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Revision as of 18:55, 21 October 2011

Technical support service

What are Qualiteam's technical support services?

GENERAL SUPPORT SERVICES OVERVIEW

The technical support services are provided on the basis of commercialincident-based support system and evaluated with "support points".

To be subscribed for the support services, you should have support points in your balance. Support points can be purchased in the 'Buy products/services'section of your HelpDesk account.

It is recommended to replenish your support points balance beforehand, and keep it positive to ensure the service continuity. The recommended balance is 120 points, it is usually enough to troubleshoot 2 incidents or 4 configuration issues; or 1 incident or 2 configuration issues in "hot-rush" mode.

If the investigation reveals that the problem you report to our support team is a bug in the X-Cart software, no points will be taken from your account for the issue investigation, and you will receive a patchfor free.

The points remaining in your account can be used for your following support request in the future, or refunded according to our money-back policy.

X-CART HOSTING SUPPORT

All technical issues related to the X-Cart hosting are solved for free by our hosting team. However, issues related to your X-Cart installation (for example, X-Cart configuration assistance, X-Cart usage and simple code modification advices, various problems/incidents solving, etc.) are under consideration of our X-Cart support team (see General Support Services Overview).

SUPPORT SERVICES WARRANTIES

If it turns out that the issue reported is related/caused by the work previously done by our support engineers and which you paid for, the issue will be resolved free of charge for you, and no points will be taken from you account for such issue troubleshooting.

CUSTOM DEVELOPMENT BASIC SUPPORT & WARRANTIES

As for the basic support and warranties related to the Software Modifications implemented by our company developers, please read here:

If you find any issue related to the Software Modifications implemented by our company developers, feel free to contact our project managers directly in the corresponding project's ticket. If the modification is still under warranty, the issue will be resolved for free. You will be also provided with basic support related to the modification during the warranty period.

See also:

How do I subscribe for Qualiteam's technical support services?

To subscribe for the support services, you should purchase support points in the'Buy products/services'section of your HelpDesk account. For more information please refer thissection.

Can Qualiteam staff resolve my issues?

Read about Qualiteam support services at:

What are Technical Support Service Terms of Use?

See: Qualiteam's Technical Support Service Terms of Use.

Why do I have no support services for my X-Cart license?

The technical support services are provided on the basis of commercialincident-based support system and evaluated with "support points".

When purchasing an X-Cart license, customers can choose whether to subscribe for support services (purchase license including support points) or get a discounted price, which does not have the technical support services (support points) included.

Here is the detailed information on our pricing:

If you are a newbie with the X-Cart software, you may need assistance with setting up your first X-Cart-based store. In this case, we recommend our customers to subscribe for the support services. Our qualified and skilled support engineers are always ready to help.

If an X-Cart license is purchased without support points included, the technical support services are not available. All your further tech support requests will require purchasing support points.

To enable the technical support services for your account, feel free to replenish your support points balance in the 'Buy products/services'section of your HelpDesk account.

You are also welcome to use our publicly available on-line resources:

See also:

What are support points?

See: Qualiteam.com: Incident-based support

Can I refund my support points?

See: Qualiteam.com: Moneyback policy

Do my support points expire?

Your points will expire if not spent during 2 years.

How many points are charged for a support issue (incident)?

Note: The information below is related to the old incident-based support system which is currently replaced with the new subscription-based support system

We estimated how much time is usually devoted to different issues and classified them by categories. Depending on the issue category, each ticket costs certain amount of tech support points. The approximate list of categories and their price is following:

Issue category Points Description
General assistance
General questions 0 General questions: explanations of our policies such as support-point system basics, ticket processing rules, etc; description of our services, assistance on HelpDesk and forum usage, and so on.
Technical support consulting & assistance
Product warranty issues 0 Product waranty issues: bugs revealing and further providing of patches
Consultation on Software features 0 Advice on basic usage of X-Cart/LiteCommerce features
Assistance on configuration/modification 30 Assistance/consultation on software configuration issues or basic features/design modification. Available if the changes take less than 30 minutes to elaborate. Does not involve any changes on client's server.
Incident solving 60 Troubleshooting involving investigation on client's store and/or server
Incident solving with protracted debugging 120 Troubleshooting involving investigation on client's server, code debugging and protracted debug data monitoring
Other issues Upon request Additional services not included into the list. Usually cost more that the specified tasks, therefore discussed with clients first.
3rd party software
CMS support from 90 Currently we are supporting the following software:
  • WordPress
  • Drupal
  • Joomla!

We will be happy to help you with the installation, assistance on setting them up or troubleshooting. If you need an assistance on open-source 3rd party software (not even CMS), which is not listed above, feel free to contact us anyway. We will do our best to help you. Also, it will help us to understand what else we should add to the list of supporting software.

SEO analysis and enchancements
SEO analysis from 100 Check of an online store's readiness for indexing by major search engines
Installation of X-Cart SEO enchancements 60-2040 X-Cart SEO enchancements: SEO-friendly URLs, custom TITLE and META tags for products, categories and static pages, robots.txt configuration, XML sitemap creation
Google Analytics setup 60 / hour Google Analytics installation service for X-Cart/LiteCommerce stores
Note: The issue costs are approximate, as the ticket rate may change during the problem solving.

While the problem is being solved, the initial ticket price may be changed. For example, if additional investigation is required, the rate will be increased. But if a problem turns out to be a software bug, no points will charged for the support ticket according to our bug-fixing policy.

If you think you were charged incorrectly, we are ready to reconsider the ticket cost.
Note: The cost of HotRush issues is doubled.

See also:

What are issue categories?

Issue category Description
General questions General questions: explanations of our policies such as support-point system basics, ticket processing rules, etc; description of our services, assistance on HelpDesk and forum usage, and so on.
Product warranty issues Product waranty issues: bugs revealing and further providing of patches.
Consultation on Software features Advice on basic usage of X-Cart/LiteCommerce features.
Assistance on configuration/modification Assistance/consultation on software configuration issues or basic features/design modification. Available if the changes take less than 30 minutes to elaborate. Does not involve any changes on client's server.
Incident solving Troubleshooting involving investigation on client's store and/or server.
Incident solving with protracted debugging Troubleshooting involving investigation on client's server, code debugging and protracted debug data monitoring.
Other issues Additional services not included into the list. Usually cost more that the specified tasks, therefore discussed with clients first.

How to contact tech support engineers?

To contact Qualiteam staff, use 'Communication center' section of your account. All your tickets and our replies are organized and stored for future reference. For detailed help please refer to Using your Qualiteam Account page.

What is turnaround time for my ticket?

Standard support queries are guaranteed to be processed in 1 business day turnaround period. HotRush requests are processed out of turn. You may also expedite resolving of an issue reported as a standard support ticket or learn about its progress by contacting us (via the Helpdesk or by phone).

What is support team's working time?

Our working time is 9:00-24:00 (Monday-Friday), 10:00-18:00 (Saturday-Sunday) by our local time. Our local time is GMT+4.

See also:

What is HotRush service?

Taking into account that sometimes X-Cart users encounter such issues that require immediate assistance and one business day reply might not be an option, we introduced another type of technical support: HotRush support. This service is to address urgent problems. On submitting a support ticket you will be offered to mark your inquiry as urgent (using a special check-box"HotrRush"), i.e. to be processed right after the request is posted.

When you create a hot-rush ticket during our working hours, it is processed immediately, our support engineers are obliged to respond within 1 hour. If the hot-rush issue is created during non-working hours of the support department, it is processed in the beginning of the next working day, within an hour as well.

Note: Usually, it takes about 1 hour to respond to hot-rush tickets. However, the response time also depends on the replication process between our servers, which usually takes 15-30 minutes.

Our working time is 9:00-24:00 (Monday-Friday), 10:00-18:00 (Saturday-Sunday) by our local time. Our local time is GMT+4 in summer and GMT+3 in winter.

The rate of the urgent tickets is doubled. The service is available only when your technical support balance is positive (above zero).

You can uncheck the "HotRush" check-box while the ticket has status 'Submitted' (before the ticket's status is changed to'Assigned'). Also you have the right to withdraw your HotRush request (maximum 3 times) for any reasons while the ticket has status 'Assigned' or 'In progress' (before the ticket's status is changed to 'Closed').

Note: The service is available for requests to the Technical support department alone. We remove off the high priority status from the ticket in the following cases:
  • a question relates to a customization project (the ticket is directed to the Development department);
  • a posted issue turns out to be a bug in the default software behavior therefore requires extra time to be solved;
  • other general questions concerning work of the company, usage of the HelpDesk accounts and Forums, sales and licensing issues.

See also:

How do I withdraw my HotRush request?

In the "Ticket properties" section, click "HotRush request withdrawal" link.

Note: The right to withdraw HotRush request is limited - you can do it maximum 3 times.



What is LiveChat service?

See: Qualiteam.com: HotRush service

What are warranties for the X-Cart software?

See: X-Cart Software license agreement and Is Product Warranty limited?

Is Product Warranty limited?

Product warranty is limited and lasts for 1 (one) year since the last purchase of any product or service from our company.

Note: No warranty is provided under the terms of theEvaluation license.

Does Qualiteam provide bug-fixes (patches) for free?

Bug-fixes (patches) are provided free of charge during a limited product warranty period, which lasts for one year since the last purchase of any product or service from our company. When the limited product warranty period is over, all issues are resolved within the bounds of the regular prepaid support services.

Note: No warranty is provided under the terms of theEvaluation license.

See also:

What is Qualiteam's bug-fixing policy?

We provide bug-fixes (patches)for free, and do not charge customers for the task to investigate and reveal a bug. However, customers are supposed to be able to install patches themselves - either using the build-in patch utility, or do it manually using the instructions provided in our Knowledge Base:

Basically patches can be easily installed via X-Cart admin back-end, as described in the Knowledge base. However in some cases patches require manual installation. For example:

  • Your X-Cart files differ from default ones, as they were modified in some way, for example:
    • you have some custom modification in your X-Cart store (since X-Cart is an open-source software, each customer can modify the software to meet his/her personal needs).
    • you have some other patches manually applied in the past.
  • The patch released for a specific issue is created for the software, in which some other (previous) patches need to be applied first to fix other non-related issues.
  • File permissions set for your X-Cart installation files do not allow to apply patches via X-Cart admin back-end.

In the above cases, patches would require manual installation, and it would be a time consuming task. Thus, if you need us to apply a patch to your store, it's treated as a separate task for support points. Besides you can apply patches manually by yourself using the instructions provided in the Knowledge base.

Please also note that according to the Software license agreement: 

5. WARRANTIES, DISCLAIMERS AND EXCLUSIVE REMEDIES
...
5.2 This Agreement does not obligate the Author to perform the installation of any corrections, bug fixes, patches or
other updates to the Software licensed hereunder that is installed on your server.

As an alternative to applying separate patches (bug-fixes), you can wait for the next software release, and then upgrade your X-Cart store. All the patches relevant to the previous software version are included into the next release.

See also:

What is 'bug'?

A software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways.

Generally, if the Software, running in the environment that meets the Software's System Requirements, does not operate as described in the Software User Manual - it is considered to be aBug.

See also:

What do 'obsolete' and 'out of guarantee' versions mean?

While creating a support ticket in your 'Communication center', you see 'Obsolete' and 'Out of guarantee' versions of the software on the 'Product version:' drop-down list:

  • 'Obsolete' means the version is not the latest one, although it is still supported. So, if you find a bug in an obsolete version, you'll be provided with afree patch for fixing it. As a rule, this is not the latest version of the latest branch.
  • 'Out of guarantee' means that if you find a new bug in such version, the only solution are going to have is to upgrade to a newer version of the software. No bug-fixing patches are provided for out-of-guarantee versions. As a rule, this is not the latest version of an earlier branch.

Any version, released earlier than 1 year ago, is considered 'Out of guarantee'.

Nevertheless, we provide support for all versions of the software, so please feel free to contact us via your HelpDesk account, should you require any assistance.

See also:

Does Qualiteam provide security patches for out-of-guarantee versions?

Generally, all known security issues related to the X-Cart/LiteCommerce software have been addressed in the latest versions of the software. For the older versions, the corresponding security patches are available in the "File Area" section of your personal Helpdesk at the following locations:

  • X-Cart -> X-Cart supporting files for prev versions -> {choose your X-Cart version} -> Updates and patches
  • LiteCommerce -> LC supporting files for prev versions -> {choose your LiteCommerce version} -> Updates and patches

If a new security issue affecting the X-Cart/LiteCommerce software is found, we will release new security hot-fixes for the latest versions of the software.

Besides, in each case we make a decision on releasing new security patches for every out-of-guarantee version affected by the security issue. Our decision depends on the severity of the security issue found.

In case the security issue found is already addressed in a newer version of the software, the possible solutions are:

  • Upgrade to the newer version of the software which has the security issue fixed.
  • Apply the corresponding security patch to your specific software version.

Security patches can be applied in the context of theTechnical Support services for support points, or in the context of the Custom web development services.

Please feel free to contact us via your HelpDesk account, should you require any assistance.

What is Qualiteam's policy about the updates/patches related to changes/bugs in 3rd party APIs/software integrated with the X-Cart software?

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