Akana Customer Handbook

Akana provides the same level of support to all our customers. Akana does not offer a premium level of support.

Akana offers support services via web portal, customer portal, chat, and telephone. We recommend using either the web portal or the customer portal since those provide us with the most background information that we will use to quickly handle your case. Information on contacting Akana Support can be found at https://www.akana.com/support.

Email

Email is the most popular channel to use when communicating with Akana support. Simply send your question or error message to support-akana@perforce.com. You will immediately receive an email letting you know your request has reached our systems. You will hear back from Akana Support as soon as they have reviewed your case. In most cases you will hear back from someone in thirty minutes or less.

Web Form

The perforce.com 'Request Support' is the main channel to use when opening support tickets if you do not have a Community Portal account. Select Helix ALM as the ‘Product Brand’ and fill in the relevant information in the fields provided and submit your case. You will immediately receive an email letting you know your request has reached our systems. You will hear back from Helix ALM Support as soon as they have reviewed your case. In most cases, you will hear back from someone in thirty minutes.

Community Portal

The Community Portal is the best method to use for opening and tracking your support tickets.

Telephone

Akana Support representatives are available 24x7 at:

• +1 303-545-3205 (Worldwide)
• +1 (612) 389-9546 (North America)
• +61 (2) 90543712 (APAC)
• +44 (20) 37441101 (UK).

Akana support engineers are on duty during North American and European business days.

Akana support engineers are on duty 24x7x365 for any production critical issues. Open a Blocker case in our customer portal to engage our on-call Technical Support Engineers.

If you are concerned about how your case is being handled or need to expedite a critical issue, you are encouraged to make notification on the support case or contact us via the phone numbers listed on ourwebsite.

Once the escalation is received, one of our Akana Support Managers will call the phone number you provided to understand the reason for the escalation and the impact it is having on your team. Following the phone conversation, the Akana Support Manager will put together a plan of action to address the escalation as well as send periodic updates until the resolution is confirmed.

The Community Portal is the best method to use for opening, viewing, and tracking your support tickets.

Severity Level 1 – Blocker

The issue causes a production application to stop, crash or cease to function. Work cannot reasonably continue; the application is mission critical to the business and the situation is an emergency requiring immediate attention towards resolution.

Severity Level 2 – Critical

The issue severely restricts the functionality of Product within a production application, but the production application can continue to run/operate. Severity Level 2 issues render the Product completely unusable in pre-production development efforts.

Severity Level 3 – Major

The issue restricts the functionality of Product within a production application and/or impedes pre-production development efforts. Severity Level 3 issues include a degradation of reliability or performance or limited access to a non-critical function of Product. Severity Level 3 issues include those for which a workaround had been provided, but for which a permanent improvement is still necessary.

Severity Level 4 – Minor

The issue does not significantly restrict the functionality of Product within a production application and/or has only a minor impact on pre-production development efforts. Requested performance or usability enhancements will also be considered Severity Level 4 issue, but will be provided at Akana’s discretion.

6.3 Response Times for SaaS Production Installations

6.4 Response Times for SaaS Non-Production Installations

6.5 Response Times for On-Premise Production Installations

6.6 Response Times for On-Premise Non-Production Installations

Akana has three deployment methods: SaaS (Software as a Service) based service, PaaS based service, and on-premises. If your software deployment method is PaaS based or on-premises, you will need to download the product. Information on downloading will be included with your fulfillment email or is always available from our Akana Support team as needed.

Lifecycle Manager and SOLA software require a software license, this license key will be sent with your fulfillment email.

Please see our Akana section of Support Lifecycle for the currently supported versions.

Akana’s SaaS deployments will periodically have upgrades and maintenance of the system infrastructure to publish new releases, roll out new features, and improve stability and security. The latest updates and schedule will always be able to be found at https://status.akana.com. You can subscribe to the updated to be notified about planned upgrades on the Akana status page.

Akana SaaS notifications will be posted and emailed to you with your subscription to our updates.

Upgrades of a Major/Minor version to the Akana SaaS environment will follow a minimum notification period of 14 days. Prior to this notification, the target version will have had a successful deployment and testing period of not less than 14 days in the Akana SaaS SMOKE environment. Notice of these activities will be given on  http://status.akana.com/, it is highly suggested to subscribe to receive these notifications.

On the rare occasion that your cloud is experiencing an outage, Akana will update our Status Page which can be found at https://status.akana.com. If the status page does not indicate an outage and you think you are experiencing on, please contact Akana Support.

Akana Professional Services is available to assist in any training that you would need to use and operate your Akana software.

Akana Professional Services – We have an evolving set of classes that are taught by our Professional Services team. Contact your CSM (Customer Success Manager) or Sales to explore the options that work best for you.

Akana product documentation and Akana - Knowledgebase are available for your self-help needs. The KB is your first stop for advanced problem solving and ‘how to’ questions. We are always updating it. Checking the KB before opening a new case may result in a faster resolution of your problems.

Akana Release Notes – New features and changes in functionality are announced in our release notes. Feel free to create a ticket in our customer portal to ask a Technical Support Engineer about anything you read in the Release Notes.

Sometimes your topic or issue will be outside the scope of product support. If this is the case, we are happy to offer further assistance through the various Professional Services offerings that are available through Perforce. Contact your CSM or Sales for further information.