1. Introduction

This document contains information about how tickets are processed, time frames you can expect responses, how tickets are categorised, priorisation, and terms and conditions.

 

2. Ticket Process

 

2.1 General

A ticket may be assigned to many different people and have different statuses in its lifetime, but the main flow from creation to closure can be generalized. In general, tickets will follow the processing listed below:

1. New
2. Open
3. Pending
4. Solved
5. Closed

New

An email has been sent to support@business-online.no, or a ticket has been raised from the web form and a ticket is generated in our ticket system.

 

Open

A case worker has been assigned to the ticket and initiates work within ticket category time frames. Scope of the work is clear and the development team adds the ticket to the queue. Once picked up, it will go through the sub-statuses Development or Queued for fixing before it is released.

 

Pending

When a Ticket is set in the status of Pending this means that our staff will not be able to proceed without customer interaction. This status is usually used when a question is raised in relation to design or in the case when a quotation has been sent for approval.

 

Solved

Work is completed and has gone through the final stages of QC before being closed. If something is found that deviates from closing acceptance criteria, the ticket will be moved back to Development or Queued for fixing dependant on its nature.

 

Closed

The final stage of the ticket processing is closure of the ticket. A ticket is considered closed when all activities related to it are completed, issues that cannot be solved, or customer has requested it.

 

Detailed Status Overview

Below you'll find a table containing all statuses a ticket may be set to, these sub-queue statuses are used for internal indications on where in a ticket is within its lifecycle.

 

Status name	Sub-queue status	Processing type	Description
New	New	Created	Default status of all new tickets. Ticket is awaiting assignment to a case worker
Open	Open	Evaluation	A ticket is moved to this status when a case worker has been assigned the ticket.
Open	Elaborating scope	Evaluation	Elaborating scope of work
Open	Estimate	Evaluation	The scope is clear, and the ticket responsible will initiate estimation.
Pending	Pending	Evaluation	The estimate or clarification has been sent to the requestor for evaluation.
Open	Queued for fixing	Development	The ticket is moved to the development queue. Response time depends on priority.
Open	Development	Development	The ticket is moved to development.
Open	Released from Development	Released	Development is completed and deployed. The ticket is moved to Quality Check.
Open	Monitoring	Released	The ticket is set to a dormant status for solutions that require monitoring or reported issues that could not be reproduced.
Solved	Solved	Released	The ticket is released to the customer for verification.
Closed	Closed	Closed	The task is considered completed.

 

3. Ticket Types and Priorities

Tickets registered are handled with different types and priority. The priority is mainly set based on the urgency literally described in the ticket, or evaluated by the ticket handler.

 

3.1 Priority Definitions

Urgent	Resources stop current work to start working on this. NCR is created and the case is worked until closed.
High	The ticket is handled when the next available resource has completed their current task.
Normal	The ticket follows the standard ticket queue.
Low	The ticket is down prioritised and taken whenever a resource has no other activities.

 

3.2 Ticket Type Prioritisation

Tickets identified as «Problem» or «Task» have different handling times than «Incident» or «Question» tickets. This is due to the urgent nature of the tickets.

 

problem

First workday processing, before planned into the “bug” queue. Priority and FIFO principals apply. May also be subject to be taken as part of a bigger refactoring for features in Business Online.

 

Task

Processed, described, and planned within 14 work days. This number is not definite, as large scopes may require longer planning phases. And current backlog may result in delayed startup.

 

Incident

Processed by the first available case worker. Incidents will not require development support, if a reported incident require development involvement the ticket will be reclassified to Problem and the following handling process applies.

 

Question

Processed by the first available case worker, may be escalated to subject type experts.

 

3.3 Requesting Higher Priority

The requestor can request higher priority by either adding a description about this in the ticket, or reply to the auto response with a request for higher priority. The requestor can also call the support phone or main contact to request higher priority on the ticket.

Requesting higher priority may apply additional charges to the request due to resources having to drop existing, planned work, for the new request. Read more about the additional charges in the Billing rules.

 

4. Ticket Terms and Conditions

 

4.1 Ticket type

Once a ticket is processed it is assigned a ticket type. Below is a table with a short description about the criteria for ticket categorisation.

Not Defined	Root cause is yet to be determined - accurate category can't be set
Question	The request is direct or indirect question related to Business Online. A ticket considered a «Question» will be charged to customer.
Incident	In-depth technical support. This typically includes content deletion, or other types of issues created by the end user, remote screen share for troubleshooting, and configuration assistance. A ticket considered an «Incident» will be charged to customer.
problem	The reported is a core system error and requires development debugging effort to resolve. A ticket considered a «Problem» will not be charged to customer.
Task	The request is an enhancement of existing functionality. A ticket considered a «Task» will be charged to customer. On occasion a Tasks can be a collaborative investment between the customer and Business Online, in such a case there will be an agreed cost split on the scope. Note that this will only be possible if a specific scope can create additional value to Business Online standard as a product.

 

4.2 Charge To

Who the ticket will be charged to is dependent on how the ticket is categorised. The charge to field is set based on the following criteria.

Not Defined	Root cause is yet to be determined - accurate charge to can't be set
Business Online.	The reported issue could be reproduced and is A system error on the Business Online Standard An undocumented precaution
Customer	1. The reported issue could not be reproduced and happened due to Inadequacy / imperfection (Not a bug, but a scenario not identified when designing the functionality) Customer administrator did something they shouldn't have Customer user did something they shouldn't have Customer client is not configured according to configuration manual 2. The ticket is an enhancement or new requirement procurement ticket.

 

4.2.1 Billing Rules

This chapter will describe how tickets are charged. Please refer to your contract for rates.

 

General

• All registered tickets will be created with 0,5h ticket handling, regardless of scope.

• Any request for higher priority adds an additional charge to the ticket. This will be billed to the customer regardless of the ticket content (exception: Problems).

• Issue reports categorised as Not Defined where root cause is not known will assume that 5hrs of development is approved. If root cause is not found after 5hrs, development will estimate further hrs required for troubleshooting. “Charge to” will be set when the root cause is known and will be charged in its entirety to either Business Online or Customer depending on the categorisation.

• A ticket categorised as a Problem will not be charged to customer.

• Request for higher priority of a ticket will have additional charges proportional with the estimated effort for the job.
  • Urgent - 100% additional charge to total time spent
  • High - 50% additional charge to total time spent

 

New Requirement / Enhancements

New requirements or enhancements (Tasks) are considered customisations and follow different billing procedures than support tickets. New requirements and enhancements will be quoted as a fixed price or as a budgetary quote after a detailed estimation has been provided by the technical and development teams.

 

Enhancement or New Requirement requests will assume that a minimum of 5hrs of elaboration and estimation is approved before the ticket is sent to development. Included in this effort is Ticket handling, requirement analysis, consultant scope documentation, Technical/Development scope documentation, internal handover, customer correspondence, and detailed estimation. This effort will be billed separately from the quoted fixed price and if quoted as budgetary these hours will be included in the ticket total.