IBM® Software Support provides assistance with
product defects, answering FAQs, and performing rediscovery.
After trying to find your answer or solution by using other
self-help options such as technotes, you can contact IBM Software Support. Before you
contact IBM Software Support, your company must have
an active IBM software subscription and support contract,
and you must be authorized to submit problems to IBM. The
type of software subscription and support contract that you need depends
on the type of product you have. For information about the types of
available support, see the
Support portfolio topic in the
Software
Support Handbook.
Complete the following steps to contact IBM Software Support with a problem:
- Define the problem, gather background information, and
determine the severity of the problem. To determine the
severity level, you need to understand and assess the business impact
of the problem you are reporting. Use the following criteria:
| Severity |
Business impact |
|---|
| 1 |
Critical business impact: You are unable to
use the program, resulting in a critical impact on operations. This
condition requires an immediate solution. |
| 2 |
Significant business impact: The program is
usable but is severely limited. |
| 3 |
Some business impact: The program is usable
with less significant features (not critical to operations) unavailable. |
| 4 |
Minimal business impact: The problem causes
little impact on operations, or a reasonable circumvention to the
problem has been implemented. |
- Gather diagnostic information. Use the Web search
form (under in
the navigation pane of this information center) to search for the
keyword mustgather to see whether there are
specific files or other diagnostic information to gather.
For example:
- What software versions were you running when the problem occurred?
- Do you have logs, traces, and messages that are related to the
problem symptoms? IBM Software Support is likely to
ask for this information.
- Can the problem be re-created? If so, what steps led to the failure?
- Have any changes been made to the system (for example, hardware,
operating system, networking software, and so on)?
- Are you currently using a workaround for this problem? If so,
please be prepared to explain it when you report the problem.
- Submit the problem to IBM Support.
- IBM Support Assistant (ISA)
- Go to the Software support site to use the IBM Support
Assistant (www.ibm.com/software/support/isa/).
- Online
- Go to the IBM Support Portal (www.ibm.com/software/support/).
You can open, update, and view all your Service Requests from the
Service Request portlet on the Service Request page.
- Phone
- For the phone number to call in your country, see the Directory
of worldwide contacts web page (www.ibm.com/planetwide/).
If the problem that you submit is for a software defect or
for missing or inaccurate documentation, IBM Support creates an Authorized
Program Analysis Report (APAR). The APAR describes the problem in
detail. Whenever possible, IBM Support provides a workaround that you can
implement until the APAR is resolved and a fix is delivered. IBM publishes resolved
APARs on the IBM Support
website daily, so that other users who experience the same problem
can benefit from the same resolution.
