Defining your support experience

Selecting your product's support provider

Select your product's support provider to add the necessary details that are associated with the third-party or community provider types.

Third-party products

Provided by individual service entities, IBM Business Partners, or independent service vendors (ISV). Support for third-party products is provided by the third-party provider. If the root cause analysis determines that the issue is a defect in a third-party product, IBM Cloud isn't required to provide a fix. However, IBM Cloud shares analysis with the third-party provider, if needed, and can work with the third-party provider to help solve the issue.

Community products

Provided by open source communities. If a root cause analysis determines that a support issue is a defect in an open source or community product, IBM Cloud isn't required to provide a fix. IBM Cloud closes the case and refers users to the community or forum for assistance. Users can get community assistance for technical issues through Stack Overflow.

Use the following steps to select your product's support provider.

1. In the IBM Cloud console, click the Navigation Menu icon > Partner Center > My products.
2. Select the product that you're onboarding, and click Support.
3. Select your product's support provider.
   1. If you select Community, provide the support statement and the URL for the support community, and select the languages in which support is provided.
   2. If you select Third-party, use the following steps to complete the necessary fields.

Providing your product's support information

If your product has third-party or IBM Cloud provided support, you need to add at least one support detail. The details that you provide are displayed on your product details page in the catalog. At minimum, support must be available 8 hours a day, Monday through Friday. The recommended support coverage is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year.

Don't add details that have personal information, for example, personal emails.

Use the following steps to add support details for your product:

1. From the Partner Center Support tab, provide your product's support statement.

   For the support statement, describe the provided support for your product and Add any additional support information that isn't provided in the other fields.

2. Click Add support details, provide your support availability, then click Save to add each detail. You must add at least 1 support detail for your product.

   Table 1. Support details

   Support detail	Description
   Email	Your company email where users can contact support.
   Chat	The URL for where users can get direct contact with a support representative.
   Slack	The URL for the company Slack channel.
   Phone number	The company phone number where users can get direct contact with a support representative.
   Other	Any additional information, email, URL, or phone number that you want to provide.

3. After you add all of your product's support details, provide the required URLs for your product.

4. Add all locations where you provide support for your product.

5. Add your escalation information. Do not use a personal phone number or email.

6. Provide your support contact information. This information is for internal use only and is not displayed on the product details page.

Updating your product's support information

If your product is already published to the IBM Cloud catalog, but you need to update your support details, you can easily do that by editing your published information and requesting an approval for them.

To update your support information, complete the following steps:

1. In the IBM Cloud console, click the Navigation Menu icon > Partner Center > My products.

2. Select your product and click Support.

3. Click the Edit icon for the field that you want to update.

4. Click Save.

   You can revert to the published state of your support information by clicking Revert changes.

5. Click Request approval when you're ready with your updates. The approval can take at least five business days.

6. After your request is reviewed and approved by the IBM Cloud team, publish your changes by clicking Publish approved changes.

   Any changes that you don't publish are deleted after 60 days.

You can toggle between the updated and the published state of your support information. Toggle the switch on to review your updates, and toggle the switch off for the published state.

Next steps

Add variations to your deployable architecture.