IBM Software Support provides assistance with product defects.
Before contacting IBM Software Support, your company must have an active IBM software maintenance contract, and be authorized to submit problems to IBM. The type of software maintenance contract that we need depends on the type of product we have:
If you are not sure what type of software maintenance contract we need, call 1-800-IBMSERV (1-800-426-7378) in the United States or, from other countries, go to the contacts page of the IBM Software Support Handbook on the Web (http://techsupport.services.ibm.com/guides/contacts.html) and select the name of the geographic region for phone numbers of people who provide support for your location.
Follow the steps in this topic to contact IBM Software Support:
When you report a problem to IBM, you are asked to supply a severity level. Therefore, we need to understand and assess the business impact of the problem you are reporting. Use the following criteria:
Severity 1 | Critical business impact: You are unable to use the program, resulting in a critical impact on operations. This condition requires an immediate solution. |
Severity 2 | Significant business impact: The program is usable but is severely limited. |
Severity 3 | Some business impact: The program is usable with less significant features (not critical to operations) unavailable. |
Severity 4 | Minimal business impact: The problem causes little impact on operations, or a reasonable circumvention to the problem has been implemented. |
When explaining a problem to IBM, be as specific as possible. Include all relevant background information so that IBM Software Support specialists can help you solve the problem efficiently. To save time, know the answers to these questions:
We can submit your problem in one of two ways:
If the problem you submit is for a software defect or for missing or inaccurate documentation, IBM Software Support creates an Authorized Program Analysis Report (APAR). The APAR describes the problem in detail. Whenever possible, IBM Software Support provides a workaround for you to implement until the APAR is resolved and a fix is delivered. IBM publishes resolved APARs on the IBM product support Web pages daily, so that other users who experience the same problem can benefit from the same resolutions.
For more information about problem resolution, see Searching knowledge bases and Obtaining fixes.