Customer Support Plans

Our Customer Support Plans ensure the optimum performance of your Black Duck solutions.

For information on how to contact Black Duck Customer Support, please visit the Contact page.

Please click on a section header below to find out more information about Black Duck’s Customer Support Plans:

Section 1: Customer Support Process
Section 2: Definition of Tier 1, 2 and 3 Support
Section 3: Assignment of Support Request Severity
Section 4: Response and Resolution Targets
Section 5: Customer Escalation Procedures

Section 1: Customer Support Process

When a customer contacts Black Duck online or by email or phone, a customer support engineer will address their request. The engineer will open a case in Black Duck’s case management system. A unique number is assigned to the case and provided to the customer. The customer support engineer will then perform the Tier 1 support activities for the customer case.

Support Request Status: The following table describes the possible status assigned to a case at any given time.

Table 1 - Support Request Status Definition

Status

Criteria

New

A support request has just been submitted.  It may be assigned to an individual or a queue. Black Duck’s support representative has not responded yet to customer.

In Process

The support representative has responded to customer regarding the receipt of the support request and is actively pursuing a resolution.

Pending

The support representative is not actively working on the resolution of the support request. Generally, this is due to information pending from the submitter of the case or a pending Program fix. However, support requests may be put on hold for other reasons as well. 

Escalated

A support request set to an escalated status means the support request has not been resolved within the target resolution time, the customer has asked for it to be escalated to the next level of support or the customer support manager has asked for an expedited program fix.

Closed

A case is “closed” if:
- The customer and the support representative agree that a satisfactory resolution has been provided, or
- The customer understands that the problem is not a result of a program defect, or
- The support representative has made multiple attempts to contact the customer and the customer has not responded.
Electronic support requests (online, email) may be closed when a support representative has provided an electronic reply with a high degree of confidence that his/her reply will resolve the issue or answer the question.

Section 2: Definition of Tier 1, 2 and 3 Support

Black Duck offers three tiers of Customer Support. Standard Support is available Monday to Friday, 8:00 AM EST to 6:00 PM EST. For customers on the Enhanced Support Plan, Tier 1 Support is available 24 hours, 7 days a week. For customers on the Premium Plan, Tier 2 support is available 24 hours, 7 days a week. For the table listing the difference in hours of coverage, visit the Overview Page.

Tier 1 Support
The Tier 1 customer support team will:

  • Enter data into the case log describing the problem and assign a severity to the case (please refer to "Assignment of Severity Levels" section below).
  • Provide the customer with a resolution and, based on the customer’s feedback, "close" the case. A resolution is generally one of the following: an answer to a customer question, a suggestion of how to accomplish a particular task or a workaround to a program issue.

For those problems not solved during the first contact with the customer, the customer support engineer will provide an estimated time-frame for follow up and will escalate the case to Tier 2 support.

Tier 2 Support
The Tier 2 customer support team will:

  • Follow up with customers: answer questions, report the status of a pending issue, update customer expectations, or get more information about a pending issue.
  • Attempt to provide workarounds to address the problem within the time limits set forth in the section "Response and Resolution Targets" below.
  • In situations where a program is not operating as documented or a new feature or functionality has been requested, the customer support engineer will report the problem through Black Duck’s bug tracking database for investigation and release targeting based on the request severity.
  • Escalate unresolved support requests to Tier 3. Work closely with Tier 3 engineers to analyze, understand, and resolve difficult issues.
  • Verify that a pending issue can be ‘closed’ when a satisfactory resolution has been provided to customer.

Tier 3 Support
If a support request is still not resolved by Tier 2 support, the support request is then escalated to a team of Black Duck engineers for resolution.

In extreme cases where no workaround is available, the pending support request is a mission-critical problem for the customer, and the problem results from a defect in the program, Tier 3 support will provide a program patch to resolve the problem. This level of support is provided at the discretion of the customer support manager overseeing the particular program.

Section 3: Assignment of Support Request Severity

When a customer opens a support request, a customer support engineer will assess the severity of the request based on the customer's description of the problem. The severity of the support request will be recorded in the Case Management System which can be accessed in Customer Support Portal

Table 2 below provides the definitions used in identifying and assigning a severity level to the customer's reported problem.

Table 2 - Severity Definitions

Severity

Criteria

Critical

Customer's production system is down
The Program is unusable resulting in total disruption of work or other critical business impact. No workaround is available

High

Major feature/function failure
Operations are severely restricted, there is a major disruption of work, there is not an acceptable workaround available

Medium

Minor feature/function failure
Program does not operate as designed, minor impact on usage, acceptable workaround deployed

Low

Minor problem
Documentation, general information, enhancement request, etc.

Section 4: Response and Resolution Targets

Black Duck will use reasonable efforts to meet the following resolution targets:

Table 3 - Response and Resolution Targets

Severity

Standard
Target Response

Premium
Target Response

 Target Resolution

Solution (1 or more of the following)
Critical 2 Business Hours 1 Business Hour Within 2 Business Days - Satisfactory workaround is provided.
- Program patch is provided.
- Fix incorporated into future release.
- Fix or workaround incorporated into Software Solution Library.

High

1 Business Day

2 Business Hours

 Within 5 Business Days

- Satisfactory workaround is provided.
- Program patch is provided.
- Fix incorporated into a future release.
- Fix or workaround incorporated into the Software Solution Library.

Medium

2 Business Days

4 Business Hours

 Within 10 Business Days

- Answer to question is provided.
- Satisfactory workaround is provided.
- Fix incorporated into future release.
- Fix or workaround incorporated into Software Solution Library.

Low

3 Business Days

1 Business Day

 Within 15 Business Days

- Answer to question is provided.
- Fix or workaround incorporated into Software Solution Library.

Section 5: Customer Escalation Procedures

During the process of resolving a customer support request, the severity of the request may be increased and/or a higher level of authority might be notified. Case severity may be escalated internally when it is determined that the support request involves a system critical issue, an extremely complex problem, or an unreasonable amount of time has passed with no resolution. In the event that a customer is not satisfied with the level of support, they may escalate a given support request to Black Duck’s Director of Customer Support.

To escalate an issue, please call +1 781.425.4447. Please specify the case number and the reason why the issue is being escalated.

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