Contacting support

IBM® Software Support provides assistance with product defects.

Before contacting IBM Software Support, your company must have an active IBM software maintenance contract, and you must be authorized to submit problems to IBM. The type of software maintenance contract that you need depends on the type of product you have:

If the problem that you submit is for a software defect or for missing or inaccurate documentation, IBM Software Support creates an Authorized Program Analysis Report (APAR). The APAR describes the problem in detail. Whenever possible, IBM Software Support provides a workaround that you can implement until the APAR is resolved and a fix is delivered. IBM publishes resolved APARs on the Software Support Web site daily, so that other users who experience the same problem can benefit from the same resolution.

Before you submit a problem to IBM Software support, answer these questions:

  1. Do you have an active IBM software maintenance contract?
  2. Do you understand the business impact of the problem?
  3. Can you describe the problem?

IBM Software maintenance contracts

Before you submit a problem to IBM Software Support, ensure that your company has an active maintenance contract, and that you are authorized to submit problems to IBM. If you are not sure what type of software maintenance contract you need, call 1-800-IBMSERV (1-800-426-7378) in the United States. From other countries, go to the contacts page of the http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/sas/f/handbook/home.html and click the name of your geographic region.

Determining the business impact of a problem

When you submit a problem to IBM, you are asked to supply a severity level. Therefore, you need to understand and assess the business impact of the problem that you are reporting. Use the following criteria:

Table 1.
Severity Description
1 The problem has a critical business impact: You are unable to use the program, resulting in a critical impact on operations. This condition requires an immediate solution.
2 This problem has a significant business impact: The program is usable, but it is severely limited.
3 The problem has some business impact: The program is usable, but less significant features (not critical to operations) are unavailable.
4 The problem has minimal business impact: The problem causes little impact on operations or a reasonable circumvention to the problem was implemented.

Describing a problem

When describing a problem to IBM, be as specific as possible. Include all relevant background information so that IBM Software Support specialists can help you solve the problem efficiently. To save time, know the answers to these questions:
  • What software versions were you running when the problem occurred?
  • Do you have logs, traces, and messages that are related to the problem symptoms?
  • Can you recreate the problem? If so, what steps do you perform to recreate the problem?
  • Did you make any changes to the system? For example, did you make changes to the hardware, operating system, networking software, or other system components?
  • Are you currently using a workaround for the problem? If so, be prepared to describe the workaround when you report the problem.

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