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I.  Overview

CoreView manages its response to a customer’s request for support in conformance with the standards set forth by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), as well as the standards published as part of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL).  This document outlines the way CoreView will prioritize and respond to any issue officially reported to CoreView by a customer and defines the terms associated with this process. 


II. What is an Issue?

An Issue is any event that occurs that impacts a customer's use of CoreView and where the customer elects to report the Issue to CoreView Customer Care for additional troubleshooting and remediation support.  Prior to opening a Support Request on an Issue, customers are asked to perform some basic troubleshooting.  You can find additional information on troubleshooting in the Knowledge Base named Troubleshooting Common Issues.


III.  How does a Customer report an Issue?

Customers report an Issue to CoreView by logging into the CoreView Support Portal and selecting the “Submit a Ticket” option; then selecting the Department named “Support” and clicking on the “Next” button.  This will present the Customer with a “Ticket Details” page, wherein the required information is provided, any relevant information attached and then ticket then submitted.  When a customer reports an issue, they are prompted to provide the following as part of the ticket:


Priority - How has this Issue affected the customer’s business and how quickly does this need to be fixed??  The benchmark is usually measured by the impact to the customer’s operations and/or the volume of users unable to perform their duties. Additionally, whether there is an available workaround is also a factor.  While we recognize that every customer wants an Issue resolved quickly, not every Issue is Urgent.  


The reporting of an Issue presupposes that the customer had performed some initial troubleshooting activities and as a result, concluded that the Issue needs to be reported to CoreView.   This initial troubleshooting is instrumental to a speedy resolution of the Issue. 


While customers have the option of reporting an Issue by email to support@coreview.com, this is not considered a best practice and should be avoided.  Issues reported by email to CoreView Support lack the critical information needed to automatically prioritize an Issue, which may lead to a delayed response by CoreView. Customers should be aware that any Issue submitted by email will receive a default priority of Low. 


IV. What is an Incident?

An Incident is an Issue that leads to an unplanned disruption of service for one or more customers and that impacts the customer’s business operations. The key idea here is that there is a disruption of service.   If an Issue does not disrupt service, even if it was unplanned and unexpected, it is not an Incident.


For example, CoreView becomes unavailable after normal working hours when nobody is using the system, it is not an Incident, because it did not disrupt the customer’s business operations. However, if CoreView was unavailable during the regular workday, it would be defined as an Incident because service was, in fact, disrupted. CoreView Customer Care is often the first ones to be made aware of an Incident, as they are usually the first point of contact for Customer's experiencing an Issue.


Important: Responding to and resolving an Incident may necessitate that key technical and/or administrative staff of both CoreView and the customer work outside of normal work hours.


V.  What is a Problem?

A Problem is the underlying Root Cause that led to an Incident. A Problem may be something that could lead to the same Incident occurring again and again (systemic), or a Problem can be a single isolated Incident.  While it’s possible that a Problem may be quickly identified, it is more likely that a Problem can only be identified after we have gathered and reviewed the relevant information and arrived at and validated our conclusion(s).


VI.  What does fixing an Incident require?

An Incident is caused by a Problem and only a Problem can be fixed (remediated).  Resolving an Issue will take priority over other customer needs simply because an Issue means that a customer’s business is being negatively impacted.  The focus on any Incident is to diagnose the Problem as quickly as practicable and to then determine how best to restore the customer back to normal operations.  This might mean immediately fixing the Problem causing the Incident, or it could mean coming up with a temporary workaround to get a customer operational again until the underlying Problem can be found and remediated. 


VII. What does fixing a Problem require?

Unless a Problem is systemic, its remediation is not usually treated as urgent, but it is important to prevent future Incidents.  Identifying the underlying Problem may take time and require analysis, troubleshooting and testing to diagnosis the Root Cause and the best course of action to correct the Problem.  Fixing a Problem may require changes to the CoreView application that require time for design, development, testing and release.


VIII.  How does CoreView prioritize their response to an Issue?

CoreView prioritizes our response to a reported Issue using an Impact/Urgency matrix, as depicted in the exhibit below.  This approach is consistent with ITIL[1] and ISO/IEC[2] standards.  When reporting an Issue though our Support Portal, the customer will be asked to select values for Severity and Urgency that best define the Issue.



The intersection of Severity and Urgency will determine the overall Priority of our response.  Depending on the Priority, the Issue may be automatically escalated within CoreView.  Moreover, for each Priority there is a unique Service Level Agreement target, or SLA for short.  Please refer to the document titled CoreView Support Service Levels for additional information on our SLAs.


IX.  Conclusion

CoreView believes that conformance to industry standards and practices such as those promulgated by ISO/IEC, ITIL and other governing bodies will provide our customers with improved customer experience and it helps ensure that any compliance expectations to which our customers might be subject would not be adversely impacted by a lack of compliance on the part of CoreView.


Footnotes

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incident_management_(ITSM)

[2] https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso-iec:20000:-1:en


Compliance Information

ISO/IEC Compliance: 19941:2017, 1:2012, 2000-1:2018, 20000-11:2015