Product Description – RT00072
Responsiv Assist Flex Support provides a remote facility that can be used by members of your team including developers, administrators, managers, project sponsors, and others with questions about how to achieve an IT solution, overcome a problem, or design a sustainable solution.
The objective of the service is to reduce project delays through access to our expert knowledge of the supported products, and to allow you to provide people at all levels of your organisation with access to critical skills and experience that are perhaps not mainstream.
A product description provides the definitive description of a product and its entitlement, which supersedes any and all descriptions, marketing information, presentations, or other expectations that might have been communicated or assumed about the product.
This product description is valid from August 2020
Product Summary
Responsiv Assist Flex Support provides a remote facility that can be used by members of your team including developers, administrators, managers, project sponsors, and others with questions about how to achieve an IT solution, overcome a problem, or design a sustainable solution.
The objective of the service is to reduce project delays through access to our expert knowledge of the supported products, and to allow you to provide people at all levels of your organisation with access to critical skills and experience that are perhaps not mainstream.
Supported Products
Responsiv Assist Flex Support can be used for products that are not in the “supported products” list, however Responsiv may not have any experience or knowledge of those products, and our support will, in these cases, be on a reasonable effort basis. We are a technical company who pride ourselves on our customer service and we will tell you if we cannot help.
Products in the supported products list are there because we have access to vendor support, and we have extensive knowledge of the products throughout their lifecycle (including design, install, develop and operate) and how these products can be used effectively.
Tariff
Each ticket raised will have a minimum tariff of 1 credit and should take approximately an hour to resolve using our assets and experience. The Responsiv analyst will review the ticket and should they suspect the response will take longer, the number of credits will be estimated and agreed with You ahead of starting work on the ticket.
The table below is an illustrative guide to the approximate number of credits needed for each activity. The actual number of credits will depend on individual assessments as agreed with your Registered User. See Appendix 1 for more detailed description of the Activities
Scope of support
Developer Support
- Assistance with implementing Integration and Automation projects
- Assist your developers to solve technical problems and reduce project delays
- Remote workshops and briefings for product good practice and resolution of development challenges
- Architecture design
- Design for performance
- Design for resilience and scale
Operational Support
- Mentoring and help with technical challenges
- Deliver workshops and remote briefings
- Support operations staff before problems arise by identifying potential problem areas
- Assist with operational change planning, including patching, and upgrades.
- Routine installation and usage (how-to) questions1
- Product related questions.
Incident Support
- This product cannot be used to raise Severity 1 or 2 tickets
- Experts available to remotely help fix critical issues
- Liaison with vendors for known problems and fixes
This is a service assistance product. You remain responsible for coordinating support efforts and the outcome.
Service Delivery
This section describes the Service Level Agreement (SLA), which includes the operational work processes along with the metrics by which the services will be provided and measured.
Coverage Hours of Operation
Registered Users can raise a ticket using the Responsiv Assist Portal 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.
Responsiv will work on Incidents and service requests only during coverage hours. The coverage hours for this product are 09:00 to 17:00 Monday to Friday UK hours (excluding UK Bank Holidays).
Service Level Commitments
The following Service Level Commitments are the target measurement metrics by which the level of service will be measured.
Severity
1 (Critical)
2 (Urgent)
Service not performing in accordance with the Service Levels. Non exhaustive examples:
Incidents that prevent you from conducting or processing relevant business or that cause a breach of applicable laws or regulations within the resolution time. Loss of a second site, failure of one or more resilient components, failure of a feature of a non-resilient component.THIS IS AN INCIDENT SEVERITY AND NOT AVAILABLE OR SUPPORTED BY THIS PRODUCT
3 (High)
Issue that materially affects the use of the product that is not a Severity Level 1 or 2 issue. Non exhaustive examples:
Incidents which have an impact on your ability to conduct or process relevant business efficiently and effectively in terms of Client servicing, operational procedures or internal management reporting
4 (Medium)
Severity
1 (Critical)
2 (Urgent)
3 (High)
4 (Medium)
Severity
1 (Critical)
2 (Urgent)
3 (High)
4 (Medium)
Escalation process
Should conflict arise during resolution of a Ticket (e.g. each party believes resolution responsibility resides with another party), then:
If the Service team cannot resolve the conflict within two (2) working days, then our Responsiv Assist Manager will meet your representative to resolve the issue.
Conditions on Use
The underlying Terms and Conditions that apply to this Product Description are “TC-RL0004Q-V51 (Aug2020) Terms and Conditions for Responsiv Consulting and Assistance Services”
Each Responsiv Assist Flex Support agreement will state the number of credits purchased and the term of the agreement. Support begins on the date of our acceptance of your purchase and ends on the earlier of your consumption of the credits or 12 months from the date of acceptance. Unused credits will expire at the end of the term.
This product is used entirely at your discretion and controlled by purchased capacity. Credits are deducted for each request you make. The scope of uses to which the credits can be applied is detailed above. The scope will change over time and it is Your responsibility to check that the scope, as defined in the latest Product Description, meets Your requirements.
Registered Users are responsible for liaison with the Responsiv support team, and for triaging questions that are raised. It is Your responsibility to manage the Registered Users within the Responsiv Assist Service Desk. Additional Registered Users may be purchased separately if required.
Agreement on the number of credits consumed for an individual ticket (the Tariff) is the responsibility of the Registered User who has raised the ticket. We will assume your Registered User has authority to bind You in this respect.
For customers that have purchased this product on multiple occasions and where entitlement periods overlap, Credits consumed will be from those that have the shortest expiry date.
We do not develop assets but may provide coding hints or prebuilt examples from our knowledge base. All assets made available through this product are provided as-is and are supplied as non-working examples that can be modified for your purposes.
Responsiv does not guarantee that we will resolve any tickets raised but only that We will work on your tickets for the number of Credits agreed.
Responsiv does not warrant uninterrupted or error-free operation of supported products, or that Responsiv will correct all defects or prevent third party disruptions or unauthorised third-party access to a supported product.
Unless otherwise specified in the Attachment, Agreement, or Offer, Responsiv offers assistance with development, operations, and planning for Non-Responsiv products without warranties of any kind.
These warranties are the exclusive warranties from Responsiv Solutions and replace all other warranties, including the implied warranties or conditions of satisfactory quality, merchantability, non-infringement, and fitness for a particular purpose. Responsiv warranties will not apply if there has been misuse, modification, damage not caused by Responsiv, failure to comply with instructions provided by Responsiv, or if otherwise stated in an Attachment, Offer, or Agreement.
Your Obligations
Under this agreement, and in addition to Your Obligations under Our Terms and Conditions, You remain responsible for the control, management and supervision of all assistance provided by this Agreement. Including but not limited to:
- Managing your personnel, activities and responsibilities under this Assistance Agreement;
- Being responsible for ensuring that your contacts have the relevant environment knowledge;
- All tickets must have your personnel working on them at the same time as Responsiv are working.
Provide timely assistance to respond to any questions and matters requiring attention when reasonably requested by our support consultant(s) handling an open request.
Appendix 1
Descriptions provided below are illustrative and are not contractually binding on the service we provided by this product
Remote Briefing and Mentoring
We provide a trusted and objective advisor who is at the end of a phone when your team is struggling to develop a solution, or to resolve a problem. Our remote support can save delays to your project and prevent teams of developers sitting around waiting for an answer.
Mentoring can include briefing sessions on product features and experiences we have with the product.
It can be used to extend your own team’s knowledge about specific features or illustrate pitfalls and good practice. It gives access to the Responsiv consulting team and their experience as well as to our knowledge base and extended network.
- When using a product for the first time, or infrequently, it is comforting to know that you can phone a friend, or ask for a workshop without unnecessary delay.
- We will provide expert architecture, design, and development support, including researching good practice and liaising with the vendor to assure that our advice is reasonable and accurate.
Remote Project Support
Project managing your first software development or integration project can be daunting. Designing an integration solution that is sustainable and cost effective to operate is not simple.
We can work remotely with specific individuals in your company to support them through their first project full development lifecycle by providing advice and answering their questions. We can help to structure their learning and at the same time deliver value to your business. Thinking about scalability and resilience of the eventual solution will make a significant difference to the operational cost and efficiency.
- Accelerate and justify important design decisions
- Build to the strengths of each product and avoid surprises
- It is possible to extend this to include site visits.
- Provision of code snippets and explanations.
- Design preparation and documentation.
- Accelerate capable developers in their use and experience of the supported products.
- Code snippets and explanations
- Education
The aim of the service is to reduce project delays due to lack of expertise in the supported products.nning, and be available during the deployment
Peace of mind
For “just in case” assistance to developer and operational staff during upgrades to production applications, or making changes to configurations. We can assign a person to be immediately available during a specified period of time. Many customers use this to assure that their projects get to production on time.
- We provide assistance with your deployment of new functionality to production environments, including deployment of changes as part of an issue resolution and/or a project/small change implementation.
- Deployment of changes as part of an issue resolution and/or a project/small change implementation.
Includes creation or modification of configurations and scripts. - We will assist you during deployment of objects that form part of the configuration of a supported product, for example; MQ queues, channels, BPM Applications, or API policies. Our specialists will provide feedback on your deployment and rollback planning, and be available during the deployment
Reviews
Documents, project plans, Blueworks live processes, change plans, and many more documents can be reviewed by our subject matter experts. To perform a review, we will need some context to the document and a statement of what the review is to achieve. Here are some examples of what to expect from a document review:
Component Design (single documents)
This type of review includes architectural documents, software components, models, BWL processes, requirement specifications, and plans.
To perform a component design review, we will need the component design itself, and to know what the component is expected to do, and how it is expected to be used. If you have any design standards or other requirements that are separate from the business requirements, then we will need them too. When you request the review, you will need to tell us what we are reviewing against – any specifics.
- Component design
- Design guides or standards
- Component specification / requirements
- Review instructions
We will read through the background information and then perform a gap analysis between the document being reviewed and what we understand to be expected of it. We will then add to that any experience we may have about the general subject or problem being addressed, for example any patterns we may know about. Our report will look something like:
- Introduction: This is a review of <doc> in the context of <doc>, and specifically reviewing for <things> and constrained to effort. Other considerations are <things>
- Findings: <three key findings with decriptions and observations>
- Body: Optional body of more detail around findings. This may require additional time.
- Appendix: <all findings listed>
Depending on your request, we will produce a short presentation or written report on our findings.
Architecture Reviews (multiple documents)
This type of review is for sets of documents and reviewing overall architectures. To perform such a review, we will need to understand the context and what the architecture is expected to do, and how it is expected to be used. We will also require a workshop to discuss the architecture.
If you have any design standards or other requirements that are separate from the business requirements, then we will need them too. When you request the review, you will need to tell us what we are reviewing against – any specifics.
- Architecture logical, physical, conceptual models
- Design guides or standards
- Business requirements
- Your Review instructions to us
We will read through the background information and then perform a gap analysis between the document being reviewed and what we understand to be expected of it. We will then add to that any experience we may have about the general subject or problem being addressed, for example any patterns we may know about. Our report will look something like:
- Introduction: This is a review of <doc> in the context of <doc>, and specifically reviewing for <things> and constrained to effort. Other considerations are <things>
- Findings: <three key findings with decriptions and observations>
- Body: Optional body of more detail around findings. This may require additional time.
- Appendix: <all findings listed>
Depending on your request, we will produce a short presentation or written report on our findings.
Product Installation and upgrade
We can assist you with product installations and upgrades, however our support is limited to providing subject matter experts and standby support for the product itself. You remain responsible for testing, review of release notes, and any environmental changes needed (IP addresses, etc) as well as planning. Our contribution is technical knowledge of the product and experience of other upgrades.
- Installations include first time installation of supported products on your site, and support in setting up connectivity to cloud services.
- Installation of new software versions, including the base product installation, appropriate fix packs and initial configurations / setup.
- Upgrades include subsequent installations of software over existing supported products that are significant version changes and noted by the vendor as being new versions, or rolled up patch releases.
- “just in case” assistance to developer and operational staff during upgrades to production applications, or making changes to configurations.
We will require time to become familiar with the intended installation and the requirements as well as the physical design.
- Installation plan (whole plan)
- Installation runbook (on the day detailed plan and rollback actions)
- Installation physical model
- Installation rollback plan and data handling procedures
- Your installation instructions to us
On agreement of your instructions we can read through the background information and comment in an email format as well as carrying out the required role in accordance to your instructions. Examples of installation instructions are:
1. Simple: Please be available to answer questions regarding this supported product during these hours.
a. We will agree the hours and name an individual who will be quickly available to answer questions and offer advice during the installation or upgrade
2. Medium: Please review our plans and provide feedback, and then help us to perform the upgrade
a. We will agree the schedule, exchange contact information, and gain access credentials as well as agree the runbook for the upgrade.
b. Attend planning meetings
3. Complete: Please upgrade this product
a. We will probably require a separate statement of work for this kind of work because it involves reviewing release notes, assuring that testing of dependent systems has happened, and understanding your standards and procedures.
b. If it is a relatively simple upgrade/installation, for example a Responsiv Unity module or platform, then we can do these complete installations and upgrades using Assist Credits
DataPower appliance upgrades
Deployment of configuration changes to DataPower appliances. Includes creation or modification of existing appliances, and support for installation / setup of new appliances. We can review your planning, be available for fast response during the upgrade, and mentor your technical staff on how to plan and execute a product upgrade.
Solution Support
Solution Support can provide active monitoring and support, or can be an on-demand style of support. Either way we can fit into your organisation in a way that matches your budget and augments your team without snatching too much control from your business. Responsiv Assist for supported products allows you to agree a light-touch support package that can cover all the parts of your solution regardless of different vendors or whether the code is bespoke.
Technology solutions typically contain a number of products from different vendors and bespoke software or configuration. The support that is purchased for products is limited to the product itself and is generally a simple break-fix style of support. This is rarely what is needed to maintain a holistic solution.
A common answer to this problem is to outsource support in the form of a managed service. Of course, Responsiv can help with that, however it can be expensive, and it typically requires that you give up control of the solution to a third party, who are incentivised to keep costs down.
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Gain holistic support for the complete solution rather than each product. This can include any combination of supported products, and your own code.
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Providing assistance on clients Intellectual Property (IP) that has been built on top of technology
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Assist you to fix problems within code and cover ‘how do I?’ questions
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Flexibility and efficiency through term contracting model
Products that may be a part of the solution but are not in the supported products list are managed on the basis of reasonable effort.
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