P4 (Helix Core) Customer Handbook

P4 Support Plans

• Standard support during normal business hours
  • Direct phone and email access with support offices in North America, Europe, and Australia
• Critical Care support for application outages

P4 Support provides the same level of support to all our customers, with no premium level of support.

P4 Support accepts requests through the Community Portal, Web Form, Email ([email protected]), and by telephone.

We recommend using the Community Portal. This method provides us with the most background information that we will use to quickly handle your case and allows you to track the case progress.

Community Portal

The Community Portal best method to use for opening and tracking your support tickets.https://www.perforce.com/support/community-portal-faq

Web Form

The Web Form is the best option to use when opening support tickets if you do not have a Community Portal account. Select P4 as the ‘Product Brand’ and fill in the relevant information in the fields provided and submit your case. You will immediately receive an email letting you know your request has reached our systems. You will hear back from P4 Technical Support as soon as they have reviewed your case. In most cases, you will hear back from someone within thirty minutes.

Telephone

P4 Core support engineers are available as noted here: P4 Standard Support Hours.

Video session support can be requested by email ([email protected]), or telephone.

Please Note:      

• A single video session may be scheduled for up to 60 minutes. If more time is required, an additional video session may be set up for a later time based on the Technical Support Engineer’s availability.
• The Technical Support Engineer cannot take over control of your system at any time

The Technical Support Engineer will request the following information for preliminary research prior to scheduling the video session:

1. Summary of the problem
2. Preferred date and time for the video session (including time zone)
3. Severity (Low, Med, High, Critical)
4. Product version and configurations
5. Additional data may be requested such as error messages, logs, and journals

If you would like Perforce Technical Support to take control of your system, please see our Professional Services offerings.

If you are concerned about how your case is being handled or need to expedite a critical issue, please ask your Support Engineer to escalate the case, or contact your Account Executive.

The P4 Support team at Perforce is there for you when you have a specific problem or challenge to overcome. We work with you to identify the technical cause, which is the event responsible for the reported problem, and may provide a workaround, relevant documentation, or a resolution to restore affected P4 products to their operational state. Once resolved, to help prevent issues in the future, you may want to determine the root cause of why the problem occurred in the first place. 

This type of project and analysis goes beyond Support and requires more in-depth exploration to attempt to discover the core reason for your issues. We call this Root Cause Analysis (RCA). This service includes a written report detailing the problem, root cause, corrective recommendations, and preventative actions determined from the RCA.

Although RCA is not a standard component of your Support plan, we offer convenient pre-paid RCAs as a supplement to your plan — and at a discount off our full-price hourly consulting rate. You can purchase these pre-paid RCAs together with your initial P4 Support contract or at renewal.

• We offer pre-paid packages for 1 and 5 RCAs.

For further details, please see P4 RCA brochure.

If you would like to purchase RCA pre-paid packages, please discuss with your account team.

On top of our Standard Support plan, you may optionally add our P4 Critical Care Support. This plan gives you access to the help you need – outside of normal business hours – for emergency or critical situations.

A “Critical Care Situation” is defined as a condition preventing an entire group from performing critical tasks using P4.

Examples of Critical Care situations include:

• P4 fails following a server upgrade.
• Unable to access the P4 server.
• Assistance recovering P4 server data after a hardware failure or crash.

For enterprises that have our Standard Support plan, and need help upgrading their servers, we offer prearranged Weekend Upgrade Support. This just-in-case option is available for existing support customers.

You can contact Professional Services ([email protected]) or discuss with your Account Executive to set up specific weekend coverage.

Note: We will require two weeks' notice to complete the statement of work (SOW) and schedule coverage.

The Community Portal is the best method to use for opening, viewing, and tracking your support tickets.

P4 Support aims to correct an Issue in accordance with Target Resolution Times set forth below and shall provide the Authorized Technical Contact with updates on the progress of the resolution (“Updates”) in accordance with the times set forth in the Updates column in the table below.

In each case, appropriate bug reports will be logged where necessary.

Blocker - Complete System Outage

• The P4 server is not operational and end users cannot access the P4 server, or the functionality is significantly decreased, or back up or other security of data can no longer be performed.
  • All or a clear majority of users are not able to access the system, to reasonably perform their normal functions.

Examples

• P4 server is down or a major performance issue resulting in the P4 being unresponsive with no workaround immediately available.
• Denial of access to where the P4 server resides.
• Hardware failure or crash on the server where P4 server resides.

Critical - Significant Impact/Server Operations Severely Limited

• While the P4 server is operational, (i) functional limitations or restrictions have materially impacted P4 server operations, (ii) non-essential functions were disabled in production, or (iii) essential non-production functions were disabled.
  • Critical loss of application functionality or performance, resulting in most users being unable to perform their normal functions. 

Examples

• The P4 server is not working system-wide and impacts an entire team (edge server)
• P4 is ​available, but performance is hindering the usability of the P4 server for required business processes.
• A substantial number of users are not able to use the P4 server for their normal operations or functions.

Major - Major Non-Critical Impact/System Operations Reduced

• P4 server is operational with functional limitations or restrictions that are not critical to the overall operation of the P4 server
  • Moderate loss of functionality or performance, resulting in multiple users impacted for their normal operations or functions.
  • Component/feature failure.

Examples

• The system is accessible, but there are some functional limitations that are not critical in the daily operation.
• Some components are not functioning as expected.
• Some processes are working as expected but others are timing out or not completing within the expected timeframe.
• A specific user configuration is not working, but alternative solutions work.
• A workaround exists, but it is only temporary.

Minor - Minor Impact/System Operations Not Impacted

• P4 server is operational with problems or errors that have little impact on the operation of the P4 server
  • Problems or questions that do not affect product functionality including how-to questions, documentation, and general questions regarding application commands and usage.

Examples

• Issues with P4 components.
• How-To questions.
• General questions about P4 products.
• Feature requests.
• Documentation requests.
• Issues isolated to one or only a few users.

The P4 software applications are available for download from perforce.com, and as package installs (as described in our documentation).

P4 additionally provides a managed service, P4 Remote Administration.

P4 licenses are issued by our licensing team. Contact your Account Executive for new licenses; the support team can help direct your request to the relevant people, and some minor adjustments can be requested by completing the relevant form.

To purchase new licenses, please see:  https://www.perforce.com/how-buy

The P4 support team will assist with questions on any released version.

Maintenance support is available only for those releases under maintenance, as noted here: https://www.perforce.com/maintenance-support

We provide standard and advanced User and Administration training courses, and a ‘Battle School’ for a troubleshooting overview. These can be online or classroom-based (where possible).

https://www.perforce.com/support/training/helix-core-classes

The P4 support team can put you in contact with your Account Executive to discuss your training needs, and the possibility of a private course tailored to your requirements.

Our Self-Service Resources include official documentation, video tutorials, knowledgebase, and product release notes.

These resources are updated regularly and should be your first stop for problem solving and how-to questions. Checking these resources before opening a new case may result in a faster resolution of your issue. Feel free to ask a support engineer about anything you find in these self-help materials.

In addition, you may sign up for Perforce University to continue your Perforce product education.

Sometimes your problem will be traced to issues with software that is not under the control of P4 (e.g., third-party software and networking.) The support team will guide you as far as they can and can put you in contact with the Account Executive or Sales Team to discuss further options, including engaging our Professional Services team.

https://www.perforce.com/support/consulting/helix-core-consulting