1 TECHNICAL SUPPORT
You are eligible for Technical Support whilst you maintain a paid subscription to the Subscription Materials at either the Professional or Enterprise tier.
Technical support is provided for issues (including problems created by you) that are demonstrable in the currently supported release(s) of an Applaud Solutions licensed product, running unaltered and on an appropriate hardware, database, and operating system configuration, as specified in your order or program documentation.
1.1 SUPPORT PERIOD
Technical support is effective upon the effective date of your ordering document and is the same as the subscription period unless stated otherwise in your ordering document. Applaud Solutions is not obligated to provide technical support beyond the end of the support period.
1.2 SUPPORT PORTAL
If you are on the Professional or Enterprise Tier, you will be given access to our online support portal, accessible at https://support.applaudsolutions.com, which is available 24x7.
Service requests for all other supported Applaud Solutions programs may be submitted via our online portal at https://support.applaudsolutions.com.
1.3 SEVERITY DEFINITIONS
When logging a Service Request, the service request severity level is selected by you and Applaud Solutions and should be based on the following severity definitions:
Severity Urgent
Your production use of the supported programs is stopped or so severely impacted that you cannot reasonably continue work. You experience a complete loss of service. The operation is mission-critical to the business, and the situation is an emergency. A Severity Urgent service request has one or more of the following characteristics:
- A critical documented function is not available
- The system hangs indefinitely, causing unacceptable or indefinite delays for resources or response
- The system crashes and crashes repeatedly after restart attempts
You must provide Applaud Support with a named contact during this period to assist with data gathering, testing, and applying fixes. We must be provided with email and telephone details of the named contact. Responses from Applaud Support must be acted upon within 4 local business hours to avoid a Service Request being downgraded to Severity High.
You are requested to propose this severity classification with great care so that valid Severity 1 situations obtain the necessary resource allocation from Applaud Solutions.
When logging an Urgent SR, you will be requested to provide justification to Applaud Support which will be reviewed by the local Support Manager before being accepted.
Severity High
You experience a severe loss of service in your production system or the issue is stopping an important milestone from completing, such as User Acceptance Sign-Off or a deployment into Production. Important features are unavailable with no acceptable workaround; however, operations can continue in a restricted fashion.
When logging a High Severity SR, you will be requested to provide justification to Applaud Support which will be reviewed by the local Support Manager before being accepted.
Severity Normal
You experience a minor loss of service. The impact is an inconvenience, which may require a workaround to restore functionality.
Severity Low
You request information, an enhancement, or documentation clarification regarding your software but there is no impact on the operation of the software. You experience no loss of service. The result does not impede the operation of a system.
1.4 ESCALATIONS
If you are not satisfied with the progress of a service request marked Urgent, High, or Normal, you may request an escalation of the case to Applaud Support Management by updating the Service Request. You must provide a business justification for the escalation.
Applaud Support Management will review the escalation justification and, if agreed, will mark the Service Request as ‘escalated’.
Upon escalation, Applaud Senior Management is notified, and your nominated Success Manager will be assigned to work with you directly until the escalation is resolved.
1.5 SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS FOR PROFESSIONAL TIER
You will receive assistance with service requests Monday through Friday, excluding holidays, between the working hours of 08:00 A.M. to 16:00 GMT.
Reasonable efforts will be made to respond to your service requests per the following guidelines:
- Severity Urgent service requests within 8 working hours
- Severity High service requests within the 12 working hours
- Severity Medium service requests within 24 working hours
- Severity Low service requests within 36 working hours
1.6 SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS FOR ENTERPRISE TIER
You will receive assistance with service requests Sunday through Friday, excluding holidays, between the working hours of 06:00 A.M. to 18:00 GMT.
Reasonable efforts will be made to respond to your service requests per the following guidelines:
- Severity Urgent service requests within 4 working hours
- Severity High service requests within the 8 working hours
- Severity Medium service requests within 12 working hours
- Severity Low service requests within 24 working hours
2 SYSTEM DOWNTIME ISSUES
Downtime issues should be raised via the Applaud Support desk with a severity of ‘Urgent’ and a title of ‘System Down: All Users’ or ‘System Down: Multiple Users’ to indicate this SR concerns system unavailability that is affecting end users.
“Downtime” is defined as a period of time when the Applaud Software is completely unavailable or not accessible to your users. Downtime excludes Scheduled Maintenance Windows, where you are performing upgrades or maintenance to the Software, during which time the system may not be available. Downtime also excludes any performance impacts due to failures in the Customer’s Oracle software, network, security configuration, or hardware.
Finally, terms in this section do not apply to non-production systems, such as Development, Test, Pre-Production, CRP, UAT, or others.
SYSTEM DOWNTIME: ALL USERS
Your production use of the supported programs is stopped, and the Applaud application is completely unavailable to all users across all devices. You experience a complete loss of service across all processes for all users.
There is no workaround available in alternative Applaud interfaces, within Standard Oracle screens, or via an HR Service Desk or Administrator. The use of Applaud software is mission-critical to the business, and the situation is an emergency.
You must provide Applaud Support with a named contact during this period to assist with data gathering, testing, and applying fixes. We must be provided with the email and telephone details of the named contact. Responses from Applaud Support must be acted upon within 1 local business hour to avoid a Service Request being downgraded to Severity High.
You are requested to propose this severity classification with great care so that valid System Downtime situations obtain the necessary resource allocation from Applaud Solutions.
Requests with this category will only be accepted on a Production instance and only if the supported programs have previously been working successfully on that Production instance. If the issue occurs after an upgrade of Applaud software, then you must demonstrate the upgrade has been tested successfully before applying it to your Production instance.
This category cannot be used if the application is partially accessible for even one user.
SYSTEM DOWNTIME: MULTIPLE USERS
Your production use of the supported programs is stopped and the Applaud application is completely unavailable to some users across all devices. Those users experience a complete loss of service across all processes within Applaud. Some other users are able to use the Applaud application successfully.
There is no available workaround in alternative Applaud interfaces, via different devices (for example, via desktop instead of mobile), within Standard Oracle screens, or via an HR Service Desk or Administrator.
The operation is mission-critical to the user population affected.
Requests with this category will only be accepted on a Production instance and only if the supported programs have previously been working successfully on that Production instance. If the issue occurs after an upgrade of Applaud software, then you must demonstrate the upgrade has been tested successfully before applying it to your Production instance.
This category cannot be used if the application is partially available to the affected user population.
2.1. RESPONSE TIMES FOR SYSTEM DOWNTIME ISSUES: ENTERPRISE TIER ONLY
If you are on the Professional Tier, then responses will be made according to the standard Service Level Agreements referred to in the section ‘Service Level Agreements for Professional Tier.’
If you are on the Enterprise Tier, then Applaud Solutions will make reasonable efforts to respond to your ‘System Down’ service requests per the following guidelines:
- “System Down: All Users” requests within 1 working hour
“System Down: Multiple Users” requests within 4 working hours
2.2. RESOLUTION TIMES FOR SYSTEM DOWNTIME ISSUES: ENTERPRISE TIER ONLY
If you are on the Professional Tier, then Applaud Solutions makes no commitment to resolve a downtime issue within any given timeframe.
If you are on the Enterprise Tier, then Applaud Solutions will make reasonable efforts to resolve your ‘System Down’ service requests per the following guidelines:
- “System Down: All Users” issues resolved within 8 working hours
- “System Down: Multiple Users” issues resolved within 16 working hours
The target times given above are for guidance only and do not provide a contractual commitment. Further, ‘Resolved’ refers to the time to provide a solution; Applaud is not responsible for implementing such a solution.
If the target times are not met by Applaud, this does not result in a breach of contract or result in any penalties or service credits. Your rights to remedy are given in the section ‘Warranties, Disclaimers and Exclusive Remedies’ and are unaffected by these Target Resolution times.
2.3. ELIGIBILITY FOR SYSTEM DOWNTIME RESOLUTION TIME TARGET
To assist with problem diagnosis for downtime issues, remote access to all components of your Production
instance must be granted to Applaud. Access via screen sharing controlled by one of your permanent
employees or an authorized third party is acceptable.
The ‘Target Time to Resolve’ guideline applies when all the following criteria are met:
- Remote access is available at all times whilst the issue is not solved
- The issue is caused exclusively by an Applaud software defect
- The application is configured correctly
- The application is installed correctly
2.4. EXCLUSIONS
The ‘Target Time to Resolve’ guideline does not cover:
- Issues caused by non-Applaud software or hardware, including but not limited to Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Database, Oracle Middleware, Mobile Device Management systems, Mobile Application Management Systems, Mobile devices, device operating systems
- Issues caused by incorrect configuration or installation of Applaud Software
- Issues caused by incorrect configuration or installation of Oracle Software or Hardware
- Issues caused by your network configuration, including domain name masking, reverse proxy servers, and load balancers
- Issues caused by your security configuration, including web certificates and firewalls
- Issues where remote access to a production environment is not granted to an Applaud representative, thus limiting the ability to provide timely problem-solving
‘Target Time to Resolve’ excludes time when Applaud is waiting on you or any other third party, which includes time to extract log or trace files, provide information or access, deploy patches, deploy mobile apps, or make configuration changes.
The ‘Target time to resolve’ is not calculated from the time of the Service Request being raised. The ‘Target time to resolve’ is calculated from the time Applaud have established and accepted there is a problem in Applaud software to the point of releasing a software patch or configuration change to solve the problem.
Applaud Solutions is not required to provide any reporting or audit on the ‘Target Time to Resolve’ statistic.