Using the Support Center

If you experience problems with IBM Cloud®, you have several options to get help with determining the cause of the problem and finding a solution. If you're logged in, you can go directly to the Support center to review your product topics and featured FAQs, open or manage a support case, or search community content. If you can't log in to your account, start a chat by going to the IBM Cloud Support page and clicking Let's talk. Or you can complete the Create an Account, Login, or Billing Request form.

As a classic infrastructure user, you might be familiar with support tickets. Tickets are now called cases in IBM Cloud.

Three different types of support plan are offered. For more information, see Basic, Advanced, and Premium support plans. You can change your current support plan at any time by contacting a IBM Cloud Sales representative.

IBM periodically sends surveys to IBM Cloud customers to get feedback on recent experiences with customer support. The survey focuses on the support quality and the overall experience. IBM management reviews the survey results to improve the support experience.

Getting support

To access the Support Center, click the Help icon > Support center from the IBM Cloud console menu bar.

Review your product topics to get a quick overview of the IBM Cloud documentation that offers common tasks based on what is provisioned on your account. You can search to view topics based on specific products. You can also view and search through Featured FAQs. If you experience problems with IBM Cloud®, create and manage support cases from the Support Center.

The following are the methods that you can find in the Contact support section if you need help:

Use the Create a case page to open a support case.
If you have an Advanced or Premium support plan, you can
- Click Chat with IBM from the Support Center to connect with a support agent.
- Contact support by phone using the number in the Support Center.
If you have technical questions, you can follow a link to ask questions of others in online communities.

Users in the account need assigned access to create, update, search, or view cases. For more information, see Assigning user access for working with support center.

Asking a question

Online communities connect you with other users and provide a wide variety of searchable answers for your IBM Cloud questions. If you don't find an existing answer, ask a new question. The Support Center gives you links to the following communities, in which IBM Cloud development and support teams participate:

IBM Cloud Community
IBM Cloud on Stack Overflow
- To indicate that a technical question on Stack Overflow is about developing apps with the IBM Cloud platform and services, add the ibm-cloud tag to your question.

Getting support for IBM Cloud Dedicated or Bluemix Local

If your account is either IBM Cloud Dedicated or Bluemix Local, support is provided by the IBM Cloud support team.

Open a new case by using the IBM Cloud Support page and click Create a case. Mention that your account is either IBM Cloud Dedicated or Bluemix Local in the Subject and Description of the support case.
If you don't have an IBMid, contact someone in your organization that does, or work with your IBM representative.

Requesting support for resources in the European Union

European Union (EU) support is available to customers who choose to enable the EU supported setting. EU Support is provided 24 hours a day and 7 days a week by engineers that are located in Europe. Global teams provide support at the discretion of the EU support team. Global teams might be contacted, for example, when issues are not resolved by the Advanced Customer Support (ACS) team in the EU, and more expertise is needed.

You can specify that you want EU support for your account if the following criteria are true:

The EU Supported setting is enabled for your account by the master user or account owner. For more information, see Enabling the EU Supported setting.
Your resources are in the appropriate European data center. For more information, see Data centers.
You select the EU supported case level when you open the case.

IBM Cloud platform services that are hosted in the Frankfurt location must be supported by a team that is physically located in Europe.

Enabling the EU Support setting for your account applies to all future cases that you open for issues on any service or data center that is hosted in the EU region. However, if you add resources outside of an EU data center or Frankfurt location, issues for those resources are not necessarily handled by a support team in Europe. Any cases that are opened before you enable the EU Supported setting aren't affected.

IBM generally available service

Support is provided for problems that are determined to be a defect for services or container images that are generally available (GA) and provided by IBM. The case is addressed based on the severity that you assign. For more information, see Case severity and initial response times.

You can change your current support plan at any time by contacting a IBM Cloud Sales representative.

IBM beta service

IBM releases services or container images that are classified as beta releases. These services are in a trial stage of development and they aren't production-ready. A beta release helps IBM development and marketing teams to assess the value of the service in the market. This assessment enables teams to make updates before the service is released as a GA service or container image.

If the root cause analysis determines the issue is a defect in the beta service or container image, IBM isn't required to provide a fix. Additionally, the case is assigned the appropriate 3 or 4 severity level.

Third-party services

Third-party services are provided by vendors outside of IBM. These services are provided by individual software entities, IBM Business Partners, or independent software vendors (ISV).

Support for third-party services is provided by the service provider. This includes third-party products that are deployed by using the IBM Cloud Provider Plug-in for Terraform. If the root cause analysis determines that the issue is a defect in a third-party service, IBM isn't required to provide a fix. However, IBM shares analysis with the third-party service provider, if needed, and can work through Marketplace with the third-party service to help solve the issue.

Open source or community service

Open source or community services are provided by open source communities outside of IBM.

If the root cause analysis determines that the issue is a defect in an open source or community service, IBM isn't required to provide a fix. IBM closes the case and refers you to the community or forum for assistance. You can get community assistance for technical issues through Stack Overflow.