IBM® Software
Support provides assistance with product defects.
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 page (www.lotus.com/services/passport.nsf/WebDocs/Passport_Advantage_Home),
and click How to Enroll.
- By phone: For the phone number to call in your country, go to the
contacts page of the IBM Software Support Handbook on the Web (techsupport.services.ibm.com/guides/contacts.html),
and click the name of your geographic region.
- 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 page (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 or, from other countries,
go to the contacts page of the IBM Software Support Handbook on the Web (techsupport.services.ibm.com/guides/contacts.html),
and click the name of your geographic region for phone numbers of people who
provide support for your location.
To contact IBM Software
Support, follow these steps:
- Determine the business impact of your problem:
When you report
a problem to IBM,
you will be asked to supply a severity level. You need to understand and assess
the business impact of the problem you are reporting. Use the following criteria:
Severity description
Severity 1 |
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 |
Significant business impact: The program is usable but
is severely limited. |
Severity 3 |
Some business impact: The program is usable with less
significant features (not critical to operations) unavailable. |
Severity 4 |
Minimal business impact: The problem causes little impact
on operations, or a reasonable circumvention to the problem has been implemented. |
- Describe your problem and gather background information:
When
explaining 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 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 your problem to IBM Software Support:
You can submit
your problem in one of two ways:
- Online: Go to the Submit and track problems page on the IBM Software Support
site (www.ibm.com/software/support/probsub.html). Enter your information into
the appropriate problem submission tool.
- By phone: For the phone number to call in your country, go to the
contacts page of the IBM Software Support Handbook on the Web (techsupport.services.ibm.com/guides/contacts.html),
and click the name of your geographic region.
If the problem you submit is for a software defect or for missing
or inaccurate documentation, IBM Software Support will create an Authorized Program
Analysis Report (APAR). The APAR describes the problem in detail.
Whenever
possible, IBM Software
Support will provide a workaround for you to implement until the APAR is resolved
and a fix is delivered. IBM publishes resolved APARs on the IBM product support
Web pages daily so that other users who experience the same problem can benefit
from the same resolutions.