Service Level Agreement (SLA)

Multi-level agreement that includes technical support and training based on the user license. Administrators get Premium support. Publishers get Professional support.

• Support
• Response Times
• Outages
• Best-effort Policy
  
  

Review this information carefully. It explains what you can expect from SchoolNow in the event of problems, outages and even basic support issues. Having a clear understanding of how our organizations must work together will reduce confusion and let you rest assured we’re on the case. The goal of the SchoolNow support agreement is to allow SchoolNow to assist the customer in defining and forming responses to their needs based on predefined expectations of urgency. SchoolNow looks to assign all requests a definition and apply the appropriate Service Level Agreement (SLA) to resolve requests in a timely manner. There are two levels of support: Administrative and Publisher, each designed to accommodate requests efficiently and by priority.

Support

Administrator

Premium support

Phone support

• 24/7, if you do not have access to a computer, call in to leave a message with a support representative. Requests are handled in order received during regular support hours.
• 2-hour e-mail response to confirm that a ticket has been opened
• Next business day response defining your request as a support ticket, with an action plan for next steps
• Outage requests are given immediate priority

Training

• Live scheduled training sessions
• SchoolNow User Guide
• Online training videos

Publisher

Professional support

Ticket support

• Incident support by e-mail (support at schoolnow dot com), SchoolNow dashboard or at www.schoolnow.com
• 4-hour email response to confirm that a ticket has been opened
• Next business day response defining your request as a support item or a project

Training

• Live scheduled training sessions
• SchoolNow User Guide
• Online training videos

Types of support requests

Each type of request has a specific action plan, and timelines for SchoolNow to meet SLA response times. SchoolNow makes final determinations on request type classifications.

Personal

Personal requests are a request by an individual for a question, need, or issue related to that specific individual.

• Error with system
• Configuration issue
• “How to” questions

Technical

A technical request is for issues and questions related to site-wide outages, hosting, security, integrations, SSL, DNS, and other items that are technology and Internet-related.

• Server/application outages
• Errors from SchoolNow code
• Back-end errors
  • Bugs
  • Feeds
  • Widgets
  • Configuration
• Front-end errors (SchoolNow standards)
  • Widgets
  • Modules
  • Mobile
  • Login issues
• Technical questions
  • Configuration
  • Infrastructure
  • Capacity
  • User access
• Security incident
• Integration
  
  

Prioritization

SchoolNow manages service and support load in the following order:

• Outages – Any SchoolNow error creating a system outage affecting all or a majority of users
• Errors – Error requests are ranked by the number of users affected
• Technical questions – Questions regarding configuration or other SchoolNow-related questions
• “How do I” questions – Support for new features or using the CMS tools

All support requests will:

1. Be opened as a ticket in SchoolNow’s support system, and assigned a ticket number
2. The ticket will be attached to a named user
3. The ticket will contain enough information to define and recreate the request
4. Be assigned a type, and placed in the proper SLA queue
5. Handled during regular support hours (8am-6pm EST)
6. Completed within support definitions, and documented according to our Best Effort policy.
7. Closed when completed, with an email to the named contact with details on the resolution
   
   

Response Time

Response time is defined as the time in which SchoolNow has to contact a named user and start the resolution process with the user. Standard support issues are handled during regular support hours. Requests are serviced on a first-come, first-served basis, that is… in the order they are received. Requests are serviced during our standard operating hours (8am-6pm EST) based on their priority. Urgent issues affecting all users or all websites are handled immediately as our engineers are notified via an advanced alert system that provides us 24/7/365 server monitoring. Response time is not a guarantee of closing a request; rather signals the start of working on a resolution. Resolution time is affected by client accessibility, resource availability, and the ability to define and recreate issues or requests. Please review and understand our Best Effort policy.

Outages

When there is an outage, you can check to be sure it is SchoolNow servers by visiting our status monitor. This monitor is located on 3 disparate servers in Chicago, California and Atlanta. All three monitors will be “Down” if there is a SchoolNow outage.

In the event of an outage, you will not be contacted by SchoolNow. It is our policy to invoke our prioritization policies and quickly get to work on resolving the issue to get our servers back online. You may put in a support ticket to our support team, and they will provide you the information that has been provided to them by our development team. It is our first priority to resolve any issues that affects all of our users. When we resolve the issue, we perform a full investigation of what happened. This entails combing our server logs, and reviewing our status monitors to fully understand the situation. When we understand the situation, we then architect and implement the solution that will be needed to prevent the incident from happening again. Only then will we contact our customers to provide them not only an explanation of what happened, but what we have done to prevent it from happening again.

Please understand that there are malicious attacks daily on SchoolNow web servers. We manage and update a security solution that we believe is the best we can offer our customers. Our up-times improve consistently each year and we take your web site, its content and its security very seriously. During an outage, we will never contaminate our communication with irregular or inaccurate responses, but instead, identify the problem and implement a solution before contacting you.

Thank you for reviewing the SchoolNow support agreement and we look forward to serving you now and in the future.