Support for WebSphere Automation

WebSphere Automation adheres to a Support Cycle 2 (SC-2) lifecycle policy.

Signing up for notifications about WebSphere Automation

You can informed of critical IBM software support updates using the My Notifications subscription service. For more information, see Stay up to date with My Notifications on the IBM website.

To subscribe to products of your choice, see My Notifications.

Opening a support case

Before you contact IBM Support, check these troubleshooting and known issues sections.

To learn more about IBM Support, see the IBM Support Guide and the Getting Started Guide for IBM Support.

To open a support ticket, you must have an active entitlement for WebSphere Automation.

Before you open a support case, collect MustGather data about your cluster.

To open a support case:

  1. Go to the IBM Support site Opens in a new tab.
  2. From the menu bar on the header, click Open a case.
  3. Log in with your IBMid and password.
  4. Enter a meaningful Case Title that summarizes your problem.
  5. Select IBM as the Product Manufacturer.
  6. Select WebSphere Automation as the Product for which you need assistance from the support team.

  7. Select the appropriate Severity of the problem.

    Important: The case severity is based on the business impact of the problem. If you set the case severity as 1, you must be available 24x7 to work with IBM Support on this issue.
  8. Select the Account that has the entitlement for WebSphere Automation.
  9. Provide a detailed Case Description of your problem. A detailed description can help support understand your problem more accurately and thus provide quicker solutions or answers. The following information is crucial:
    • WebSphere Automation product version
    • Installation platform (VMware, Azure, AWS, IBM Cloud)
    • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform version
    • Steps to reproduce the issue
  10. Collect information about your cluster. For more information about how to gather the required information, see Collecting support information about the cluster Opens in a new tab.
  11. Upload the tar.gz file with the results of the diagnostic scan that you ran in the previous step in one of the following ways:
  12. Select the language preferences.
  13. Click Submit a case.

Open a case for each problem that you need assistance with. Do not add new issues to an existing case for which you are already engaged with the support team. When you clearly define an issue, the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) can quickly address the issue and reduce confusion for the support team when they review the documents and files that are collected for the case.

Understanding support lifecycle policies

The numbering scheme for the version of WebSphere Automation is based on the semantic versioning specification defined at: http://semver.org/.

The version numbering takes the form major.minor.patch, where:
MAJOR
Number changes occur when significant changes are introduced between releases, including incompatible changes.
MINOR
Number changes indicate a new release.
PATCH
Number changes for fix updates.

WebSphere Automation uses a Support Cycle 2 (SC-2) lifecycle policy to provide new features and enhancements, along with security updates and defect fixes. For more information, see https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/6456969.

For more information about IBM Software Lifecycle Policies, see https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/718165.