Contacting IBM Software Support

Before contacting IBM Software Support, your company must have an active IBM software maintenance contract, and you must be authorized to submit problems to IBM. The type of software maintenance contract that you need depends on the type of product you have:

For IBM distributed software products (including, but not limited to, Tivoli®, Lotus®, and Rational® products, as well as DB2® and WebSphere® products that run on Windows, or UNIX operating systems), enroll in Passport Advantage® in one of the following ways:
- Online: Go to the Passport Advantage® Web site at http://www-306.ibm.com/software/howtobuy/passportadvantage/pao_customers.htm .
- By phone: For the phone number to call in your country, go to the IBM Software Support Web site at http://www-304.ibm.com/support/customercare/sas/f/handbook/home.html.
For customers with Subscription and Support (S & S) contracts, go to the Software Service Request Web site at http://www.ibm.com/support/servicerequest.
For customers with IBMLink, CATIA, Linux, OS/390®, iSeries®, pSeries, zSeries, and other support agreements, go to the IBM Support Line Web site at http://www.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/so/its/a1000030/dt006.
For IBM eServer™™ software products (including, but not limited to, DB2® and WebSphere® products that run in zSeries, pSeries, and iSeries environments), you can purchase a software maintenance agreement by working directly with an IBM sales representative or an IBM Business Partner. For more information about support for eServer software products, go to the IBM Technical Support Advantage Web site at http://www.ibm.com/servers/eserver/techsupport.html.

If you are not sure what type of software maintenance contract you need, call 1-800-IBMSERV (1-800-426-7378) in the United States. From other countries, go to the contacts page of the IBM Software Support Handbook on the Web at http://www-304.ibm.com/support/customercare/sas/f/handbook/home.html and click the name of your geographic region for phone numbers of people who provide support for your location.

Determining the business impact

When you report a problem to IBM, you are asked to supply a severity level. Therefore, you need to understand and assess the business impact of the problem that you are reporting. Use the following criteria:

Severity 1: The problem has a critical business impact. You are unable to use the program, resulting in a critical impact on operations. This condition requires an immediate solution.
Severity 2: The problem has a significant business impact. The program is usable, but it is severely limited.
Severity 3: The problem has some business impact. The program is usable, but less significant features (not critical to operations) are unavailable.
Severity 4: The problem has minimal business impact. The problem causes little impact on operations, or a reasonable circumvention to the problem was implemented.

Describing problems and gathering information

When describing a problem to IBM, be as specific as possible. Include all relevant background information so that IBM Software Support specialists can help you solve the problem efficiently. To save time, know the answers to these questions:

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 you recreate the problem? If so, what steps were performed to re-create the problem?
Did you make any changes to the system? For example, did you make changes to the hardware, operating system, networking software, and so on.
Did you make any changes to the system? For example, did you make changes to the hardware, operating system, networking software, and so on.

Submitting problems

You can submit your problem to IBM Software Support in one of two ways:

Online: Click Submit and track problems on the IBM Software Support site at http://www.ibm.com/software/support/probsub.html. Type your information into the appropriate problem submission form.
By phone: For the phone number to call in your country, go to the contacts page of the IBM Software Support Handbook at http://www-304.ibm.com/support/customercare/sas/f/handbook/home.html and click the name of your geographic

If the problem you submit is for a software defect or for missing or inaccurate documentation, IBM Software Support creates an Authorized Program Analysis Report (APAR). The APAR describes the problem in detail. Whenever possible, IBM Software Support provides a workaround that you can implement until the APAR is resolved and a fix is delivered. IBM publishes resolved APARs on the Software Support Web site daily, so that other users who experience the same problem can benefit from the same resolution.