rhipe CSP Support Guide

Introduction

As a rhipe Limited (ACN 112 452 436) customer, it is our pleasure to welcome you to our Global CSP Support Services. With operations around the globe, we are backed by a team of highly trained and experienced technical support engineers on a 24x7 basis.. To maximize the value you’ll receive, we have compiled this Support Guide to help you to become familiar with our support offerings and procedures.

1.1. Intended Audience

The intended audience of this document includes:

· IT Partners

· Customers (End Tenants) who have engaged in support as a service

· rhipe internal Sales

· rhipe internal Marketing

· rhipe CSP Support

· rhipe Executive

1.2. Abbreviations & Terms

Abbreviation	Description
CSP	Cloud Solutions Provider
MS	Microsoft
SSP	Self Service Portal
SEA	South East Asia
APAC	Asia Pacific
AEST	Australian Eastern Standard Time
MYT	Malaysia Time
MPN	Microsoft Partner Network
MSOL	Microsoft Online
CSE	Cloud Support Engineer
O365	Office 365
SRX	Microsoft Support Request Number
OS	Operating System

2. Program Overview

rhipe provides a support program designed to meet the needs and requirements of a wide range of customers. Our support program offers you the options you need to maximise your support investment while allowing you to focus on your core business.

2.1. Support Program Overview

The support program provides broad coverage with direct access to the rhipe Technical Support team via telephone, email and self service portal support channels (see section 0 for details). The program is designed to support a wide range of partners and their customers needs. We pride ourselves on providing support 24x7 to our partners, as well as optional paid Support as a Service offerings to our partner’s customers on a 12x5(M-F) or 24x7x365 basis.

2.1.1. Support Program Features

Package Feature	Description
Self Service Portal	Access our Self-Service Portal with your rhipe support account. Here you can lodge new tickets, review or comment on existing tickets, or explore our extensive library of knowledgebase articles.
24 x 7 x 365 & 12 x 5 x Mon-Fri Coverage	Technical support for partners via telephone, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 a year, for all reported issues. Support as a Service customers are provided either 12 x 5 Mon-Fri or 24 x 7 x 365, depending on level of coverage.
Service Level Managed Incidents	Service-level managed tickets provides for continual identification, monitoring and review of the levels of IT support services we provide to our end customers and ensures that the agreed IT services are delivered as and when required. Our service levels are based on initial response times detailed in “Section 2.4.1 - Support Priority Response Levels”. Response times will vary based on a support request’s priority levels.
Multilingual Support	Our technical support centers offer support in other languages, depending on your local region. Current Languages Supported: · English, Filipino & Japanese

2.2. Service Level Managed Incidents

The purpose of our service levels is to ensure that the proper elements and commitments are in place to provide consistent IT service support services to customers.

2.2.1. Service Availability

Coverage specific to the support services: 24x7*

Email and Self Service Potal requests received on weekends will be actioned within the response times specified in Section 2.4.1 below.

Note: All Urgent or critical incidents (Priority 1 and 2) should be raised through the TELEPHONE channel to ensure they are given the appropriate attention.

2.3. Incident Prioritisation

An important aspect of logging every incident is to agree and allocate an appropriate prioritisation code – as this will determine how the incident is handled both by CSP support tools and CSP support staff.

Prioritisation can normally be determined by considering both the Urgency of the incident (how quickly the business needs a resolution) and the level of Impact it is causing. An indication of impact is often (but not always) the number of users being affected. In some cases, and very importantly, the loss of service to a single user can have a major business impact – it all depends upon who is trying to do what – so numbers alone are not enough to evaluate overall priority.

2.4. CSP Priority Coding

In all instances, the CSP support staff will assess, prioritise and categorise support tickets raised by the IT Partner or their customer with support as a service agreement.

Priority Coding System
Urgency	Impact
		High	Medium	Low
	High	Priority 1	Priority 2	Priority 3
	Medium	Priority 2	Priority 3	Priority 4
	Low	Priority 3	Priority 4	Priority 5

2.4.1. Support Priority Response Levels

In the following table, "Response Times" is defined as the time between receipt of the call, email or support ticket and the time that a rhipe Support team member begins working on the issue. Generally, this will mean a form of communication back to you either by email, phone or other method to inform you that work has started towards resolution. It may also be to ask further information we may need to scope, define and replicate the issue.

IMPORTANT: Due to the diversity of problems which may require technical support, and the methods needed to resolve them, the response Time IS NOT defined as the time between the receipt of a call and problem resolution. The Response Time starts immediately upon receipt of your incident report.

Priority Levels	Response Times
Priority 1	Response within 1 hour
Priority 2*	Response within 4 hours
Priority 3	Response within 1 business day
Priority 4	Response within 2 business days
Priority 5	No Response Level applies

* Emails and Portal Requests are automatically assigned Priority 2 and are normally triaged within 4 hours. During the triage process priority may be lowered depending on the severity..

Note: All Urgent or critical incidents (Priority 1 and 2) should be raised through the TELEPHONE channel to ensure they are given the appropriate attention.

2.5. Support Priority Level Descriptions

Priority Levels	Description
Priority 1 – Critical Severity	An extreme impact on essential business operations with no workaround or alternatives available, and a significant number (>50%) of end users are affected by the issue. Examples of a critical issue include: · a complete loss of service; · a service hang; · unusable
Priority 2 – High Severity	A high impact on business operations. Business operations are disrupted but a workaround exists which allows for the continuance of essential operations. Affects no more than 50% of all end users.
Priority 3 – Medium Severity	A medium impact on business operations that involves a partial or limited loss of non-critical functionality, but a workaround exists which allows for the continuance of normal operations. Affects no more than 25% of all end users.
Priority 4 – Low Severity	A minimal impact on business operations that involves minimal loss in functionality. Issue affects limited number of users, or less than 10% of all end users in larger organisations.
Priority 5 – Informational	No impact on business operations. Used for non-urgent cases covering the following: · General usage, including questions that reference product documentation. · CSP Program, product functionality and licensing inquiries. · Inquiries regarding licensing programs outside of those covered by the CSP support team. · Internal rhipe services that need to be referred to another team for review or resolution. · Issues or cases related to issues outside the control of rhipe such as Microsoft Partner Center enablement, or MPN Agreement renewals.

2.6. Individual Support Requirements

On occasion, there are customers who have individual support requirements not included in our standard support offering. On these occasions, a rhipe representative will work with you to fully understand your requirements and come up with a customised support package tailored to your specific needs. These services will be treated as Charged Support Services or Consulting Services as set out in section 0, Error! Reference source not found. and section 5.6 below. Additional fees may apply.

Some examples of individual support requirements may include:

· Handling all inbound support calls with basic issue triage and ticketing;

· Managing your after-hours support queries;

· Additional support for other products or services

3. General

3.1. Geographic Coverage

With our offices located across the globe and support centres in Melbourne & Sydney (Australia), Auckland (New Zealand), Manila (Phillipines) and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), support cases are seamlessly transferred from one support center to the next, in a follow-the-sun method to ensure cases are rapidly resolved.

Language Support

All support services are primarily provided in the English language. Our technical support centers offer support in other languages, depending on your location and the time of the support request. Subject to availability, you may request to be supported in a language other than English when opening a support case. Our support centers offer support in multiple languages, although rhipe makes no guarantee as to availability.

Languages Supported include:

· English, Filipino & Japanese.

3.2. Remote Support

Using our Remote Support capability, many of our customers receive more cost effective and timelier resolution of their problems. The support person connects to your computer remotely and is granted access, by you, directly into your computer. During a Remote Support session, we see the same screen images as are being displayed on your monitor, chat to you about what we see and, at your discretion, we can either guide you through a difficulty over the phone or we can take control of your mouse and keyboard and troubleshoot a problem for you.

3.3. 24x7x365* Support

At rhipe, we offer 24x7x365 support to all our partners. The rhipe Support Centre is dedicated to delivering exceptional levels of customer service and a culture of continuous improvement by monitoring customer satisfaction with every support call closed.

With a rhipe support agreement in place, our customers are assured of:

· 24x7x365 telephone support and access to self service portal

· Quick response times for all levels of calls

· Highly experienced support staff

· Trained, Microsoft certified engineers

· A snapshot of any support activity is available through a Support Incident Report.

4. Support Coverage

The primary goal of our Support team is to assist partners rapidly and efficiently resolve technical problems. If your service is interrupted due to a query relating to initial installation & setup or you have a break/fix related issue to report, our team of dedicated support staff will help in restoring normal operations as quickly as possible and attempt to minimize adverse effects on business operations as shown below.

4.1. Included Support Services

The following table outlines support services that are considered in scope as part of IT Partners CSP agreement and will be provided free of charge:

Support Type	Supported
PRISM Portal[i]	· Assistance with CSP Portal logins · Updating Billing Information · Assistance with License Subscriptions: Additional products, quantity changes & subscription suspension/re-enable · Creating new tenant records · Managing existing tenants · Transition tenants to the rhipe CSP program · Trial licensing questions · General FAQ’s
Microsoft Escalation Support	· Facilitation of Service Requests related to Microsoft Online (MSOL) services such as Office 365, Dynamics 365 & Azure infrastructure · Issues related to overall MSOL & Azure infrastructure and service health · Current MSOL cloud platform maintenance events · Queries relating to planned MS cloud platform outages
CSP Partner Billing	· Billing & Invoice Related Queries

5. Support Lifecycle

5.1. Working on your support case

5.1.1. Updates

With our 24x7x365 online portal facility, you always have access to the status of your support case. To review the progress of your case, please log into http://www.cloudsupport.help

5.1.2. Support Case Closure

Your support case will be closed when it has been resolved, no further troubleshooting is possible or you request the support engineer to close the issue. In addition, your issue will also be automatically closed in 3 business days from resolution should no response be received by you within the timeframe.

5.1.3. Reopening a Support Case

You have 5 business days from case closure to reopen an issue if required. If the 5-day period has lapsed, a new support case will be opened and may involve repeating the initial processes to resolve the issue.

5.1.4. Reassignment of your Support Case

In situations where your support case needs to be re-assigned (e.g. holidays, sick leave, staff shift change or escalation to a senior engineer) you will be informed as required whom to contact moving forward. Support Operations

5.2. Support Roles and Responsibilities

5.2.1. Cloud Support Engineer – Level 1

The Cloud Support Engineer L1 is a generalist with a broad technical understanding of the Office 365 product suite. They are the first point of contact to provide answers, solutions or workarounds to all partner/end customer issues.

The core L1 responsibilities include:

· Primary point of contact for all support requests;

· Gather the partner/customer information to determine the issue by analysing the symptoms and figuring out the underlying root cause(s) of the problem;

· Assigned initial responsibility to accept, analyse, resolve new issues;

· Manage all support requests issues within Service Level Agreement;

· Prioritises issues according to impact, urgency and priority;

· Keeps the issue current and provides regular status updates to partner/end; and

· Ensures resolution and closure of all assigned issues.

Where a L1 is not able to resolve an issue, they classify the problem and escalate in onto the appropriate L2 engineer.

5.2.2. Cloud Support Engineer – Level 2

The Cloud Support Engineer L2 has a deeper skill set in Office 365, with specialist knowledge and experience in areas such as Azure, Dynamics 365, or Symantec products. They can usually resolve most technical issues, or qualify the case as requiring escalation to Vendor due to a service or infrastructure issue.

The core L2 responsibilities include:

· Escalation point for high priority cases;

· Consolidate all partner/customer information regarding the incident, including further technical investigation and analysis;

· Manage and prioritises all assigned issues within Service Level Agreement;

· Keeps the issue current and provides regular status updates to partner/end; and

· Ensures resolution and closure of all assigned issues.

Where a L2 is not able to resolve an issue, they are empowered to open an escalation case to the vendor.

5.2.3. Vendor Escalation – Level 3

Escalation cases move to the applicable vendor for further review and resolution. Since this is an issue handoff, the case will move to a new support structure based on the vendor and product. Please be aware that the person assisting you may not actually resolve the issue. It may be a case manager who will be liaising with multiple internal departments and stakeholders to get the issue resolved.

Where the initial issue was raised by a partner, the Partner will need to assume the technical Point of Contact role for the assigned Engineer or Case Manager to contact. If an escalation is generated from an end-customer under a paid support agreement or Partner Branded support service, then the rhipe Support Engineer to escalated that issue to the vendor will assume that role.

5.2.4. Technical Support Specialist – (TSS)

The TSM works to ensure SLA success and provide overall management of escalations and support channels over all programs. In addition, the TSM:

· Monitors all open support cases to ensure continued activity towards a prompt resolution;

· Provides technical account leadership to both support staff and partners;

· Communicates directly with partners on cases and issues that are reoccurring/repeating;

· Directs case management and escalation with support staff;

· Has a direct relationship and line of communication with Vendors;

· Initial point of contact for partner and/or paid support customer case internal escalations.

The TSM will often take ownership of cases where issues are ongoing, difficult to diagnose, or reach a resolution for.

5.2.5. Service Delivery Manager – (SDM)

The SDM has overall responsibility for the support team, and provides commercial account leadership for support services provided by rhipe. In addition, the SDM:

· Monitors open issues to ensure there is continued activity towards a prompt resolution;

· Communicates directly with customer to update and prioritise high impact issues;

· Directs issue escalation with support staff through focus groups to ensure continued ownership;

· Ability to request vendor review of cases with untimely or unsatisfactory resolutions provided;

· Holds ownership of statistical reporting including CSAT scores; and

· Reviews support history on a regular basis and shares findings and recommendations directly with customer.

5.3. Partner Responsibilities

5.3.1. Performing Basic Troubleshooting Steps

Before contacting the rhipe Support Team, we require that Partners perform a thorough investigation of the issue to get a full understanding of the case. This requires a number of troubleshooting steps to be followed, which can be found using our self-help section detailed under ‘Technical Support Readiness’ Section 5.8 of this document.

These self-help resources can help determine what the problem is and enhances the solution process if additional assistance is required after that. As the Partner is the first point of contact with their end tenant, it is expected that technical troubleshooting is performed with the end user when the problem is initially raised with you.

5.3.2. Raising a support request

Once basic troubleshooting of an issue is completed and you require further assistance, the rhipe Technical Support Team would require the following minimum details when raising a support case:

· Partner details: Legal name as on the rhipe agreements;

· Technical contact details;

· Tenant/Customer details: Company Name, tenant domain;

· A clear explanation of the issue being raised;

· Clear, unscaled screenshots relevant to the issue attached as image files (not embedded in Word Documents);

· User accounts affected, either some specific user/users with the accounts listed, or all users within the tenant;

· A list of the main troubleshooting steps performed;

· Any relevant error codes or messages, or error/system logs while may assist.

5.4. Escalations

Under the CSP program, Partners are unable to raise support cases with Microsoft directly. Where there is a service or infrastructure issue, escalations to Microsoft need to be first qualified by rhipe’s technical support team, and then raised through the correct channel.

5.4.1. Escalation prerequisites

Microsoft escalations can only be performed once the Partner has done standard troubleshooting first and then a review and any secondary troubleshooting steps requires are performed by our team. After this time if the issue cannot be resolved, an escalation case to Microsoft will be opened. Contact the customer support hotline in your region and request to have your incident escalated, providing a reason for your escalation so that your case can be handled accordingly by our support engineers.

· An escalation requires a technical Point of Contact from your technical team, along with their availability or shift times, plus contact details such as direct phone numbers and email addresses.

· The technical contact for the case needs to be someone from your team. You cannot escalate to an end-user within the tenant, even if they are a Global Admin of the tenant.

· Microsoft will assign the severity of the case, and their SLAs for response and resolution will apply to the severity of the case.

· Your technical Point of Contact will need to work directly with Microsoft Support Engineer to resolve the case. Full and prompt cooperation is required.

· The rhipe technical support team is not a point of contact for an escalation case. We ask that you do not add us to email conversations with Microsoft Engineers.

· If you are not getting timely responses to cases, please add the Microsoft engineer’s Team Leads & Managers in the CC of an email back to the support engineer and request that the manager review the case. You should find these addresses in the signature from the Microsoft Engineer assigned.

Once the escalation has been raised, the support case opened with us will be closed as the issue has been handed over. You need to manage the escalation case with vendor’s Engineers or Case Managers directly. If you are not contacted by phone or email within 24 hours, please reply to the escalation case closure email to bring it to our attention so we are able to investigate and follow up on your behalf.

5.4.2. Escalation validity

Escalations to Microsoft are only valid for CSP subscriptions and licenses obtained through rhipe. If there is an issue with a service where the licensing or subscriptions are not obtained through rhipe then we reserve the right to decline the escalation request.

Any other Microsoft Support issues such as Partner Centre or Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) issues need to be raised through the relevant support channel separately.

5.4.3. Enhanced Microsoft Support

Due to our status with Microsoft as a Globally Managed Partner, there are several support features which are provided to our partners at no extra charge, including:

CSP Azure Subscriptions: All Azure support escalations are raised at a higher priority, with shorter Microsoft SLA’s than the standard support channel.

Office 365 licenses: All escalation cases are dealt with by a dedicated Microsoft O365 support team who understand the CSP Program. They also work under shorter SLA’s than the retail support channel for Office 365.

Dynamics 365: Access to specialist Dynamics 365 Support engineers during high-complexity cases.

General: Dedicated support case managers able to review troublesome or complex issues.

5.4.4. Review of Escalated Support Cases (Microsoft)

If you are unsatisfied with an escalation case, we may elect to send it for review by our support case managers at Microsoft. Examples of such cases would be:

Lack of response from assigned Microsoft Engineer after requesting Team Lead/Manager review;

Slow responses, missed appointments or SLA broken by a considerable margin;

Being asked to re-lodge the case with another support team;

Unable to get a resolution, fix or workaround to the case.

If you believe that an escalation case warrants a review, then please:

· Reply to the escalation case notification from our team;

· Include the last email conversation with the Microsoft Engineer or Manager as an attachment;

· Advise us of the status of the case;

· Request that we review it.

We may also, at our absolute discretion, review other Microsoft support cases which were not raised by rhipe directly, but have relevance to the requirements of the CSP program or your ability to transact with us within CSP, and you are unable to get a resolution.

5.5. Customer Satisfaction Ratings

5.5.1. Surveys

Are your wait times too long? Was the technical support representative patient? Do you have suggestions for improvements? Our technical support satisfaction survey provides valuable feedback to us regarding the levels of service we provide to you. These are surveys, designed specifically to gain your thoughts and opinions to better serve you in the future.

5.5.2. General Feedback

At rhipe, we value all the input we receive from customers and don’t care which way we get it! In addition to receiving the valuable feedback from our surveys, we also encourage our customers to contact us directly by email partner.support@rhipe.com to discuss concerns or improvements at any time.

5.6. Other Services – Consulting & Paid Support as a Service

At times you may have a requirement surrounding your partnership with rhipe and need further assistance with requests that are not covered in this support guide.

We offer a range of value-added services, packaged services and scoped consulting engagements across all our products and programs to assist you in delivery of outcomes to your business or customers.

Some examples of these services or engagements include:

· Specific configuration[ii] or deployment advice;

· Customisation[iii] requirements around specific products, applications and services;

· Enabling a mobile workforce and modernizing workflows;

· Migration services beyond email – moving internal resources to the cloud.

· Support as a Service

IMPORTANT: All configuration and customization requests are considered out of support scope and do not form part of the Support Services. These non-support related requests will be escalated internally to the relevant department, who will contact you directly to discuss your individual requirements with the same service levels and quality.

5.7. Contacting Technical Support[iv]

In most instances we encourage the IT Partner to log a support request by Email and Self-Service portal as first preference instead of the phone, due to the high volume of calls.

5.7.1. Via Email

· partner.support@rhipe.com

5.7.2. Via Telephone

· Australia: +61 2 8350 8484

1300 303 520

· New Zealand +64 800472305

· Malaysia: +60 3 8408 1222

· Singapore: +65 3138 2425

· Thailand: 1800 013 722

· Philippines: +63 2 271 1178

· Indonesia: +62 855 7467 6933

5.7.3. Via Self Service Portal

https://support.rhipe.com
[i] Exclusions include CSP Support staff administering & managing the tenants on behalf of the CSP Indirect Reseller (Partner). PRISM portal is a self-service tool for the CSP Partners.

[ii] Configuration uses the inherent flexibility of the solution to add fields, change field names, modify drop-down lists, or add buttons etc.

[iii] Customization involves code changes to create functionality that is not available through configuration options.

[iv] Please note, any support case not lodged through the proper channels as per this support document will not be covered by our SLA’s and support agreement. All support requests are to be made only via email to assist@cloudsupport.help, self-serve portal or telephone. Support requests made through other channels such as individual rhipe staff, account managers or other means will not be subject to any SLA as defined in this Support Guide.

OLD DOC

Introduction

To maximize the value you’ll receive, we have compiled this Support Guide to help you to become familiar with our support offerings and procedures.

Intended Audience

The intended audience of this document includes:

IT Partners

Customers (End Tenants) who have engaged in support as a service

rhipe internal Sales

rhipe internal Marketing

rhipe CSP Support

rhipe Executive

Abbreviations & Terms

Abbreviation	Description
CSP	Cloud Solutions Provider
MS	Microsoft
SSP	Self Service Portal
SEA	South East Asia
APAC	Asia Pacific
AEST	Australian Eastern Standard Time
MYT	Malaysia Time
MPN	Microsoft Partner Network
MSOL	Microsoft Online
CSE	Cloud Support Engineer
O365	Office 365
SRX	Microsoft Support Request Number
OS	Operating System

Program Overview

Support Program Overview

Support Program Features

Package Feature	Description
Self Service Portal	Access our Self-Service Portal with your rhipe support account. Here you can lodge new tickets, review or comment on existing tickets, or explore our extensive library of knowledgebase articles.
24 x 7 x 365 & 12 x 5 x Mon-Fri Coverage	Technical support for partners via telephone, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 a year, for all reported issues. Support as a Service customers are provided either 12 x 5 Mon-Fri or 24 x 7 x 365, depending on level of coverage.
Service Level Managed Incidents	Service-level managed tickets provides for continual identification, monitoring and review of the levels of IT support services we provide to our end customers and ensures that the agreed IT services are delivered as and when required. Our service levels are based on initial response times detailed in “Section 2.4.1 - Support Priority Response Levels”. Response times will vary based on a support request’s priority levels.
Critical Patch Notifications	To ensure your supported environment is up-to-date with the latest features and safe from potential security threats or defective functionality, we offer a service to proactively notify our supported customers about upcoming patches or other related technical notifications.
Multilingual Support	Our technical support centers offer support in other languages, depending on your local region. Current Languages Supported: English, Thai, Bahasa Malayu & Bahasa Indonesia, Sinhala, Korean & Japanese.

Service Level Managed Incidents

The purpose of our service levels is to ensure that the proper elements and commitments are in place to provide consistent IT service support services to customers.

Service Availability

Coverage specific to the support services:

Telephone support: 24x7*

Email and Self Service Potal Monitored Mon to Sun 12:00 A.M. to 11:59 P.M,

Note: All Urgent or critical incidents (Priority 1 and 2) should be raised through the TELEPHONE channel to ensure they are given the appropriate attention.

Incident Prioritisation

CSP Priority Coding

In all instances, the CSP support staff will assess, prioritise and categorise support tickets raised by the IT Partner or their customer with support as a service agreement.

Priority Coding System
Urgency	Impact
			High	Medium	Low
		High	Priority 1	Priority 2	Priority 3
		Medium	Priority 2	Priority 3	Priority 4
		Low	Priority 3	Priority 4	Priority 5

Support Priority Response Levels

Priority Levels	Response Times
Priority 1	Response within 1 hour
Priority 2	Response within 4 hours
Priority 3	Response within 1 business day
Priority 4	Response within 2 business days
Priority 5	No Response Level applies

Support Priority Level Descriptions

Priority Levels	Description
Priority 1 – Critical Severity	An extreme impact on essential business operations with no workaround or alternatives available, and a significant number (>50%) of end users are affected by the issue. Examples of a critical issue include: a complete loss of service; a service hang; unusable
Priority 2 – High Severity	A high impact on business operations. Business operations are disrupted but a workaround exists which allows for the continuance of essential operations. Affects no more than 50% of all end users.
Priority 3 – Medium Severity	A medium impact on business operations that involves a partial or limited loss of non-critical functionality, but a workaround exists which allows for the continuance of normal operations. Affects no more than 25% of all end users.
Priority 4 – Low Severity	A minimal impact on business operations that involves minimal loss in functionality. Issue affects limited number of users, or less than 10% of all end users in larger organisations.
Priority 5 – Informational	No impact on business operations. Used for non-urgent cases covering the following: General usage, including questions that reference product documentation. CSP Program, product functionality and licensing inquiries. Inquiries regarding licensing programs outside of those covered by the CSP support team. Internal rhipe services that need to be referred to another team for review or resolution. Issues or cases related to issues outside the control of rhipe such as Microsoft Partner Center enablement, or MPN Agreement renewals.

Individual Support Requirements

Some examples of individual support requirements may include:

Handling all inbound support calls with basic issue triage and ticketing;

Managing your after-hours support queries;

Additional support for other products or services

General

Geographic Coverage

With our offices located across the globe and support centres in Melbourne & Sydney (Australia), Auckland (New Zealand), Manila (Philippines) and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), support cases are seamlessly transferred from one support center to the next, in a follow-the-sun method to ensure cases are rapidly resolved.

Language Support

Languages Supported include: English, Filipino, Bahasa Malayu & Bahasa Indonesia, Korean & Japanese.

Remote Support

24x7x365* Support

With a rhipe support agreement in place, our customers are assured of:

24x7x365 telephone support and access to self service portal

Quick response times for all levels of calls

Highly experienced support staff

Trained, Microsoft certified engineers

A snapshot of any support activity is available through a Support Incident Report.

Support Coverage

Included Support Services

The following table outlines support services that are considered in scope as part of IT Partners CSP agreement and will be provided free of charge:

Support Type	Supported
PRISM Portal[*]	Assistance with CSP Portal logins Updating Billing Information Assistance with License Subscriptions: Additional products, quantity changes & subscription suspension/re-enable Creating new tenant records Managing existing tenants Transition tenants to the rhipe CSP program Trial licensing questions General FAQ’s
Microsoft Escalation Support	Facilitation of Service Requests related to Microsoft Online (MSOL) services such as Office 365, Dynamics 365 & Azure infrastructure Issues related to overall MSOL & Azure infrastructure and service health Current MSOL cloud platform maintenance events Queries relating to planned MS cloud platform outages
CSP Partner Billing	Billing & Invoice Related Queries

Support Lifecycle

Working on your support case

Updates

With our 24x7x365 online portal facility, you always have access to the status of your support case. To review the progress of your case, please log into http://www.cloudsupport.help/

Support Case Closure

Reopening a Support Case

Reassignment of your Support Case

Support Roles and Responsibilities

Cloud Support Engineer – Level 1

The core L1 responsibilities include:

Primary point of contact for all support requests;

Gather the partner/customer information to determine the issue by analysing the symptoms and figuring out the underlying root cause(s) of the problem;

Assigned initial responsibility to accept, analyse, resolve new issues;

Manage all support requests issues within Service Level Agreement;

Prioritises issues according to impact, urgency and priority;

Keeps the issue current and provides regular status updates to partner/end; and

Ensures resolution and closure of all assigned issues.

Where a L1 is not able to resolve an issue, they classify the problem and escalate in onto the appropriate L2 engineer.

Cloud Support Engineer – Level 2

The core L2 responsibilities include:

Escalation point for high priority cases;

Consolidate all partner/customer information regarding the incident, including further technical investigation and analysis;

Manage and prioritises all assigned issues within Service Level Agreement;

Keeps the issue current and provides regular status updates to partner/end; and

Ensures resolution and closure of all assigned issues.

Where a L2 is not able to resolve an issue, they are empowered to open an escalation case to the vendor.

Vendor Escalation – Level 3

Technical Support Specialist – (TSS)

The TSM works to ensure SLA success and provide overall management of escalations and support channels over all programs. In addition, the TSM:

Monitors all open support cases to ensure continued activity towards a prompt resolution;

Provides technical account leadership to both support staff and partners;

Communicates directly with partners on cases and issues that are reoccurring/repeating;

Directs case management and escalation with support staff;

Has a direct relationship and line of communication with Vendors;

Initial point of contact for partner and/or paid support customer case internal escalations.

The TSM will often take ownership of cases where issues are ongoing, difficult to diagnose, or reach a resolution for.

Service Delivery Manager – (SDM)

The SDM has overall responsibility for the support team, and provides commercial account leadership for support services provided by rhipe. In addition, the SDM:

Monitors open issues to ensure there is continued activity towards a prompt resolution;

Communicates directly with customer to update and prioritise high impact issues;

Directs issue escalation with support staff through focus groups to ensure continued ownership;

Ability to request vendor review of cases with untimely or unsatisfactory resolutions provided;

Holds ownership of statistical reporting including CSAT scores; and

Reviews support history on a regular basis and shares findings and recommendations directly with customer.

Partner Responsibilities

Performing Basic Troubleshooting Steps

Raising a support request

Once basic troubleshooting of an issue is completed and you require further assistance, the rhipe Technical Support Team would require the following minimum details when raising a support case:

Partner details: Legal name as on the rhipe agreements;

Technical contact details;

Tenant/Customer details: Company Name, tenant domain;

A clear explanation of the issue being raised;

Clear, unscaled screenshots relevant to the issue attached as image files (not embedded in Word Documents);

User accounts affected, either some specific user/users with the accounts listed, or all users within the tenant;

A list of the main troubleshooting steps performed;

Any relevant error codes or messages, or error/system logs while may assist.

Escalations

Escalation prerequisites

An escalation requires a technical Point of Contact from your technical team, along with their availability or shift times, plus contact details such as direct phone numbers and email addresses.

The technical contact for the case needs to be someone from your team. You cannot escalate to an end-user within the tenant, even if they are a Global Admin of the tenant.

Microsoft will assign the severity of the case, and their SLAs for response and resolution will apply to the severity of the case.

Your technical Point of Contact will need to work directly with Microsoft Support Engineer to resolve the case. Full and prompt cooperation is required.

The rhipe technical support team is not a point of contact for an escalation case. We ask that you do not add us to email conversations with Microsoft Engineers.

If you are not getting timely responses to cases, please add the Microsoft engineer’s Team Leads & Managers in the CC of an email back to the support engineer and request that the manager review the case. You should find these addresses in the signature from the Microsoft Engineer assigned.

Escalation validity

Any other Microsoft Support issues such as Partner Centre or Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) issues need to be raised through the relevant support channel separately.

Enhanced Microsoft Support

Due to our status with Microsoft as a Globally Managed Partner, there are several support features which are provided to our partners at no extra charge, including:

CSP Azure Subscriptions: All Azure support escalations are raised at a higher priority, with shorter Microsoft SLA’s than the standard support channel.

Dynamics 365: Access to specialist Dynamics 365 Support engineers during high-complexity cases.

General: Dedicated support case managers able to review troublesome or complex issues.

Review of Escalated Support Cases (Microsoft)

If you are unsatisfied with an escalation case, we may elect to send it for review by our support case managers at Microsoft. Examples of such cases would be:

Lack of response from assigned Microsoft Engineer after requesting Team Lead/Manager review;

Slow responses, missed appointments or SLA broken by a considerable margin;

Being asked to re-lodge the case with another support team;

Unable to get a resolution, fix or workaround to the case.

If you believe that an escalation case warrants a review, then please:

Reply to the escalation case notification from our team;

Include the last email conversation with the Microsoft Engineer or Manager as an attachment;

Advise us of the status of the case;

Request that we review it.

Customer Satisfaction Ratings

Surveys

General Feedback

At rhipe, we value all the input we receive from customers and don’t care which way we get it! In addition to receiving the valuable feedback from our surveys, we also encourage our customers to contact us directly by email assist@cloudsupport.help to discuss concerns or improvements at any time.

Other Services – Consulting & Paid Support as a Service

At times you may have a requirement surrounding your partnership with rhipe and need further assistance with requests that are not covered in this support guide.

We offer a range of value-added services, packaged services and scoped consulting engagements across all our products and programs to assist you in delivery of outcomes to your business or customers.

Some examples of these services or engagements include:

Specific configuration[†] or deployment advice;

Customisation[‡] requirements around specific products, applications and services;

Enabling a mobile workforce and modernizing workflows;

Migration services beyond email – moving internal resources to the cloud.

Support as a Service

Contacting Technical Support[§]

In most instances we encourage the IT Partner to log a support request by Email and Self-Service portal as first preference instead of the phone, due to the high volume of calls.

Via Email

partner.support@rhipe.com

Via Telephone

Australia: +61 2 8350 8484

1300 303 520

New Zealand +64 800472305

Malaysia: +60 3 8408 1222

Singapore: +65 3138 2425

Thailand: 1800 013 722

Philippines: +63 2 271 1178

Indonesia: +62 855 7467 6933

Via Self Service Portal

https://support.rhipe.com

Technical Support Readiness

Microsoft Office 365 Support Knowledgebase
https://support.office.com/

Microsoft Partner Learning Center
https://partner.microsoft.com/en-au/

Office 365 Roadmap
https://products.office.com/en-us/business/office-365-roadmap

Microsoft Azure
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/documentation/learning-paths/

Microsoft Virtual Academy (Training)
https://mva.microsoft.com/

Disclaimer

This document is intended as a guide only and is not intended to give rise to any contractual obligations on the part of rhipe. Terms and conditions are set out in the CSP Support Services Terms and conditions, which shall at all times prevail. Nothing in this document should be taken or relied on as a representation or warranty by rhipe, including (without limitation) as to the availability, quality or extent of the services provided by rhipe.

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