Support for Enterprises

Dedicated Plans Service Description

Published: October 2011

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Support for Enterprises Service Description (Dedicated Plans) | October 2011

Contents
Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................ 4 Document Scope............................................................................................................................................................................. 4 Shared Support Responsibilities ...................................................................................................................... 5 Customer Responsibilities ........................................................................................................................................................... 5 Microsoft Responsibilities ........................................................................................................................................................... 5 Microsoft Support Components ...................................................................................................................... 7 Self-Service Tools ............................................................................................................................................................................ 7 Customer Portal ............................................................................................................................................................................... 7 Secure File Store (ITAR-support plans) .................................................................................................................................. 7 Technical Support Team............................................................................................................................................................... 7 Availability...................................................................................................................................................................................... 8 Severity Levels and Response Times ...................................................................................................................................... 8 Appendix A: Aligning Microsoft and Customer Service Desk ..................................................................11 Phase 1: Discovery and Planning ........................................................................................................................................ 11 Phase 2: Delivery ....................................................................................................................................................................... 11 Phase 3: Operate ....................................................................................................................................................................... 12

Support for Enterprises Service Description (Dedicated Plans) | October 2011

Introduction
The Microsoft Office 365 support organization is committed to helping customers quickly and efficiently resolve service-related issues that users might encounter when using Microsoft Office 365 for enterprises services. Microsoft Office 365 support activities include the following: Help customers align their service desk with Microsoft Office 365 support. The Office 365 support team provides training and guidance that enables the customer's service desk staff to align with Microsoft Office 365 support services and support their end users. Respond to issues escalated by the customer's service desk. The Office 365 support team helps resolve service-related issues that cannot be resolved by the customer's service desk staff. Record, track, and communicate support issue status. The Office 365 support team that is working on escalated issues provides, records, and communicates the status of each issue to the customer until the issue is resolved, service is restored, or the incident is closed. Improve customer satisfaction with support services . The Office 365 support team is continually working to improve customer satisfaction by monitoring and evaluating support service metrics and internal processes.

Document Scope
This document provides an overview of the support services provided for customers subscribed to Office 365 dedicated plans and customers subscribed to Office 365 plans that support United States government International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).* These plans include the following Office 365 service offerings: Microsoft Exchange Online Microsoft SharePoint Online Microsoft Lync Online

The document also outlines the roles and responsibilities that both the customer and Microsoft have in resolving service-related issues that users might encounter when using Office 365 service offerings. * Office 365 for enterprises dedicated plans and ITAR-support plans are delivered from a Microsoft hosting environment where each customer has their own dedicated data center hardware.

Support for Enterprises Service Description (Dedicated Plans) | October 2011

Shared Support Responsibilities

Microsoft Office 365 service offerings have established Microsoft as a global leader in the delivery of messaging and collaboration cloud services. This success comes in part from making effective and responsive support services an integral component of Office 365 cloud service offerings. When customers invest in Microsoft Office 365, they expect that the support associated with it will be equal to if not better than the support they are accustomed to from their on-premises environment. Office 365 customers will succeed in obtaining the support environment they expect by having a clear understanding of the roles and responsibilities of both their own organization and Microsoft.

Customer Responsibilities
The Office 365 customer is responsible for providing support to their end users. The customer must staff a centralized service desk with agents who will handle calls directly from customer end users who are seeking support for Office 365 services that they use. The service desk may be staffed by call center staff, on-site technicians, or subject matter experts. The customer's service desk operation may also include an internal support issue escalation process that is followed before escalating issues to Microsoft. The customer service desk is responsible for the following: Troubleshoot issuesusing Microsoft-provided support and diagnostic tools when applicable for problem determination and issue resolution prior to escalating issues to Microsoft. Resolve as many issues as possible, including but not limited to: o o o o o o Issues that can be resolved by reference to provided "how-to" articles and FAQs. Software configuration. Client connectivity. Client desktop support. Service availability issues within the customer's span of control. Performance issues within the customer's span of control.

Microsoft Responsibilities
Microsoft Office 365 support teams are the escalation point for one centralized customer service desk. Microsoft is responsible for the following: Assist customers in aligning their service desk operations with Microsoft Office 365 support. The Office 365 support team provides planning and other assistance that enables the customer's service desk staff to incorporate support for Office 365 service offerings into its existing operations. (See Appendix A.) Respond to issues that escalate from the customer's service desk. The Office 365 support team helps resolve service-related issues that cannot be resolved by the customer's service desk staff. Record, track, and communicate support issue status. The Office 365 support team that is working on escalated issues provides, records, and communicates the status of each issue to the customer until the issue is resolved, service is restored, or the incident is closed.

Support for Enterprises Service Description (Dedicated Plans) | October 2011

Improve customer satisfaction with support services . The Office 365 support team is continually working to improve customer satisfaction by monitoring and evaluating support service metrics and internal processes.

Note When customers purchase Office 365 services through a reseller partner, the reseller partner, instead of Microsoft, will provide support services directly to the customer.

Support for Enterprises Service Description (Dedicated Plans) | October 2011

Microsoft Support Components

If a customer ever encounters problems with Office 365 services, Microsoft is ready to help. The Office 365 support teams' goal is to help customers resolve technical problems rapidly and efficiently. As described in the sections that follow, Microsoft support includes several self-service tools and troubleshooting resources in addition to around-the-clock assisted technical support.

Self-Service Tools
Microsoft provides a number of self-service tools to enable a customer service desk to configure operational behavior, perform administrative tasks and resolve troubleshooting issues for a variety of service features. Customer Management Portal (CMP). The CMP enables customers to perform common administrative tasks and troubleshooting for mailboxes in the Exchange Online environment. Blackberry Administration Service (BAS). BAS is a web-based administrative console for customers using Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) to manage Blackberry devices that are connected to the Exchange Online service. Customer service desk can perform many administrative, troubleshooting and reporting tasks. Exchange Control Panel (ECP). ECP allows customer service desk to perform actions such as remotely wiping mobile devices, configuring MailTips, and searching mailboxes across the organization. Remote PowerShell. This remote command line connection allows for common configuration and read only tasks to be performed without escalation to Microsoft.

Customer Portal
The Customer Portal is available to customers and is used by Microsoft to provide customers with a single location for support documentation including troubleshooting guides, knowledgebase articles, support reporting, and ticket status. Escalation templates, service desk training documentation, and other tools are also available to customers on the portal.

Secure File Store (ITAR-support plans)

To comply with federal data security requirements (FISMA/CUI and ITAR), a Secure File Store is provided as a secure location to exchange files between authorized Microsoft support team personnel and the customer service desk if needed. The Secure File Store is deployed on a customized SharePoint portal designed specifically for this purpose and it resides within the Microsoft security boundary.

Technical Support Team

The Office 365 support team is comprised of support engineers who are trained and certified in Microsoft cloud services. Customers unable to resolve issues with the available self-service resources can escalate to Microsoft support. Common technical support issues escalated to Microsoft include: Restoring data or mailbox reconnections Mail delivery Difficulty activating users on mobile devices Unless accepted by Microsoft, support incidents that relate to the following causes are not covered:
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Support for Enterprises Service Description (Dedicated Plans) | October 2011

Customer networking infrastructure Customer hardware Microsoft on-premises software that is not part of the Office 365 service offering Non-Microsoft software Customer operational procedures Customer architecture Customer IT service management process errors, system configuration errors, or human error

Availability
The Office 365 support team is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Support services are available in English only.

Severity Levels and Response Times

A service request specific to a support issue is created when a support issue is escalated from the customer's service desk and accepted by the Office 365 support team. In the service request management process, each escalated issue is assigned a unique service request number for tracking purposes. The customer receives status updates about the service request throughout the service request life cycle via email or telephone. Office 365 support engineers are able to resolve the majority of issues and problems that they are assigned. Issues and problems that cannot be resolved by the support engineers are escalated to additional resolver groups. If an issue is escalated to an additional resolver group, support engineers are responsible for customer communications.

Escalation Severity
Microsoft prioritizes support incidents consistent with the severity level reasonably determined by the customer in accordance with the definitions shown in Table 1. The customer may request a change in severity level at any time through the life of the support incident by contacting the Office 365 support team. Table 1 details the responsiveness and ongoing communications targets based on the severity of a given incident. Table 1. Service Request Severity Assignments Severity Level Definition
Catastrophic business impact in which a service, system, network, server, or critical application is down, impacting production or profitability. Multiple users or customers lose complete functionality of all services.

Initial Response Goal

Microsoft Communication Goal

Update customer every one hour or via live conference bridge; customer updates Microsoft every hour or via live conference bridge.

1 Catastrophic

15 minutes

Support for Enterprises Service Description (Dedicated Plans) | October 2011

Severity Level

Definition
Critical business impact in which service, production, operations, or development deadlines are severely impacted, or where there will be a severe impact on production or profitability. Multiple customers, users, or services are partially affected. Moderate business impact. Significant problem where use of the service is proceeding, but in an impaired fashion. Single user, customer, or service is partially affected. Minimum business impact. Important issue, but does not have significant current service or productivity impact for the customer. Single user is experiencing partial impact. Used for design change requests (DCRs), feature requests, research activities, and similar items.

Initial Response Goal

Microsoft Communication Goal

A Critical

1 hour

Update customer every two hours; customer updates Microsoft every two hours.

B Urgent

2 hours

Update customer every day.

C Important

4 hours

Update customer every three days.

D Advisory

N/A

Update customer as necessary or agreed upon.

Severity 1 and Severity A Incident Response Management

Microsoft uses a formal process for responding to Severity 1 and Severity A incidents that affect service availability. The goal of this process is to minimize service outage time, and success is reflected in performance against the service availability service-level agreements (SLAs). Microsoft classifies incidents that have the potential to impact service availability as Severity 1 or Severity A incidents (see Table 1). If a service outage occurs, information regarding the outage is gathered and sent to stakeholders, operations teams, key technology contacts, and impacted users. As part of its incidence response, the Office 365 support organization takes the following steps: Sends an outage notification to the customer. If it is determined that Microsoft needs to resolve the incident, the impact of the incident is appropriately reviewed and assessed. Within the initial response goal described in Table 1, the Office 365 incident management team sends a notification to the audience that is designated by the customer, covering details of the incident, its impact, and an expected time of resolution. Additional communications are sent every hour (or two hours for Severity A incidents) for the duration of the incident, as scheduled by the Microsoft incident management team, or whenever new and relevant information is available. Resolves the incident. The Office 365 support team continues to work on the incident until a resolution is in place or a work-around is established. The Office 365 support team may need to engage the customer over the phone, by email, or through a conference call or bridge call, to assist in troubleshooting or to validate that the service is back to normal operation. If a bridge call is required, Microsoft provides a phone number and participant code. After the resolution is validated, the Office 365 support team sends an outage resolution alert to the customer.
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Support for Enterprises Service Description (Dedicated Plans) | October 2011

Contributes to a post-incident review document. A post-incident review (PIR) document is created and published for all incidents that impact service-level availability and are resolved by Microsoft. The PIR is delivered to the customer by a Microsoft Services Resourcetypically the customers Technical Account Manager (TAM) or deployment consultantaccording to the terms outlined in the Service Management Service Description document. The PIR report includes a summary of the incident, a list of applicable action items, and the root cause (if known). Customers may request additional detail through the Services Resource. Requests for follow-up meetings with the Services Resource are evaluated on a per-incident basis.

Support for Enterprises Service Description (Dedicated Plans) | October 2011

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Appendix A: Aligning Microsoft and Customer Service Desk

The Office 365 teams work with the customer's support organization to develop processes and procedures to support Microsoft Office 365 services at the customer's organization. The alignment process typically occurs in three phases.

Phase 1: Discovery and Planning

The first phase is completed by performing discovery and planning sessions that clearly define and establish the support objectives, goals, and deliverables for the customer. Participants in these sessions include the Microsoft Deployment Project Manager (DPM), Microsoft Release Program Manager (RPM), and customer management personnel who have responsibility for their service desk infrastructure and incident management. The Discovery and Planning phase for the customer's service desk alignment requires the following: Understanding customer business needs. Discussion of service desk planning and input-based support requirements. Collecting and validating the range of customer information that is required for support onboarding. Surveying the services and systems that the customer currently uses for providing day-to-day user support and for handling incidents, problems, known errors, and processes for change management. Discussion of the incident management process and activities. Discussion of the change management process and activities. Identifying training needs for the customers support team and service desk staff. Aligning the customer's service desk to the Office 365 support service framework within the Service Ready deployment milestone.

To properly address these requirements and track project deliverables, weekly workstream meetings are scheduled between the Office 365 support team and the customer's key support service stakeholders. These meetings help to manage expectations, maintain support for the project, and drive conditions of satisfaction. A project plan is developed and tracked throughout this process to ensure that clear timelines for each work item are completed before the pilot support phase.

Phase 2: Delivery
The Delivery phase involves setting up and aligning the customers service desk to work with the Office 365 support infrastructure, and then testing the delivery of support processes for Office 365 services. The Office 365 support team and the customer complete the following service desk requirements: Integrate customer data into the Office 365 support teams infrastructure. Provision and validate Office 365 support resources and tools. Educate and train customer's service desk trainers to the required level for Office 365 Implement service desk processes, procedures, services, resources, roles, and responsibilities. Coach customers service desk personnel through the steps for escalating a test break/fix incident to Office 365 support team to validate their ability to escalate, de-escalate, and close service requests. Declare the status of Service Ready for all deployed Office 365 services and support functionality. Develop a plan with key stakeholders that address the Microsoft and customer ongoing relationship and sets expectations.
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Support for Enterprises Service Description (Dedicated Plans) | October 2011

The delivery phase is finalized by signing off on Service Ready acceptance and transitioning to the Operate phase, which is managed by the DPM and the Support Service Manager (SSM).

Phase 3: Operate
The Operate phase occurs while a customer is deploying and piloting Office 365 services to a subset of its end users. The length of the pilot depends on the number of services being deployed. During this phase, the Office 365 SSM and DPM collaborate with the customer and initiate the support processes that have been developed. This phase provides the time to solidify the support partnership and manage the following activities that come under the support framework. Issue detection, recording and escalation Issue classification and initial support Issue investigation and diagnosis Issue resolution and recovery Issue closure Issue monitoring and communication Ownership of tasks that are a result of the Operate phase

During this phase, the SSM is focused on customer relationship management, driving the efficiency and effectiveness of the incident management process, producing management information, and acting as the liaison for Office 365 support team and the other teams.

Support for Enterprises Service Description (Dedicated Plans) | October 2011

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