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Technical Support Cases
When a Customer has an issue they cannot solve on their own or by using any of the Customer resources provided, the Customer's Support Liaison may contact MicroStrategy Technical Support to log a case for their issue. Contact information for MicroStrategy Technical Support is provided on the Contact Us page.
PRIOR TO LOGGING A CASE
Before logging a case with MicroStrategy Technical Support, the Support Liaison should follow the steps below:
- Verify that the issue is with MicroStrategy software and not a third party software.
- Verify that the system is using a currently supported version of MicroStrategy software.
- Attempt to reproduce the issue and determine if it occurs consistently.
- Minimize the complexity of the system or project object definition to isolate the cause.
- Determine if the issue occurs on a local machine or on multiple machines in the Customer environment.
- Search the MicroStrategy Knowledge Base for information regarding the issue.
The Support Liaison may also want to discuss the issue with other users by posting a question about the issue on the MicroStrategy Customer Forum.
LOGGING A CASE
To log a case, Support Liaisons may contact MicroStrategy Technical Support via email, telephone, or the Online Support Interface. Only Support Liaisons can log cases with MicroStrategy Technical Support. Upon logging a case, the Support Liaison receives a case identification number for future reference.
When logging a case, be prepared to provide the following information:
- Personal Information
- Name
- Company and customer site (if different from own company)
- Contact information (phone and fax numbers, e-mail address)
- Case Details
- Configuration information, including MicroStrategy software product(s), version(s), and DSI in which the Products are installed
- Full description of the case containing symptoms, error message(s), steps taken to troubleshoot the case thus far
- Log files or other supporting data
- Customer system impact
Customer System Impact
In order to better understand the impact of the Customer's issue, assistance in drawing together a business case for the issue may be required. The business case describes the effect of the issue on the Customer's environment from a non-technical standpoint. It allows MicroStrategy Technical Support Engineers to understand how the case hinders the Customer's ability to deploy a successful MicroStrategy solution.
A business case can include, but is not limited to:
- Economic and financial implications of the issue
- The scope of the issue's impact across reports, users, projects, servers, services, etc.
- Executive-level visibility
- Potential impact to key deployment dates
PRIORITIZATION OF CASES
MicroStrategy assigns priority levels to cases to allow Technical Support to maximize service levels for each Customer. Depending on technical and business needs, MicroStrategy works with each Support Liaison to set the correct priority level for each case.
MicroStrategy recognizes that the Customer's business and technical priorities may evolve over time. If the Support Liaison feels that the priority of the case should change, the Technical Support Engineer is available to reprioritize the case.
MicroStrategy reserves the right to:
- Make the final determination on the priority level of a case.
- Downgrade the priority of a case and notify the Support Liaison of this action if the Support Liaison fails to communicate with MicroStrategy Technical Support in a timely manner.
MicroStrategy shall make reasonable commercial efforts to comply with established guidelines when involved in problem resolution.
Premium Support Customer cases take precedence over Bronze Support Customer cases of the same priority. Additional information on each level of support is provided on the Support Offerings page.
Customer Involvement in Case Response
Customers logging priority level one and priority level two cases must be available to work full-time throughout the resolution process with MicroStrategy Technical Support to resolve the issue. The Customer must be willing to involve the level of staff needed to resolve the issue effectively and be available to assist MicroStrategy Technical Support with tasks such as testing, sending appropriate information, implementing suggestions, etc. Resolution may be delayed if information is not provided in a timely manner.
Provisional Software Code
From time to time, MicroStrategy may provide to Customer certain software code, which is not generally available to all licensees of MicroStrategy ("Provisional Code"). Provisional Code includes any software program, algorithm, code, routine, script, test build, logging build, enhancement patch, or documentation that MicroStrategy provides to Customer clearly designated as Provisional Code. Provisional Code does not include the Products, certified defect patches, or subsequent releases of Products that are made generally available through Technical Support or licensed separately. Provisional Code is provided to Customer at no additional charge.
MicroStrategy grants Customer a non-exclusive, terminable license to use the Provisional Code only in support of and in combination with Customer’s use of the Products and in accordance with the terms of the license agreement under which the Products were licensed. If such license agreement is terminated, Customer’s right to use the Provisional Code will automatically terminate.
Provisional Code may be experimental in nature, may contain defects, and may not work as intended. Technical Support Services may not be available for installation and use of Provisional Code. However, MicroStrategy Technical Support Engineers will use commercially reasonable efforts to answer questions Customer may have about Provisional Code.
Provisional Code is provided "As Is" without any warranty of any kind including the warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Except for a third party claim of infringement, MicroStrategy shall have no liability to customer for any indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages of any kind (including loss of revenue or use), whether in contract or tort, resulting from customer’s use of the Provisional Code, even if MicroStrategy has been advised of the possibility of such damages. MicroStrategy’s liability shall in no event exceed the fees paid by customer for the Provisional Code.
PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION
Once the problem has been identified, MicroStrategy Technical Support may provide Customers with one of the following as a solution to their issue:
- Workarounds — alternative actions that can be used to complete tasks and provide a solution to limitations in the software. The case response time guidelines listed above are based on Customers actively working to implement MicroStrategy Technical Support's suggestions, including workarounds.
- Configuration Changes — a modification to the Customer's MicroStrategy environment settings to resolve the issue. The changes may relate to MicroStrategy software or any underlying technologies and systems.
- Patches — the application of existing patches for MicroStrategy software addressing a critical issue.
- Hotfixes — minor upgrades for MicroStrategy software addressing the issue.
- Major and Minor Releases and Service Packs — upgrades for MicroStrategy software addressing the issue.
- At times, defects in third party software may limit the operation of MicroStrategy software. In these cases, Technical Support will attempt to identify the defective component so that the Customer may seek a defect correction from the third party vendor. See the Third Party Software section under Limitations of Support for more details.
ISSUES THAT REQUIRE CODE CHANGES
Once a case is identified as requiring a code change, the status of the Technical Support case is changed from "Open" to "Logged-Informed". This indicates that Technical Support has reported (logged) the problem to the Software Development team and that the Customer has been notified (informed).
Support Liaisons may obtain a status update for their "Logged-Informed" cases anytime by contacting MicroStrategy Technical Support and referencing their case number.
PROVIDING DATA TO MICROSTRATEGY TECHNICAL SUPPORT
During the course of troubleshooting and researching issues, it may be necessary to provide MicroStrategy Technical Support personnel with data from your systems (diagnostics, metadata copies, etc). For the convenience of our customers, MicroStrategy provides several methods to transmit this data including, but not limited to, Email, the MicroStrategy Support Site and the MicroStrategy Download Site. However, if the customer is sharing any confidential data which may be subject to government regulation, it is the customer’s responsibility to transmit that data to MicroStrategy using MicroStrategy’s Secure FTP Server. Customers should work with the Technical Support Engineer assigned to their case to coordinate any such data transfers.