Service Level Agreement
Subscription Service Availability. For purposes of HCE EPaaS subscription services:
- “Subscription Service Availability” is defined as: (Total Hours Available – Actual Outage Hours) divided by the Total Hours Available.
- “Total Hours Available” equals total hours during the month less hours designated for scheduled Subscription Services downtime. Work to be completed during scheduled Subscription Services downtime includes downtime required to apply updates and upgrades to the Subscription Services, to apply operating system updates and operating system version upgrades, to implement required hardware upgrades, and scheduled third-party service provider outages. HCE will endeavor to have any Scheduled Subscription Services downtime outside of standard business critical hours, which are Monday through Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Mountain Time.
- An “Outage” is defined as Client’s inability to gain access to the Subscription Services to perform online transactions or performance problems that result in Client’s substantial inability to perform online transactions. “Actual Outage Hours” are measured as the elapsed hours beginning with the time the HCE is notified by the Client of an Outage and ending with the time that the problem has been resolved. The additional elapsed time spent in correcting the Outage will be added to the original elapsed time for purposes of calculating the Actual Outage Hours.
- HCE will make the Subscription Services available to Client with a monthly Subscription Service Availability goal of 95%.
- Support. HCE shall provide ongoing (a) telephone, (b) online ticketing, and (c)email support for the Subscription Services from 7:00 AM to 5:00 PM Mountain time, Monday through Friday during normal business days.
Support Request Types
HCE separates request types into three primary categories: (a) administrative support issues, (b) bug reports, and (c) feature requests.
- Issue: a request for platform configuration changes outside of the system administrator scope or the resolution of business process errors experienced by end users within the expected platform functionality.
- Bug Report: a flaw, failure, or fault in the platform that causes it to produce an error or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways.
- Feature Request: (often mistaken as a Bug) comes about when a user of the platform would like unique, new, or additional functions to process data in a manner outside of the existing workflows of the platform parameters. If your business develops a custom option or operational task for students/employees and then needs a platform-based solution to complete that task, this would be considered a Feature Request. Feature requests are managed outside of the Support Process and managed by HCE’s Product Management Team development process.
ISSUE & BUG REPORT RESPONSE PROCEDURES AND OBLIGATIONS
- This Section governs the speed at which HCE shall endeavor to respond to the Client’s requests for support regarding the Subscription Services.
- Definition of Priorities.
When requesting Subscription Services support, HCE will set the incident’s priority according to the definitions stated below:
| Priority |
Definition
|
Response and Incident Assignment Goal |
Target Completion Time
|
|
1- Critical Business Interruption
|
The Subscription Services fail to operate in any respect or there are severe restrictions in the operation of the Subscription Services that prevent the performance of any productive work. |
Within 2 business hours
|
Within 4 hours
|
|
2-High
|
A major function is experiencing an activity impact, such that the operation of the Client’s functional group of users or business operations with respect to the Subscription Services are severely degraded by performance.
|
Within 4 business hours
|
Within 1 business day
|
|
3-Normal
|
A general request impacting a Subscription Service function is experiencing an acceptably intermittent problem, or a common non-essential operation is failing consistently. The inconvenience can be tolerated until the next scheduled release.
|
Within 1 business day
|
Within 3 business days
|
|
4-Low
|
All other Subscription Services requests that do not require immediate attention or involve additional work item development. The inconvenience is slight and can be tolerated.
|
Within 3 working days
|
Within 5 business days.
|
- Definition of Response, Wait Times, and Workarounds. For purposes of the table above and the remainder of this policy, the following words have the following meanings:
- “Error Correction” means either a modification of, addition to or deletion from the Subscription Services that, when made to the Subscription Services, causes the Subscription Services to conform to the documentation or specifications, or a procedure or routine that, when observed in the regular operation of the Subscription Services, eliminates the effect giving rise to a Subscription Services incident.
- “Maximum Wait Time” means the period of time the Client must wait for a reply after calling the provided Subscription Services support line or emailing the provided Subscription Services support email address.
- “Response and Incident Assignment” means an acknowledgment of receipt of a Subscription Services support request and assignment of a Subscription Services incident number by HCE.
- “Workaround” means a temporary solution to a Subscription Services incident that HCE has implemented, or that HCE has granted prior written consent to Client to implement, and that allows the Subscription Services to regain functionality, provide major software functions in accordance with its intended use, and be in material compliance with all agreed-upon Subscription Services metrics.
- Procedures for Priority 1 and Priority 2 Issues:
- For Priority 1 Subscription Services incidents:
The client may call HCE’s support line, submit an online ticket, and/or send an e-mail to ensure the fastest possible Response and Incident Assignment. HCE may require that the Client designate a primary and secondary contact who will be authorized contacts for HCE support personnel to help minimize the turnaround time for resolving Subscription Services incidents and answering questions. Accordingly, HCE may limit its telephone support to these authorized contacts for the Priority 1 incident.
- For Priority 1 incidents: Beginning upon the Response and Incident Assignment, HCE will give Client an hourly progress report on resolution and shall use commercially reasonable efforts until the Subscription Services incident is resolved with a Workaround reasonably acceptable to Client. If a temporary Workaround or other temporary resolution is implemented rather than an Error Correction, HCE will provide an action plan for a long-term Error Correction within 30 business days of the Workaround. The action plan will include details on the proposed resolution and the timeframe of the permanent Error Correction.
- For Priority 2 incidents: The same procedures as for Priority 1 Subscription Services incidents will apply, except that rather than hourly reports, HCE will provide the Client with reports every business day on the status of the resolution and will continue working on the resolution during normal business days (7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Central Time ) until resolved to Client’s reasonable satisfaction.
- Escalation Procedure
If HCE is unable to resolve Subscription Services incidents to the Client’s reasonable satisfaction within the timeframes set forth above, HCE shall promptly escalate the issue to the appropriate personnel to intervene to address any such incidents.
