Certain, Inc. (“Certain”) Product Support Services are intended to be used post-implementation in order to help answer general questions pertaining to the use of Certain’s SaaS Application (our “SaaS Application” and to provide maintenance and support for errors and defects encountered when using the SaaS Application. The services described below are provided under the terms of the Master Services Agreement. Certain reserves the right to change this Product Support Services Level Agreement (the “SLA”) with reasonable notification to our customers. Notifications will be posted on our website at (
certain.com).
1. Overview: Certain provides several support levels based on the various needs of our customers. Certain customers can identify their support level by contacting their Account Executive or Customer Success Manager.
2. Product Support Services. Certain provides Product Support Services for questions pertaining to the use of our applications, such as accessing menus, features and functions, performing basic actions, using the reporting engine, email function, editing and viewing registration data, integrating with marketing automation, documentation clarification and all activities related to setting up and configuring events, mobile, check-in, forms and websites. Certain Product Support Services representatives will respond to such service requests during stated Support Hours. Product Support Services specifically excludes event design and building, training services, performance optimization or custom software development (which includes updates/on-going communication on enhancement requests). Support of custom HTML (which is a 3rd party component within the software) and API configuration are considered design & build services and are not covered under the Product Support agreement. Support agents will direct these requests to our Professional Services team.
3. Program Error Support Services. Certain provides Program Error Support Services during stated Support Hours. A “Program Error” means a reproducible problem related to the SaaS Application. Customers may submit Program Error Support Service Requests via the channels noted above. Certain Product Support Services representatives will respond to such requests during Support Hours.
4. Classification of Program Errors. Upon receipt of a Program Error Support Service Request, Certain shall promptly investigate whether a Program Error exists, and if so, Customer and Certain shall mutually and in good faith establish an agreed-upon severity level. Severity corresponds to priority and urgency in delivering a product fix. Each Program Error is classified in accordance with its priority level as defined below:
Priority: The priority level assigned to an issue indicates the urgency for fixing it. The higher the priority, the greater the urgency. Priority levels rank from “Urgent” to “Low”. While Certain will often seek to discuss and recommend the assignment of priority levels the final responsibility for setting priority levels remains with the Customer.
Severity 1 – URGENT: Major business impact affecting multiple users.
This severity implies a serious defect at a crucial time that would have a critical impact on the success of a live event. Following are some items that may cause a defect to be classified as Severity Level 1:
- A program error or unrecoverable failure causing a total system shutdown.
- An urgent error or failure for a critical system function at a crucial time in event production where an alternative configuration is unavailable.
- An error resulting in unrecoverable data loss.
Severity 2 – HIGH: Causes data loss or corruption, system crash, missing major functionality.
This severity implies a serious defect that would stop or hold up an event production. Following are some items that may cause a defect to be classified as Severity Level 2:
- A program error or unrecoverable failure causing a total system shutdown.
- An error or failure for a critical system function at a crucial time in event production.
- Missing major functionality
Severity 3 – NORMAL: This reported issue identifies a functional error for which there is an acceptable workaround.
This severity causes no delays in product shipment or scheduling. Following are some items that may cause the defect to be classified as Severity Level 3:
- Lack of complete “Help” support in the user interface, including unclear, missing or misleading user documentation.
- A program error when deviations from the documentation exist but the application is still usable, the functionality of the application is not impaired and there is no material impact on the user.
- Delays or nuisances that could be considered a hang condition although the system recovers. This includes slight performance issues.
Severity 4 – LOW: This reported issue identifies a functional error for which there is an acceptable workaround.
This severity causes no delays in product shipment or scheduling. Following are some items that may cause the defect to be classified as Severity Level 4:
- Lack of complete “Help” support in the user interface, including unclear, missing or misleading user documentation.
- A program error when deviations from the documentation exist but the application is still usable, the functionality of the application is not impaired and there is no material impact on the user.
- Delays or nuisances that could be considered a hang condition although the system recovers. This includes slight performance issues.
- A cosmetic error
- Lack of user-friendly or intuitive operation
- Misspellings in user interface, on-line help, or documentation
5. Program Error Response and Repair Times. Certain will provide a workaround, fix or correction “repair” for reported program errors as soon as commercially practical. In the event that an immediate resolution for a program error is not available Certain will respond within the timelines stated in the summary of Support in Section 1 above as follows:
- Resolution may be either the supply of an actual fix (for Severity 1 issues) or Customer agreement in writing of the projected release in which the fix will be delivered.
- Certain will consider an issue request resolved in the event that 10 business days have passed without Customer acknowledgement of the proposed resolution. A Customer may always reopen an issue request at a later date.
- Escalation – a Customer may request that an issue be escalated. The appropriate manager will contact the Customer to discuss and work out a plan for resolution.
6. Nonqualified Products. Certain shall have no support obligations for errors that are the result of programming or infrastructure provided or used by Customer or Customer’s users that is not part of the SaaS Application (“Nonqualified Products”). A program error is a problem caused by Customer’s use of Nonqualified Products, the performance or non-performance of the Internet or defective content. If Certain provides support services for a problem caused by Nonqualified Products, or if Certain’s service efforts are increased as a result of Nonqualified Products, Certain may, upon notification to Customer, charge Customer for time and materials for such extra services at its then-current rates. If, in Certain’s reasonable opinion, performance of support services is or will be made more difficult or impaired because of Nonqualified Products, Certain shall so notify Customer, and Customer shall remove the Nonqualified Products at Customer’s own expense within a commercially reasonable period of time. Customer shall remain solely responsible for the compatibility and functioning of Nonqualified Products with the SaaS Application.
7. Third Party Exceptions. Certain offers a number of third party integrations as well as customer access to the Certain Web Services API Framework. For these integrations and for services accessed through Web Services, Certain shall not have SLA obligations. In addition, Certain reserves the right to change the Web Services terms of use as needed. The web services terms and conditions can be found at:
http://api.certain.com/docs/termsOfUse.cfm.
8. Customer’s Responsibilities. Before contacting Certain for Product Support Services, Professional Support Customers agree to make their best effort to find an answer using self-service options, including online help files, self-playing tutorials, knowledge base and tip sheets. In connection with Certain’s provision of Product Support Services, Customer shall maintain any Nonqualified Products and associated peripheral equipment, if any, in good working order in accordance with the manufacturers’ specifications and be reasonably certain that any problems reported to Certain are not due to hardware or operating system malfunction; supply Certain with access to and use of all information and facilities reasonably determined to be necessary by Certain to render support services; perform any tests or procedures recommended by Certain for the purpose of identifying and/or resolving any program errors; maintain, at Customer’s sole discretion, a procedure external to Certain for reconstruction of lost or altered files, data, or programs; follow routine operator procedures as specified in the SaaS Application documentation at all times and ensure that the SaaS Application is isolated from any process links or anything else that is reasonably likely to cause harm before requesting or receiving remote support assistance. Customer is solely responsible for providing all internal technical support for the use of the SaaS Application by Customer users.
9. Maintenance Services. Certain shall provide or cause to be provided enhancements, modifications, updates, corrections or a subsequent release or version of the SaaS Application that Certain generally makes available.
10. Maintenance Windows. Certain will establish maintenance windows during which time Certain may take down our SaaS Application to conduct routine maintenance which shall not exceed three (3) hours per month. Exceptions for non-routine maintenance require Customer notification. Certain will provide a minimum of fourteen (14) days’ notice of scheduled or non-routine maintenance and will check Customer system activity at the time of scheduled maintenance before commencing activity that might impact the Customer. Certain shall not be responsible for any damages or costs incurred by Customer or any user during or as a result of the downtime scheduled in accordance with the provision of Maintenance Services. Certain may change its maintenance window upon one week’s prior notice. Certain’s regular scheduled maintenance occurs from 9:00 PM to 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time. Certain shall give Customer’s network operations center notice promptly upon the commencement of any unscheduled downtime and at the end of such unscheduled downtime.
11. Availability. Certain will take adequate measures to provide SaaS Application availability of 99.5% for Certain Event Intelligence (CEI) and 99.9% for all other applications (a maximum of 43.8 minutes unscheduled downtime a month as defined in Point 10 above).
