Contacting IBM Software Support

IBM Software Support provides assistance with product defects.

Before you begin

To take advantage of unique Support features go to the WebSphere Process Server support page.

Before contacting IBM® Software Support, your company must have an active IBM software maintenance contract, and you must be authorized to submit problems to IBM. The type of software maintenance contract that you need depends on the type of product you have.
  • For IBM eServer™ software products (including, but not limited to, DB2® and WebSphere® products that run in zSeries®, pSeries®, and iSeries™ environments), you can purchase a software maintenance agreement by working directly with an IBM sales representative or an IBM Business Partner. For more information about support for eServer software products, refer to the IBM Technical support advantage Web site.
  • For IBMLink™, CATIA, Linux®, S390, iSeries, pSeries, zSeries and other support agreements, refer to the IBM Support Line Web site.
  • For Subscription and Support (S & S) contracts, refer to the IBM Software Service Request Web site.
  • 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® or UNIX® operating systems), enroll in Passport Advantage® in one of the following ways:
    • Online: Go to the Passport Advantage Web site and click How to Enroll.
    • By phone: For the phone number to call in your country, go to the contacts page of the and click the name of your geographic region.

    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 or, from other countries, go to the contacts page of the IBM Software Support Handbook on the Web and click the name of your geographic region for phone numbers of people who provide support for your location.

Steps for this task

  1. 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 you are reporting. Use the following criteria:
    Table 1.
    Severity level Description
    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.
  2. Describe your problem and gather background information. 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:
    • What software versions were you running when the problem occurred?
    • Do you have logs, traces, and messages that are related to the problem symptoms? IBM Software Support is likely to ask for this information.
    • Can the problem be recreated? If so, what steps led to the failure?
    • Have any changes been made to the system? (For example, hardware, operating system, networking software, and so on.)
    • Are you currently using a workaround for this problem? If so, please be prepared to explain it when you report the problem.
  3. Submit your problem to IBM Software Support. You can submit your problem in one of two ways:

What to do next

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 others who experience the same problem can benefit from the same resolutions.


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Last updated: Tue Feb 21 17:40:18 2006

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