The Technical Support organization

The Technical Support organization is structured according to geographic regions, each with its own center. The regions are:

Americas.
Europe, Middle East, and Africa.
Asia Pacific.

Americas

The Americas Support Center is located in Bedford, Massachusetts. It provides telephone support in English, Spanish, and Portuguese for North American and Latin American customers. Hours of operation provide coverage that takes into account the business hours of local sales offices as well as the time zone differences between the countries in this region.

Customers can access the Americas Support Center by telephone, by e-mail, or by using the PSC Support Web site (http://www.progress.com/support).

Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)

The EMEA Technical Service Centre is located in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and supports our distributors, application partners (APs), and direct end users in the EMEA region. Support is offered in ten different languages, to supply telephone coverage in your native language. All the Technical Support Engineers (TSEs) belong to a language team to ensure telephone coverage. They also belong to one or more skill groups, which are defined around different areas of the Progress Software Corporation product set.

Customers can access the EMEA Support Centre by telephone, by e-mail, or by using the Progress Software Corporation Support Web site (http://www.progress.com/support).

Asia Pacific

The Asia Pacific Support Centre is located in Melbourne, Australia, and supports our subsidiaries, distributors, APs, and direct end users in the Asia Pacific region. Support is provided only in English.

Customers can access the Asia Pacific Support Centre by telephone, by e-mail, or by using the Progress Software Corporation Support Web site (http://www.progress.com/support).

Coverage offerings

Technical support is committed to providing the best possible customer support. For more detailed information and a complete reference to important names, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses, visit the Progress Software Corporation support Web site at http://www.progress.com/support.

Technical Support is available to you when the commercial products fail to work as documented. If it is determined during the course of a call that you would be better served by making use of training and consulting services, Technical Support might refer you to your local office.

Technical Support provides assistance with products according to our Product Life Cycle document. The following levels of customer support are available:

Mission Critical Support — Focuses on your company needs and provides a designated Technical Account Manager (TAM), proactive personalized support, and direct access to senior level Technical Support Engineers.
Extended 24x7 Support — Provides 24x7 support 365 days a year including holidays, one-hour guaranteed call back, and continuous effort for business-critical issues.
Basic Support — Provides technical support during Progress standard business hours. For assistance outside of business hours, our online Knowledge Center is available 24x7 to provide you with solutions.
Partner After-Hours Support — Provides Application Partners the ability to offer their end users direct access to Progress Technical Support for after-hours support on Progress products.

When you place your call

Some information is required when you log a support issue with Progress Software Corporation Technical Support. Here is a list of the primary information you need to provide when you place your support call:

Your name.
Your company name and/or customer number.
The product's serial number.
The telephone number or e-mail address where you can be reached.

In addition, be prepared to answer the following questions to help us assist you more quickly:

In which environment is the product running? Include:
Memory.
Swap space.
Number of users.
Disk space.
Machine and model.
Operating system and version.
Progress Software Corporation product and version.
HLC or ESQL/C (Large or Small Client?).
Multi-operating system environment (Yes or No?).
Third-party products installed on the machine, and versions.
Which error messages did you receive and where or when did you see them? Include:
Messages appearing on screen from client or server or in log file (in the order they appeared).
Previous messages in the log file (going back several days before onset of problem).
Message in hardware log or event viewer, if appropriate.
What was happening when the problem occurred?
Is the problem new, has it occurred before, or was it always there?
How often does the problem occur? For instance, how many times has it occurred in the last twenty sessions?
Can you recreate the problem at will or upon demand?
Can you duplicate the problem against the Sports database?
If you have more than one database, does the problem occur on all the databases?
Does it happen with multi-user Progress, single-user Progress, or both?
Was there anything unusual about the environment when the problem occurred?
Do you have any idea what the problem might be? For example, are you aware of any recent changes in the system environment or in the application?
Was a core file or Dr. Watson log file produced? If so, save this file in case the stack trace information is needed.
What have you done so far to debug or isolate the problem?

Placing your call to Technical Support

Before placing your call, please ensure you have all the relevant information available. You can contact your regional support center by telephone, fax, e-mail, or via the Web. See
http://www.progress.com/support/tech_support/contact_support for more information.

Logging your calls on the Web

TechSupport Direct is available from the Support Web page at http://www.progress.com/support. Click the TechSupport Direct link. This is the direct Web interface into your regional Technical Support call logging and tracking system. Through this service, you can log, monitor, update, report on, and close your issues over the Web. A login ID and password are required.

Quick Log is a tool specifically designed for users to quickly log an issue without requiring a login ID or password. If you would like to update your existing call or check the status of a call, you must use TechSupport Direct.

From your customer site

If you are calling from a customer site, please make this known to the engineer. Ask the engineer to set the priority of your call to HIGH to ensure you get a prompt call back if your issue cannot be resolved during the first call.

Supporting Progress customers

We support our customers. A customer is any organization that has a valid maintenance contract with Progress Software Corporation. Our goal is to provide the best support possible. To this end, it is important that we service and support those customers who have contracts with Progress Software Corporation.

In situations involving APs, the first call on any issue related to an end-user customer should come from the AP. It is important that the AP initiate all support calls to Progress Software Corporation. It is in the AP's best interest to know what problems their customers are encountering and to isolate any problem. Furthermore, the customer of the AP is not the best resource in problem isolation between the AP's application or software from Progress Software Corporation. The AP must stay involved with any problem that its customers might encounter with Progress software. This involvement will increase their knowledge and maintain the appropriate relationship with the customer. The AP also will be in a position to determine if this is a problem affecting a single site or the AP's entire customer base.

If the customer of the AP contacts Progress Software Corporation directly, they will be asked to discuss their issue with their AP. Obviously, this does not replace the application support provided by the AP. Failure to renew your maintenance agreements for the licenses in question is likely to result in denial of support for any further calls.

If you have questions about evaluation licenses, future products or any sales-related questions, please contact your local presales support team at your local Progress Software Corporation office.

Service packs

Service Packs are a collection of bug fixes to Progress products; they go through a high level of testing, including running a complete suite of regression tests. Service Packs are released for all supported platforms simultaneously, have the same version number, and contain the same fixes. Service Packs for Core Products are released every three months, as needed, from the product's release delivery date. They are available online through the Product Updates and Documentation link on http://www.progress.com/esd. Service Packs include an installation procedure to take you through the steps to apply the service pack.