Cooperative Support FAQ

Unicon has about 100 employees, a portion of which are focused on the support and services efforts on higher education technology solutions. The support program has a dedicated staff of developers who are experienced Sakai project contributors. The number of developers will scale with the increased participation in the cooperative program. In addition to developers there will be additional technical staff to assist in addressing non-development activities.

Unicon has created three different levels of support offerings each with a differing quantities of bundled support hours; 10, 30, and 100.

Unicon has several references that can speak to our level of expertise in consulting, planning, deploying and supporting enterprise higher education technology solutions. View a list of some of Unicon's customers.

In order to keep the cooperative support team effectively focused on addressing identified bugs and issues for the benefit of the subscribers, there is a limit to the size of project that the team can address. If a subscribing participant has a unique need for a development project that exceeds a level of development effort beyond 40 hours of work, they will be referred to Unicon's qualified Professional Services division to complete that effort.

Unicon has devised three different levels of support options. These three distinctive Service Level Agreements (SLA) are designed to provide tailored options for institutions of various size, Sakai usage, and support need. Unlike many programs this one is not dependant upon the size of your institution or the number of registered FTE's you have. The Service Level Agreement that you elect is based completely on your own identified unique needs.

All submitted support cases will have standard priority assignments. These are listed below along with the target response times.

High - The inability to use the software results in critical impact to the subscriber's operation. Provide initial response to the contact within one hour during program support hours.

Medium - The software is usable but severely restricted in one or more major functions. Provide initial response within four hours during program support hours.

Low The software is usable but with limits to functions that are cosmetic or otherwise deemed not essential to the subscribers' operation. Provide initial response within one business day.

If it is identified that the reported item required alteration to the core product code it will then be recorded and tracked at the community project level. Cooperative members will then vote on how all reported items are prioritized. In addition, any institution that wishes to escalate a reported item may do so through our unique development acceleration process. In order to achieve this escalation there is a low hourly rate of $100 that will be needed to resource this development effort.

Unicon has been a leading commercial supporter of open source solutions for higher education. Our expert technical staff is made up of well known leading contributors to community projects. Unicon's developers, administrators, and project managers have a combined expertise of uPortal and Sakai that is unparalleled in the industry. Unicon has some of the top knowledge experts from the open source projects on staff as well as strong partnerships with both Sakai and JA-SIG community leaders.

In addition to our open source and technology expertise Unicon has an extensive background in delivering commercial support both open source and proprietary products. In part with our Cisco Learning Academy program established in 1998, Unicon provides development, maintenance, and support of the learning management technologies to nearly 10,000 institutions world-wide.

The great part about having Unicon as a dedicated support partner available to you is that your own administrators can invest their energies to many of the other areas of expertise that you rely on them for. When the need arises to interact with Unicon to work a support issue or development request it is always best to have someone familiar with the production or development environments in question. Most schools have a designated portal administrator that has the appropriate amount of experience and background to best articulate the specific information gathering needs typical of resolving a support case.

As with any support request, the more information provided the better. Designated support contacts will be directed to use the support web site to open cases. This process will provide the specific data fields needed to begin supporting the reported issue.

Once a new support case is logged, one of the Cooperative Support Team members ensures that all the information that is needed to evaluate the case is available. Then, it must be determined if the reported item is legitimate bug or an application/configuration issue. This often may require an additional request of information such as an analysis of the description of the problem, review log files or an attempt to reproduce the issue.

In addition, there will be automated processes in place that will monitor all case activity. In the chance a case has not been addressed in accordance with the SLA of the support contract, the support team manager is notified. This ensures you a timely response to your issue.

Unicon has created a Service Level Agreement structure that allows institution to choose a program that best fits their needs.

Developer: The Developer subscription is designed to address the needs of uPortal or Sakai users who are still in the process of evaluating, testing, or developing in uPortal or Sakai and desire a qualified support partner to assist in the usual challenges involved in the first year of working with the software. This entry level package is for pre-production use of uPortal. It is only available for one year per subscriber, after which subscribers are automatically upgraded to the Standard subscription.

Standard: The Standard subscription is designed for uPortal or Sakai sites that require a full-service support offering to safeguard their important uPortal or Sakai implementations. Designed for small to medium-sized uPortal deployments, the Standard subscription delivers a low-cost support alternative attractive to budget-conscious institutions.

Enterprise: The Enterprise subscription is for the most demanding implementations of uPortal or Sakai. Institutions with larger deployments that require the highest level of response time to protect their mission critical environment should select this package. With exclusive benefits like 24 x 7 availability and the highest degree of influence over the development activities of the support team, the Enterprise subscription offers exceptional levels of uPortal or Sakai support.

In all instances where a support case has required development to resolve a bug or enhance functionality, the resulting "patches" will be made available at the community level to which they are related, such as Sakai or uPortal. Cooperative members will then have access to those items at the community level.

Those patches that come from the individual project communities will be the respsonsibility of the individual subscribers to obtain and deploy. However, depending upon the level of effort required for any given patch or upgrade, you may elect to engage the services of Unicon's Professional Services team for upgrade assistance.

Unicon provides Cooperative Support for releases of uPortal or Sakai for 18 -24 months and gives subscribers six months notice prior to ending support for any specific release of uPortal and Sakai.

While these extended support periods mean subscribers are no longer compelled to constantly upgrade, newer releases do tend to be more stable and provide better performance. Unicon's support team does not perform upgrades on the subscriber's behalf; although, we are available to provide basic assistance in the upgrade process. Unicon's Professional Services team is always available to perform upgrades.

All typical supports issues that don't require any alteration of the product code are completely covered in the Service Level Agreements. Each SLA bundle offers a set number of annual hours for those support issues. Unicon fully anticipates that very few schools will ever exceed their allocated support hours. However, the program does allow subscribers to use the hourly rate to increase their needed support if and when special circumstances require it.

The $100 hourly rate also provides a mechanism for schools to accelerate the development efforts needed to address specific bug fixes or minor enhancements.

No. Support issues are typically handled through our online Customer Support Portal, and phone, email, and fax communication. In some cases rare cases where the Cooperative Support Team requires access to a customer environment to solve a case, the support team will attempt to obtain remote access to the customer environment and work with the customer until the case is resolved. Those subscribers who require specialized on-site assitance for special projects will be referred to Unicon's Professional Services team.