IBM Software Support provides assistance in resolving product defects.
To contact IBM Software support, follow these steps:
- Ensure that your company has an active IBM software maintenance
contract, and that you are authorized to submit problems to IBM. The
type of software maintenance contract that you need depends on the type of
product that you have:
- For IBM distributed software products (including, but not limited to, Tivoli®, Lotus®,
and Rational® products,
as well as DB2® and WebSphere® products
that run on Windows®, Linux®, or UNIX® operating systems), enroll in Passport
Advantage® in one of the following ways:
- For customers with Subscription and Support contracts, go to the Software
Service Request Web site at https://techsupport.services.ibm.com/ssr/login, and enter your user ID and password.
If you are not sure what type of software maintenance contract you
need, call 1-800-IBMSERV (1-800-426-7378) in the United States. From other
countries or regions, go to the Support contacts page of the IBM Software
Support Handbook at http://techsupport.services.ibm.com/guides/contacts.html, and click the name of your geographic region for
phone numbers of people who provide support for your location.
- Determine the business impact of your problem. When
you report a problem to IBM, you are asked to supply a severity level. Therefore,
you need to understand and assess the business impact of the problem that
you are reporting.
| Option |
Description |
| Severity 1 |
The problem has a 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 |
This problem has a significant business
impact: The program is usable, but it is severely limited. |
| Severity 3 |
The problem has some business
impact: The program is usable, but less significant features (not critical
to operations) are unavailable. |
| Severity 4 |
The problem has minimal business
impact: The problem causes little impact on operations or a reasonable circumvention
to the problem was implemented. |
- Describe your problem and gather background information, When describing 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:
- What software versions were you running when the problem occurred?
- Do you have logs, traces, and messages that are related to the problem
symptoms?
- Can you recreate the problem? If so, what steps do you perform to recreate
the problem?
- Did you make any changes to the system? For example, did you make changes
to the hardware, operating system, networking software, or other system components?
- Are you currently using a workaround for the problem? If so, be prepared
to describe the workaround when you report the problem.
- Submit your problem You can submit your problem to IBM
Software Support 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 that you can implement
until the APAR is resolved and a fix is delivered. IBM publishes resolved
APARs on the Software Support Web site daily, so that other users who experience
the same problem can benefit from the same resolution.