Feb 17, 2023•Knowledge
- Overview of the Severity levels.
- Choosing the right severity for a case.
- Responding to customer requests to increase the severity of the cases.
Overview of the severity level
Infoblox Support Entitlements permit four different severity levels to choose from (Severity 1-4; Severity 1 being the highest).
Although it is human tendency to create a support case with the highest severity, the acceptance of those choices is broadly based on the following factors:
(a) Business Impact
(b) Work Outage
(c) Number of Users Affected
(d) Production / UAT environment
The option of changing the severity level of a support case (from the one chosen at the time of creation) exists. Kindly work with the support engineer managing the case for this.
Infoblox Support would be clarifying the impact/business, the technical importance of the case created, and the severity selected. This is required for maintaining accountability to our customers (by creating consistency in prioritizing cases with different severity levels).
This will be informed during the Initial response which involves – Initial analysis / Remediation action / Additional information request, Relevant technical update.
Cases within a particular severity level are attended to on a first-come, first-served basis. Severity 1 case may be processed out of turn. We at Infoblox maintain metrics and procedures to minimize the resolution times for cases created of all severities.
Although it is human tendency to create a support case with the highest severity, the acceptance of those choices is broadly based on the following factors:
(a) Business Impact
(b) Work Outage
(c) Number of Users Affected
(d) Production / UAT environment
The option of changing the severity level of a support case (from the one chosen at the time of creation) exists. Kindly work with the support engineer managing the case for this.
Infoblox Support would be clarifying the impact/business, the technical importance of the case created, and the severity selected. This is required for maintaining accountability to our customers (by creating consistency in prioritizing cases with different severity levels).
This will be informed during the Initial response which involves – Initial analysis / Remediation action / Additional information request, Relevant technical update.
Cases within a particular severity level are attended to on a first-come, first-served basis. Severity 1 case may be processed out of turn. We at Infoblox maintain metrics and procedures to minimize the resolution times for cases created of all severities.
Choosing the right severity level.
The following provides a broad definition of the different severities.Severity 1 (Only for production systems; Not for development issues):
- Complete loss of service, or a significant feature completely unavailable. No known workaround.
- Critical functions of your application are not available. No known workaround.
- Unable to access/use the product. Public communication is required.
- Business risk – Revenue/development affected.
- Impact – Multiple users or all users.
- Urgency – Potential to create extended downtime.
- Security – Was compromised, and data integrity was affected.
Severity 2: (Only for production systems; Not for development issues):
- Product bug or service issue: requires a quick response or fixes. The workaround may be available.
- Degraded service: Intermittent issues and reduced quality of service. The workaround may be available.
- Business impact: Important functions unavailable or with reduced productivity.
- Impact: Multiple / Single users with system down / repetitive issues.
- Security: Vulnerability suspected.
- Post upgrade: Application stops/impacted after an upgrade.
- Documentation: Integrity issues detected.
Severity 3: (For both production & UAT systems)
- Important functions of the application are impaired or degraded but do not need an instant response.
- Non-critical functions of your application are behaving abnormally. These do not cause major problems for customers and can take time to resolve.
- Require an answer to a time-sensitive development question (with the potential to block ongoing work).
- For Product questions, feature requests, and development issues.
- To report compliance issues.
- To inform of software defects (bugs) when performing certain minor actions.
- For answers to issues related to integration, installation, and configuration.
- For Planned events, with predictable turnaround times.
- Requests for training.
Responding to customer requests on severity cases.
Infoblox Support may increase the Severity level if the situation is deemed more critical/urgent than originally reported.
For Severities 2 - 4, Support reserves the right to downgrade the severity as the case progresses.
Severities may also be downgraded if other high-priority tasks need to be attended to (if the negative factors presented in the case are not increasing and can be fixed later).
Cases with issues that do not require a fix or workaround (depending on the customer’s need) are likely to be downgraded too.
