1.    What type and severity level of support case can customers open against Feature Channel?

IBM Support will only accept cases for the latest available feature channel in a non-production environment. Severity must be either 3 or 4. Cases cannot be escalated, and fixes will be made available in a future feature channel.

2.    If we find a defect which is only present in Feature Channel, how will it be documented and monitored?

If you find something in the feature channel, it would be fixed. We would still follow the same defect identification and resolution process as we follow for any of our maintenance channel. But the defect would only be fixed in the next update that goes into feature channel.

3.    Will I be able to identify from the MAS UI to determine if I am running an Long-Term Release or Feature channel release?

You won’t be able to identify what version of MAS Core from the MAS UI at this point. You can however see the versions of applications installed.

4.    If I install to production, will I be able to open severity 1 cases against functions that are not new features?

Only SaaS customers will be able to run on feature channel in production.  They won’t distinguish feature channels functions any differently to any other functions when it comes to raising cases.

5.    Do MAS, Manage need to be on latest version on the catalog to be able to accept the Feature Channel update?

The actual upgrade update process to get to the Feature Channel is the same as the mechanisms that we've already had in place for changing from MAS 8.10 to 8.11. The customer has got to upgrade to the feature channel first and then they'll get updates once they're in there. And then when it gets to GA, they would then have to do an upgrade from that Feature Channel to the new feature channel. After GA, the new Feature Channel would appear and then they would move on to that one.

6.    For SaaS customers, will the feature channel have all the functionality of the maintained release?

It will have all of the functionality of the previous maintained release plus whatever features we've introduced through feature channel over the top of that.

7.    Is the feature channel only for customers who subscribed to it, not for all customers automatically?

That is correct. For the client managed case, the MAS admin is going to have to make a conscious decision to go and subscribe to it. 

8.    Does the feature channel work for non-English base language?

The feature channel is really a delivery mechanism. It doesn't really affect the way language support works across the product.

9.    Can I get support for older feature channel releases. 

If you have an older feature channel release deployed, you should move to the latest update and replicate the issue to get support. 

10.              Where can I find the latest versions with the release information and the link to it?

This information is already being published here: https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/6570601