Global Support Guide

Step One
We assign a unique service request number (in the format of "SR Number”) to all requests for assistance. These service request numbers allow us to prioritize and track all service requests through resolution, and allow you to get a status update of your service request via our support portal. 

Step Two
All service requests are assigned a severity level, and are placed in a queue to be processed by the next available Support Engineer. A Support Engineer takes ownership of your service request and sees it through to successful resolution. 

Step Three
The Support Engineer will contact you, gather any additional information needed, and will investigate to determine the proper course of action. This may require the engineer to re-create the issue, work with our development team, and help you with configuration of the software. 

Step Four
If the Support Engineer and development team determine that the issue is a product defect, a defect ID and priority level will be assigned to the issue. If the defect is a high priority and a hotfix is planned, the Support Engineer will notify you of its availability.

Prior to creating a Service Request, you may want to review these helpful tips:

• Check the online help included with your product.
• Check your Product Documentation.
• Check release notes and self-service Knowledge Base solutions on our support portal.
• Consult your product’s community forum, if available.
• Try to see if the problem is reproducible.
• Check to see if the problem is isolated to one machine or more.
• Note any recent changes to your system and environment.
• Note the version of your software and environment details such as OS, database, etc.
• Note the service tag of the appliance or solution (when applicable).
• Note your product license number as we require you provide your license number on certain products
• Note the issue description including frequency of occurrence, error messages and any troubleshooting activities.
• Collect any relevant screenshots, technical service reports, log files and trace logs (when applicable).

Contact Support to Log a Service Request

For the fastest response, log your service request through the Service Request tool. Requests for technical assistance can also be created via phone to the Support Center in your region using the numbers listed on the Contact Support page. Support is provided in English with local language accommodated when possible.

All service requests are assigned a severity level from 1 to 4 based on the impact on your business. You determine the initial severity level when placing a request for assistance. Severity levels may be changed after initial contact and assessment of the issue from Support Engineer, provided that you are in agreement. 

The following table defines the severity levels and the targeted initial response time for Standard Support, 24x7 Support, and Premier Support. It is helpful to clearly explain the business impact of your issue when contacting us. 

• Standard Support available during local business hours
• 24x7 Support for severity level 1 issues only
• Premier Support available with an active Standard or 24x7 Support contract

At the time of purchase, the primary contact designated on the order form is e-mailed a welcome letter that contains a License Number and your company's Account ID Number. The License Number identifies the asset you purchased and the Account ID identifies the organization who purchased it.

These numbers are assigned to your company when a license and/or maintenance contract is purchased. Once you have your License Number and Account ID Number, you will be prompted to register your product for support using the license number or service tag. Once the product is registered, you will be able to manage your asset, download software, access support information and submit service requests.

When contacting support or registering your product for support on the support portal, you will need to provide either your License Number (preferred) or your Account ID.

If you do not know your License Number or Account ID, use one of two options to contact a support administrator:

• Call via the numbers listed on the Contact Support page.
  
• Fill out a “Trouble registering on the website” Customer Service form.

Group Administrator

A Group Administrator is identified as the first person to register the product license number on the support portal. A group can have more than one administrator but requires at least one person for the product license number to be registered. The administrator can add or remove Support Users and License Users to the group. A Support User can submit Service Requests, download new software releases and view asset information. License Users can obtain license keys via self-service or through contacting our license assistance administration.

Upgrading Your Support Program

If at any time your business demands a higher level of support, we can help you find a service that better fits your needs.

Renewing Support

A Quest Renewal Representative will send you a renewal notice prior to the end of your current support contract. To avoid unnecessary interruptions of support services contact the Quest Renewal team if you have any questions about the status of your current support contract or pending renewal. 

Lapsed Support

Without a current support contract, you will not be able to contact Quest for technical assistance or access many services on the Support Portal. We cannot guarantee immediate assistance if you allow your support contract to lapse or if you choose not to purchase support until after a support issue arises. 

The Product Support Lifecycle describes the phases during which our products are eligible for patches (fixes), support and downloads from the Support Portal.

It is our policy to provide support and fixes in current versions of our products when you are under a current support agreement. Fixes to older versions are at our discretion. We strive to put resources behind the most recent product releases in order to continually improve and enhance the value of our solutions. 

We will attempt to answer questions on older versions of our products provided resources are available; however, if you are using a discontinued version, we encourage you to upgrade to the currently supported version of the product.

Our usual support policy is to provide support on both the current (n) and prior (n-1) versions of our products. Refer to the product lifecycle table on your Product Support page or Knowledge Base for specific supported versions of your product.

Full Support

• Product is fully supported, generally available release/version.
• The most current released version of a product and one or more prior releases are included.
• Enhancement requests for this release are accepted and may be considered for future releases.
• Maintenance releases and/or hot fixes are periodically made available for this release.
• Release or version is fully supported by both Support and Development.
• Release or version is available for download from Support Portal¹.

Limited Support

• Support is available for this release/ or version, and we use best efforts to provide known workarounds or fixes.
• No new code fixes will be generated except under extreme circumstances and at our discretion.
• Enhancement requests are not accepted.
• You are encouraged to plan an upgrade to a release or version on full support.
• Release or version is available for download from the Support Portal¹.

Discontinued

• Includes release or versions that are retired or discontinued.
• No new patches or fixes will be created for this release.
• Release is not available for download from the Support Portal¹.
• Support will be provided to assist with upgrading to a supported version.
• Support is not obligated to provide assistance on this version of the product.

Continuing Support

If you are unable to upgrade or migrate your product prior to its end-of-life, we offer a Continuing Support service to provide you with one year of limited support beyond your software's end-of-life or end-of-support date. Continuing Support is not guaranteed on every product:

• Annual software maintenance contract must be renewed.
• This includes uninterrupted access to technical support via phone, online and chat.
• Support Engineers will provide known workaround solutions and fixes.
• Fee-based service available on selected products.

We recognize that certain support offerings and policies may change as the acquired company is fully integrated into the Quest® Support organization. Our goal is to make sure the continuity of services remains as synergistic as possible during this time. To help during the transition, we provide information and links about recent acquisitions on our Support Portal. For questions or support for a product that we have recently acquired, contact Customer Service using the numbers listed on the Contact Support page on our Support Portal.

If you are interested in submitting a product enhancement request, you can do so via the community portal, by creating a service request, or by logging in to the product-specific customer portal and navigating to the appropriate section.

For enhancements submitted by creating a service request with Quest® Support,once documented, the request is submitted into the enhancement review system and an identification number is provided to you. Your service request will remain open until a decision has been made regarding your request.

Product management reviews open enhancement requests on a periodic basis and considers them for inclusion in a future product release. Product enhancements are not considered or implemented in current or prior product releases. There is no guarantee that a specific enhancement request will be implemented in a future version of our products. At our discretion, we may determine that certain enhancements to functionality in the product can be offered for an additional charge or as a chargeable option. All suggested enhancements shall become the sole and exclusive property of Quest and may be used by Quest in any way without restriction or obligation to you.

Product Defects

If your issue is determined to be a defect in our software, it is recorded in our defect tracking system and a unique defect ID is provided. Your service request remains open until a decision has been made regarding the defect. Notifications of new product releases are emailed to you if you have configured your profile on our Support Portal to receive product notifications. Product release notes contain a list of resolved issues that were addressed in the release. We do not guarantee that all defects identified will be fixed in a future release of the product.

Our products have license keys generated for your use. Some products require a new license key when upgrading to a new release and/or patch. We recommend that prior to any migration or upgrade of our products, new licenses are confirmed as functioning properly because some license keys are machine and machine name specific.
If you have questions about licensing of a product, complete the form available on our Support Portal Licensing Assistance page. A licensing representative will respond to your query within 24 hours.

Support for Trial Users

We offer software trials on selected products for evaluation purposes. Support for trial users is limited to 30 days from the registration date. Service Requests for your trial software may only be submitted during the first 30 days of your testing period

There may be times when additional resources are required to solve your case. We can work with Quest Services to ensure a reliable handoff of your issue.

Quest Services for your solutions

Quest® adoption services ensure your IT staff is effectively using your solution to its fullest potential. Quest deployment services help you quickly install and configure your product properly.

Quest software-enabled services combine the strengths of our proprietary software, tools and domain expertise to reduce complexity, demands on your IT staff and costs. Quest Services help you:

• Experience faster time to value.
• Get a customized solution to meet your unique business needs.
• Quickly and properly deploy your solution.
• Reduce risk and uncertainty.
• Overcome internal resource constraints.

Visit Quest Professional Services.

A customization indicates functionality and configurations added to a Quest® product that are not provided as part of the standard generally available product release and, as such, would be outside the scope of the support and maintenance services provided herein. Customizations can include new or modified scripts used within or alongside our products as well as additional functionality,such as custom reports, dashboards,rules and automated actions, developed by you, your partners or our services organization.

Support and Customizations

Technical support does not perform or maintain customizations. The design and development of customizations to our products is your responsibility. Assistance from technical support is limited to helping ensure that the product’s functionality, which enables the addition of customizations, is functioning as expected. Alternatively, you may obtain guidance through product-specific support sites or the Support Portal Knowledge Base.

Advanced Assistance

If more thorough and detailed assistance is needed to design and develop customizations, we recommend that you engage our Quest Services organization or fully certified partners to assist. Their expertise in designing customized solutions will ensure that you receive maximum value and product adoption. In addition to providing post-implementation expert services, Quest Services also offers a variety of prepackaged customizations for products that may meet your specific requirements

Educational Services

We recommend that you obtain appropriate product training before attempting to design, develop and implement any customization to our products. Our training courses will equip you with the necessary knowledge and ability to design and implement effective changes to our products. For more details on the training services available, refer to the Quest Educational Services section.

Maintaining Customizations

Careful consideration should be given to all customizations during future migration or upgrade exercises to new product or platform versions. Customizations could inhibit the upgrade itself and may require a level of rework to continue functioning properly. Technical support does not take ownership for any customizations. We strongly encourage you to document and maintain records on any implemented customization work. These records can be useful in determining whether problems are caused by customization or are a defect in the core product.

Our products leverage the binary compatibility offered through virtualization technologies, which provide complete transparency to the operating systems and applications deployed. As a result, for all service requests received where the product is being used in a virtual environment, we assume that the problem is common to both native and virtual operating environments and that we require you to recreate the problem in a native environment if and when there is reason to believe that the problem is unique to the virtual environment itself.

From a purely functional perspective, our products operate in exactly the same way; however, we can make no guarantees with respect to performance or scalability in a virtualization environment running multiple virtual instances. Configuration aspects, such as CPU, memory availability, I/O subsystem and network infrastructure, can all influence such a deployment, which should be given careful consideration to ensure that the virtual layer has the necessary resources available to provide a satisfactory user experience.

We provide full details of all systems requirements, together with platform and third-party product versions supported on our products, in the release notes published for each product. These include operating system versions, service-pack levels, mail clients or server versions, database versions, browsers and other related technology supported, as well as which particular version level our products have been formally tested and certified to run against. The support of future platform versions, new service packs and other related technologies is generally taken into consideration and addressed during the regular product maintenance and release cycles of our products. Contact Quest® Support if you have questions regarding the current support status of any product and a particular related platform, patch or third-party product support not explicitly documented in our release notes, and we will provide collaborative assistance with the product in question.

For more information about the latest third-party platforms and versions supported, review the system requirements section of the release notes for your product or search the Knowledge Base on our Support Portal. Please note that while we do not directly or officially support third-party software, we work closely with many other providers to ensure that you receive the best possible service at all times.

Regional software license agreement applicable to your use of the software is available below (including software preinstalled on hardware or made available to you by download, disk media or otherwise, at no additional cost). 

Click here to find your regional agreement.

A security vulnerability is a flaw or weakness in the design, implementation, operation or management of a product or service that could be exploited to violate the system's security policy. To protect businesses and organizations worldwide, it is critical that the broader community of IT and security professionals report potential vulnerabilities as soon as they are recognized. This allows industry experts to take appropriate action to resolve any vulnerability that is discovered. 

Click here to review Vulnerability Reporting information.

Click here to review Vulnerabilty Reporting Acknowledgements.