Support and services
Support from the engineers who build the products, with 24x7 available and teams in the UK, EU and Australasia.
Xi Software's support is provided by the engineers who build the products. There is no first line whose job is to establish whether you have tried turning it off and on again.
That is the difference customers comment on most often, and it is a consequence of being small and specialised rather than a policy we invented.
The support provided by Xi has been tremendous, even with the 5 hour time difference.
David Laneville, Manager of I/S, City of Timmins, Canada
What a maintenance contract includes
Access
Telephone and email support
For the use of any Xi Software product, for reporting faults, requesting enhancements and general enquiries. Email is treated at the same priority as a call.
Resolution
Fixes and workarounds
Faults in the software are worked on by the engineers who wrote it. Where a correction will take time, we aim to provide a workaround in the meantime.
Currency
New releases
Maintenance releases for as long as the contract runs.
Recovery
Licence codes, any time
Licence codes can be regenerated through the licence tool or the customer portal at any time, including when recovering from a system failure.
Hours and coverage
Calls are answered around the clock, and a message is taken outside the hours of your cover. Support is provided during the hours in your agreement: Standard cover is 09:00 to 17:30 UK time on UK working days, and 24x5 and 24x7 cover are available.
Support teams are based in the UK, the EU and Australasia.
How we handle a problem
Every call, email and message gets a log number and an agreed priority.
| Priority | Definition |
|---|---|
| 1 | Critical - the product will not run |
| 2 | Service impairment - part of the product is not working properly |
| 3 | Minimal impact |
If you feel a problem is not being dealt with effectively there is an escalation route to the senior customer service engineer, then the sales director, then the managing director. It is a small company and those are three real people.
Additional services
Available to maintenance customers at the prevailing rate: out-of-hours support beyond the contracted cover, cold standby systems, product training, and Unix and Linux consultancy.
Training
On-site training workshops on any Xi Software product, in three parts.
Part I
For all users
Architecture and components, the core concepts - form types for Xi-Text, variables and conditions for Xi-Batch - submitting work, and changing queued work.
Part II
For system administrators
Queue maintenance, starting and stopping the system, user maintenance, class codes, and restricting user views.
Part III
For the graphical interfaces
Installation and customisation of the GTK3 and Motif interfaces.
We also provide general Unix and Linux consultancy. We have been doing this since 1984.
Self-service
58 articles
Knowledge base
Real operational topics: user priority ranges, load levels, diagnosing variables that do not reach another host, bulk job deletion, backing up and restoring a configuration.
Every release
Release notes
What changed, why it changed, and which releases it applies to.
Under maintenance
Downloads and licensing
Releases, online licence renewal and the product manuals, in the customer portal. Security-fix releases, and the licence codes they need, are available to every licence holder, with or without a support contract.