Customer Service Level Understanding

1 Introduction

Academic Department Support (ADS) is a group within the Academic Computing and Networking department (AC&N) that provides computing support services to many academic departments. (This group has previously been known as Extended Support.) The scope of ADS includes support and services for desktop and workstation computers, teaching labs, department file, print and application servers, and some services. Support for enterprise-wide services such as network, email, World Wide Web, Blackboard, and other network based applications is provided by other groups within AC&N.

The needs and requests for service and support from ADS often outweigh the available resources. As such, it is inevitable that compromises must be made and some expectations will not be met. This document presents a strategy for setting realistic expectations within this environment.

1.1 Policies and Guidelines

This document is built upon and extends the policies expressed in Computing & Networking Resource and Responsible Use Policies & Guidelines, available at

http://www.mines.edu/academic/computer/policies/computerpolicies.pdf

These extended principles and guidelines are the foundation for the service level understanding presented here. These principles and guidelines are:

Academic Department Support and Academic Computing and Networking are professional organizations that have a responsibility to organize and manage themselves in efficient and productive manners that best serve as broad a base of their users as possible.
The customer base for ADS is primarily the academic departments, comprised of teaching labs, departmental servers, department administration, student workstations, and faculty workstations.
The academic departments have a right and responsibility to work with ADS to establish priorities within their own departments.
ADS is focused on academic support. Strictly research programs are expected to be self-supported.
Service is provided to academic departments on a pro rata basis according to a predetermined plan.
ADS staff should be given diverse assignments and opportunities to learn and grow within the constraints of departmental needs and priorities and their own technical skills and capabilities.

1.2 Practices

The application of these policies and guidelines will be via these general practices. These will be developed and expanded in the remainder of this document:

ADS will establish a basic priority scheme to drive its daily activity.
Academic departments should work with ADS to determine the priorities of work within their own departments.
Reasonable attempts to standardize offerings must be made in order to achieve optimal supportability and efficiency.
In order to achieve an optimal distribution of resources, support personnel will be pooled rather than dedicated to specific departments. Support personnel may be designated to functional teams, but no person or persons are “on-call” for a department.
An ADS staff member will be designated as a liaison to each academic department. In this role they will assist in IT planning, help establish priorities, and be aware of departmental issues.
All work will be documented and time will be tracked to aid in compliance with the pro rata distribution of work and prioritization of work.
Some tasks or requests consume an unreasonable amount of time and personnel resources. These will be identified and restricted.

This Service Level Understanding will first establish the options from which a customer may request service. It then defines how problems will be prioritized. Then customer responsibilities are defined, followed by ADS responsibilities and limitations.

2 Service Options

Computer systems that are built and maintained according to ADS standards require much less overall service time. Systems that are administered and maintained by the end-user typically require an inordinate amount of support when support is requested.

2.1 Types of Users

We recognize two types of users: those who administer their own machines, and those for whom AC&N administers and supports the machine.

2.1.1 Self-Supported Users

AC&N will do an initial setup and configuration, will provide hardware support (but no funding), and will support shared services such as printers and file servers. Backup and recovery is limited to file servers. A basic configuration can be reinstalled following failures on the platform. Self-supported users maintain the administrative rights to their system. ADS will not have administrative rights.

The self-supported user is responsible for:

Building and installation of non-standard systems (except as noted below)
Installation of applications
Operating systems and application maintenance, upgrades, and security patches
Virus, worm, and intrusion protection
Data backup, recovery and integrity
System repair and recovery due to worms, viruses, intrusions, or data corruption

2.1.2 Fully Supported Users

AC&N will do an initial setup and configuration, will provide hardware support (but no funding), and will support shared services such as printers and file servers. Backup and recovery is limited to file servers. Supported operating systems will be limited to those endorsed by ADS. In addition ADS will:

Maintain the operating system and applications, providing upgrades (if funded or free) and security patches
Manage the virus, worm, and intrusion protection
Provide system repair and recovery due to worms, viruses, intrusions, or data corruption
Install applications

In all cases, a user is responsible for backing up their own data. AC&N will attempt to recover data from its backups, but there are no guarantees that these data will be the desired version or will be provided within a desired time window.

2.1.3 Exceptions

These descriptions apply to all users of computing for office automation, file management, network access, application use and other standard uses. Occasionally customized machines are required for certain academic lab and teaching environments. In these cases we will work with the responsible faculty to negotiate levels of responsibility. Without exception strictly research uses are considered self-supported.

2.2 Types of Systems

Basic ADS configurations are developed for these standard system types. Configurations include a basic Windows or Linux foundation with standard add-in options. Non-standard hardware and software add-ins must be tested and validated by AC&N prior to deployment.

System Type	Available Platform	Typical Use
Desktop PC or Workstation	MS Windows Linux/Unix	Office automation, research, email and communications. Typically deployed to faculty, staff, and student environments.
Instrumentation Interface	MS Windows Linux/Unix	Deployed in research and equipment labs, may be used for process control, equipment control, or data acquisition and collection.
Server	MS Windows Linux/Unix	A server is required when shared services are requested. These may include shared printers and disk storage, and serving of applications, files, licenses or web.

Self-supported users manage their own “custom” systems. ADS will, upon request, make a static copy of the configuration for disaster recovery purposes. The customer must protect his or her own data.

No standard Macintosh platforms are currently available. Macintosh users are self-supported users.

2.2.1 Microsoft Windows Support Policy

This policy describes the platforms that are endorsed by AC&N. Any systems not endorsed will receive support on an “as able” basis. System administration and extreme measures will not be provided for non-endorsed systems. Support will also be provided at a lower priority than support for endorsed systems.

Only releases currently supported by Microsoft will be considered as endorsed platforms.
All hardware platforms must meet the vendor’s minimum requirements for that release.
Servers maintained by ADS will be maintained at endorsed levels.
Users will purchase any software or hardware required or desired for upgrading.
Critical security patches must be installed on all platforms. Any system that cannot be made secure may be denied connection to the network.
All systems will be current on virus protection and will employ a host firewall.

2.2.2 UNIX/LINUX Support Policy

There is some existing presence of IBM AIX, SGI IRIX, and Sun Solaris on campus. Support has been provided on an “as able” basis. These platforms will be considered not endorsed.
Only releases currently supported by endorsed vendors will be considered as endorsed platforms.
All hardware platforms must meet the vendor’s minimum requirements for that release.
Servers maintained by ADS will be maintained at endorsed levels.
Users will purchase any software or hardware required or desired for upgrading.
Critical security patches must be installed on all platforms. Any system that cannot be made secure may be denied connection to the network.
All systems will employ a host firewall.

3 Priorities

3.1 Priority Assignment

Priorities are at the core of our service policies. When there is more service requested than we are able to provide in a given time period, then some requests must be delayed. These are the guidelines for how we determine what should be delayed.

Our priorities are driven by some basic principles.

1. Teaching needs come before other faculty or research needs.

2. Issues that affect large numbers of users are more critical than those affecting a few.

3. Fully supported users come before self-supported users.

4. Things that are broken, but did work, are higher priority than installations and other requests that can be planned.

5. Older requests in the queue are higher priority than newer requests. We may let some issues jump to the top of the queue when it makes sense to do so, such as when we can handle multiple requests in a single service call, or when an issue, such as an account creation, can be handled in a matter of minutes.

6. Priorities will adjust to the time of year. For example, during the summer, project work such as building teaching labs may cause many user requests to be delayed. At the beginning of a semester, labs and student accounts will receive high priority attention.

Service requests will be reviewed on a regular basis. Scheduled builds and maintenance that have approaching deadlines will be increased in priority if necessary and appropriate in order to meet these deadlines. Priorities will also be adjusted to balance the actual vs. allocated FTE assignments to the departments. Departments may, through their liaison to ADS, request priority changes for service requests within their departments, effectively swapping priorities between service requests.

All open service requests are reviewed by ADS to determine if the information meets minimum standards and if the priority is appropriate. Accepted service requests are set to “open”, which means that they are ready to be worked. Otherwise the customer is contacted to provide more information or to negotiate the priority. Service requests are then assigned on the basis of priority. Ties are broken by the time in queue, i.e. the oldest highest priority service request is worked next.

Sometimes customers request ADS support for an avoidable problem, such as those caused by failing to maintain appropriate virus protection, or performing tasks with administrator authority that result in a damaged system. In these cases ADS will restore the system to a previous working state and issue a support warning. Subsequent service requests for the same customer or system will be demoted one priority level. The customer may be restored to full priority service if they reclassify as a Fully Supported user type.

3.2 Priority Definitions

Priority

Items / Areas

Explanation / Description / Examples

Page

1. Any server failure.

2. Any lab with 10% or more workstations disabled.

3. Any class in progress that is hampered in the ability to conduct the class.

4. Any class scheduled for the same day that is potentially hampered in the ability to conduct the class.

5. Valid user cannot log in.

6. Any single source resource, such as a printer, that has failed.

Any instance of a user unable to accomplish their work due to a failure. Unscheduled installations do not qualify.

Problems that prevent people from working; problems or routine support needs that have the potential to result in major loss of data or resources; assistance with a virus-infected or otherwise compromised system if the system has virus protection installed and is meeting protection guidelines. A “Page” priority will result in an available system administrator being deployed.