a case due to inactivity on the part of the Subscriber.

Scenario I | Case Resolved by Support

• A case is submitted by the Subscriber through the Support Portal.
• The LSE reviews the case, and an initial email response is sent back to the Subscriber acknowledging receipt of the case. If the case is urgent or it is requested, telephone contact will be made.
• The LSE begins research and contacts the Subscriber in the event that it is necessary to:
  • Confirm case type
  • Request additional information or data
  • Conduct a web session
  • Supply suggestions, solutions or workarounds
• The case will be closed when:
  • A resolution is supplied to the Subscriber
  • The Subscriber resolves the problem
  • The Subscriber fails to supply the requested clarification information or data within a reasonable period of time from our request
  • No response is received from the Subscriber

Scenario II | Case Escalated to Engineering

• A case is submitted by the Subscriber through the Support Portal.
• The LSE reviews the case, and an initial email response is sent back to the Subscriber acknowledging receipt of the case. If the case is urgent or it is requested, telephone contact will be made.
• The LSE reproduces the reported behavior and determines that the problem is a product defect.
• The LSE escalates the issue to our R&D Department.
• R&D in coordination with Product Management reviews the problem and determines how the problem will be addressed.
  • The problem will be corrected via a patch or Service Pack
  • The problem will be corrected in the next standard release of the product
  • The problem will be corrected in a future version of the product, although no specific timetable is set
  • The problem is not material and will not be fixed
• Once the problem has been fixed, the LSE will provide the necessary information to the Subscriber.

Note:  Once a problem has been assigned a target release date, the intent is to fix the defect for the stated release.  However, it is not possible to guarantee that the defect will be resolved in a specific release or by a specific date.

Scenario III | Case Escalated to Product Management

• A case is submitted by the Subscriber through the Support Portal.
• The LSE reviews the case, and an initial email response is sent back to the Subscriber acknowledging receipt of the case. If the case is urgent or it is requested, telephone contact will be made.
• The LSE reproduces the reported behavior and determines that the problem is not a product defect, but is an item which should be considered for a future release of the product.
• The LSE escalates the issue to Product Management.
• Product Management evaluates the request and determines how the request will be handled.
  • The feature will be implemented in the next standard release of the product
  • The feature may be implemented in a future release of the product, although no specific timetable has been set
  • The feature will not be implemented
• Once a decision has been made, the LSE will provide the necessary information to the Subscriber.

SaaS Release Cycles

Our approach to release cycles and the management of our SaaS offerings is designed to provide stability, quality and predictability coupled with the flexibility to quickly resolve problems and deliver new features and service enhancements to our Subscriber base.

To this end, our release cycle is as follows:

Major Releases which include new application functionality and/or changes to architecture will typically take place 2x per year.  Notifications of the upcoming changes or new functionality will be provided a month in advance.  To take advantage of these new features, Subscriber specific configurations may be necessary.   Note that all Major Releases will be provided via our Release Ring Process which includes first releasing to Development and Secondary Sites prior to Production Sites. 

Minor Releases which include security enhancements, resolutions to application defects, and minor feature enhancements will take every three (3) weeks. Notifications of the Minor Release will be made through the email distribution of the Release as well as a banner announcement directly within the Contracts 365 application.  To take advantage of these changes, our Subscribers generally need not take any action.  Specific information on all Minor Releases can be found within our Maintenance Notification Release Log.  

Critical Fixes which include fixes for security issues or system stability items will be issued as necessary.  Notifications will be made with as much advance notice as is possible, and will require no action on the part of our Subscribers.

We strive to perform our service maintenance and new feature release with minimum impact to our Subscribers and Service availability.  We reserve a maintenance release window from 9:00pm Eastern Time to 11:59pm Eastern Time every third Wednesday evening for any updates that may interrupt Service availability, are considered higher risk, or require additional testing post release. 

In cases where a Subscriber desires to obtain additional services from us for Subscriber specific configurations of new features or enhancements, please feel free to reach out to your Customer Success Representative or to open an inquiry within our Support Portal.