Network edition and support.

[Mike Scholes]

Sorry to post it here but I did not get a response with the same question via email. If we buy a 50 user license what support do we get? I see you get basic support with the network edition, does this include email support. Is basic support the same as "Standard" support. What is an "incident" The Standard support includes 2 "incidents" is that 2 emails? It's going to cost > £700 UK per year, I'm guessing we get more than 2 emails as part of the support. If so what if we have 100 users, or 1000 users, do we still get 2 emails Can someone clarify what support we might expect.

Thanks

[mmorse]

http://www.zimbra.com/support/support_overview.html
-Support incidents determined to be enhancement requests or bug reports do not count against your allotted support tickets.
-You can exchange as many emails/phone calls as needed to resolve the issue.

I am not a sales person...but it depends upon total subscription amount:
Let's say it was 100 NE Standard w/o Zimbra Mobile, the annual subscription ammount falls under 2,500 so it would fit under the 2-ticket standard support. Adding mobile or 100 of NE Professional (ZCO & iSync are 2 of the biggies compare ZCS editions) would get you on the 10-ticket advantage support.

More details here: http://www.zimbra.com/products/pricing.html

Play with http://www.zimbra.com/quote/configurator.php and you'll see what I mean.

You should contact sales@zimbra.com or use http://www.zimbra.com/about/contact_us_form.html for any EDU/Govt/Non-profit pricing as well as anything over 500 accounts as the greater you purchase there's a sliding tier (like any company 5,000 accounts is a lot different than 500,000, etc, etc).

[Mike Scholes]

Thanks for that, I know you are not a sales person so it's good of you to reply. Maybe you could get sales to have a look at this.

I played with the configurator and 25 professional users would cost $875, 75 uses would cost $2100. Surely an installation of 75 users would result in more support issues. As we would be paying more shouldn't more support be included. I would have thought a support/per mailbox figure would be far more appropriate. I'm trying to talk the management into buying Zimbra but I need your help here

I have an example, when composing an email and you click the "To" button you can't get your personal contacts to display in full unless you choose contacts, close the box and re-enter it. You can't populate the box using the search unless you have shared contacts and choose shared and personal and enter a dot as the search criteria. This isn't a support question as I know it's a problem but if I had put in a ticket about this would it have been classed as an incident? I can think of a stack more "issues" just like this.

We don't want to use Outlook, the reason for buying the network edition is primarily for support and 1-2K, seems a bit steep for 2 emails.

[mmorse]

It's ok, I'll certainly try to explain it as best I can
So, if you opened such a ticket & it was already known or found to be a bug (ie: support/QA can reproduce it on their own boxes) then you get your ticket number reset.
-You can always ask later to get it reset if only you were hitting it at the time & like 2 weeks later everyone sees the issue.
-Which is why many check the forums first or dual post (support ticket & forum thread), we certainly don't mind - it adds to our collective community knowledge

Closer to what you've described above:
-In bugzilla the number of support cases related to those bugs/RFE's are linked/tagged. ie: A RFE with more NE customers requesting that feature gets higher priority.
-Additionally you can open a 'ticket' with simply nothing more than "Please voice my support for RFE 7473 - Share management and discovery." etc.
-It's a very input oriented process, checkout: Open Source Product Management: How do features get into Zimbra?

-They're not really just 2 emails per say, you could exchange 40 emails across 2 system down issues if that's what it takes.
-In my personal opinion, two cases where we'll even login remotely to help you out for a ~1k product is pretty darn good.
-You could always purchase another case individually or in discounted groups if it comes to that (think you can get them in 1, 2, & 5 packs).
-And 10 cases for a ~2k+ deployment is far more than you'd get out of most companies - the support reps take it all the way to the engineers if needed.
-They're opened by a phone call, the support portal, or sending an email to support@zimbra.com (Don't worry, if someone at your organization were to fire off an email to that address it's always double-checked with you before ticket counts are adjusted).

[Mike Scholes]

Thanks again

I notice your comment "across 2 system down issues". Does that mean an incident is only an incident when the system is down? Does that mean that if we have a smaller issue like a user can't login or some mail is going missing you can help us and it is not classed as an incident? Go on, say it's not and make me happy

[mmorse]

Well most go through their own support desks/admins first...and save tickets for times they/you're stumped.

As we all know the typical "a user can't login" goes like:
-Have you made sure caps lock if off?
-Are you typing the full email address as your username?
-You are typing it correctly? Ok, let me check to see if the account is locked because you tried to many times in a row...

OR "some mail is going missing":
-I swore I sent the document.
-General time you sent it or address you sent it to?
(*Opens up zmmsgtrace, checks logfiles & the queues)
-Their mail system accepted the message, have them check their junk folder & perhaps you should check with their admin to see why the message wasn't delivered.

Not to say you can't use your support tickets for that - some with premium do

Originally Posted by mmorse

-They're not really just 2 emails per say, you could exchange 40 emails across 2 system down issues if that's what it takes.

It was more of an example, I was trying to explain that it wasn't just 2 emails, rather 2 issues/questions, you rank them 1-9 (we obviously jump on 1 & 2 a little faster):

• Production system outage (U1)
• Major functionality not working with no work-around (U2)
• Major functionality bug with workaround (U3)
• Minor issues and functionality (U4 - U7)
• Enhancements (U8)
• General questions (U9)

Originally Posted by mmorse

-You could always purchase another case individually or in discounted groups if it comes to that (think you can get them in 1, 2, & 5 packs).

The "To:" situation you described would fit under an RFE:

Originally Posted by mmorse

Closer to what you've described above:
-In bugzilla the number of support cases related to those bugs/RFE's are linked/tagged. ie: A RFE with more NE customers requesting that feature gets higher priority.
-Additionally you can open a 'ticket' with simply nothing more than "Please voice my support for RFE 7473 - Share management and discovery." etc (doing so won't count against your number).
-It's a very input oriented process, checkout: Open Source Product Management: How do features get into Zimbra?

[Mike Scholes]

Comprehensive response, thanks.

My last question then, would issues from U4-U9 count as an incident and use one of our two lives?

[mmorse]

Yes they would use up a ticket; unless they prove to be bugs or enhancement requests, which do not count against the ticket allotment.

Someone might open a U3/U4/U5 like: I can't print from the calendar in the AJAX web-client, though I can still print by using the browser print.
Response: Thanks, this is actually known Bug 23062 - Calender/Documents : Print is not working we've added your support incident to the list of NE users affected by the bug.
(In which case you won't be docked a support ticket & it gets filed under 'case bugs' in your support portal so you can easily find them again if you want.)
& that's about as clear as I can explain it

[Mike Scholes]

Thanks for that, all explained clearly.