Novell Product Support

Technical Support for Novell-branded Software

The following applies only to software that is produced by Condrey Corporation and is branded as a Novell product. Unlimited Technical Support for all Condrey-branded products is provided as a part of the licensing and maintenance for the software.

In the 9 years that Condrey has been producing Novell-branded software, the Condrey Technical Support (CTS) team has worked extremely hard to provide exemplary support for our products sold by Novell.  Service Requests opened with Novell Technical Support (NTS) requests for Novell Storage Manager (NSM) and Novell File Reporter (NFR) have been and will continue to be immediately handed off to CTS for evaluation and resolution. Over the years, customers have learned that they can call Condrey directly for support without opening an SR, especially since CTS did not charge for support, which has led to an overwhelming number of calls, many of which end up being either very elementary in nature in that the answers were clearly in the product documentation, or not related to our software products at all.

Now, in 2012, Condrey is delivering a new Novell-branded software product in Novell Kanaka for Mac. This software is provided as a no-charge entitlement to all Novell OES customers worldwide. NTS calls for Kanaka are handled differently than that of NSM and NFR in that NTS will handle Level 1 and CTS will handle Level 2/3.

Given the current practice of customers calling Condrey directly for free support and the immediate size of the customer base for Kanaka, the potential support workload on CTS on Kanaka alone without some policy change is significant. Plus, the number of direct calls on NSM and NFR are increasing, also calling for a change in policy. Another desire of Condrey is to keep our support processes consistent across all Novell-branded products.

Therefore, beginning January 17, 2012, customers will have a choice of technical support options on all Novell-branded software produced by Condrey:

1. Open a Service Request (SR) with Novell Technical Support (NTS). Calls will be managed between NTS and Condrey according to the support procedures for the given product and Novell customers will be responsible for the appropriate support contracts with Novell.

2. Open a call directly with Condrey Technical Support (CTS) using a direct support incident, which can be purchased from Condrey.

The remainder of this document will discuss the specifics of option B above.

Condrey is offering CTS incidents in the following packs. Click on the desired pack to purchase:

 
Support is provided on a 24x7 basis, but only a limited number of incidents may be used outside of normal working hours according to the chart above. Normal working hours are 8am-5pm Eastern Time Monday-Friday, except holidays which average about 9 days per year.

Incidents purchased in a pack never expire. They are usable on any Novell-branded product produced by Condrey, including:

• Novell Storage Manager
• Novell File Reporter
• Novell Kanaka for Mac (includes help with underlying Novell technology such as AFP, CIFS, Universal Password, etc.)

The following is the procedure used by CTS when a customer opens an issue:

Confirm that the product is a Novell-branded product produced by Condrey.

1. Explain the technical support options available to the customer.
2. If the customer wants to continue, confirm that an incident pack has been purchased and if incidents are available given the time of day. If not, the customer is referred to a Condrey representative or website to facilitate this purchase.
3. Log the issue in the CTS incident management database.
4. Work with the customer to resolve the issue.
5. Once the issue is resolved, CTS will determine if the resolution was or was not related to a bug in the Condrey software.
6. If the issue was not related to a bug in the Condrey software, the incident will be charged to the customer by decrementing the number of incidents that remain available for use.
7. If the issue was related to a bug in the Condrey software, the incident will be closed but the incident will not be charged to the customer.