The Abacus 21 Support function begins immediately upon the receipt of a signed Agreement and activation of the implementation-installation process. Support Issues are to be reported to Abacus 21's central Support Department Office in Buffalo, New York -- where they are monitored, assessed, prioritized, assigned, and tracked.
The primary office for Abacus 21 Support is in Buffalo, New York -- with several support-related individuals situated in other sections of the United States. (Support for our related operations in Australia and South America normally is handled by our Dealers in those respective areas -- while those in Asia are currently being handled out of our Buffalo hours.)
All Abacus 21 Employees within the Support Department (supplemented with individuals from the Installation, Quality Assurance, and Technical Development Departments as appropriate) are ultimately available to assist with any and all Client questions and concerns -- as we stress internal cross-training. In addition, each applicational area has particular set of 'specialists' available.
In-Coming Support reports/requests are organized and routed to the appropriate available personnel... with the central Support Coordinators tracking their progress.
Abacus 21's Support Hours (which are different from the normal Business Hours) are 8am to 7pm EST, Monday through Friday, except Holidays.
An Incident Tracking System is used to monitor each Client's support requests and the responses offered.
The primary method of reporting a support issue and asking for assistance is to send an email to Support@Abacus21.com... describing the essence of the problem or question... and attaching whatever 'samples' may be relevant. (See below for the types of information that is appropriate to include.)
Our Support Coordinators have the responsibility of monitoring the Support Email Mailbox... and making an initial assessment of the nature/severity of the each reported Incident... and then prioritizing and routing each to the appropriate application-or-technical personnel.
Unless specifically directed to do so on a particular Incident, refrain from contacting a particular Support individual (be email, phone, or fax)... as that individual may be out-of-office or on another support issue... and your "support contact" may go un-responded to for quite some time -- as it is not going through official channels. Contacting central Support will provide the proper and most efficient/effective awareness, monitoring, tracking, and follow-up.
Note: Abacus 21 can not be responsible for delivering a proper-timely support response if your Support Incident contact is not conducted through the proper Support procedures.
If it is necessary to make an initial phone contact, Abacus 21 has Support Receptionists during Business Hours that personally receive each call... and they will perhaps ask to you articulate your problem in a direct email to Support@Abacus21.com -- or note its Incident Reference, initial details, and priority -- and route the call to the appropriate Support individual(s).
- The Client Support Receptionists will take the information, assign an Incident Number when your email or call is initially received (or reference an existing Incident Number) and record the call in our Abacus 21's Incident Tracking System.
- This information related to the Incident (or specific Call regarding an Incident) is then available for all Support Staff to review.
- On subsequent calls, please be prepared to give your Incident Number for quick access to this information.
On support calls, if all Support Receptionists happen to be busy, your call is routed to our Support Phone Voicemail Box -- where it is retrieved by the next available Support Receptionist.
Support emails sent outside of Business-Hours are collected in our Support-Email Mailbox... and are reviewed and assessed the next morning.
If you have an Off-Hours emergency, you should contact Abacus 21's Support Phone-Line (as the emails will not normally be attended to until the next Business-Day). Our Phone System will guide you through the steps to record you Support Incident -- and you will be alerted to the fact that an emergency off-hours call may be subject to Off-Hours Support fees.
Supports call received outside of Business-Hours are 'taken' by our Telephony system... and routed to appropriate on-call personnel within minutes as pertinent. Calls taken outside our normal Business-Hours are generally subject to higher billing rates.
Personnel assisting on support issues are typically Support Department personnel or Installers who are not on site. Several members of the Support Department Team are programmers -- whose primary job is to assist on those Incidents that require in-depth research into the application software Sourcecode, doing diagnostic programming, or (perhaps) writing fix scripts or programs.
For quality assurance purposes, Support Calls may be monitored or recorded.
Support Contact Procedures
- When emailing Support (or calling or faxing), please have the following information available for the Support Representative:
- Contact Information - Client Name, Contact Name, Phone, Email, Fax.
- Module Involved - for example, Accounts Receivable, General Ledger, F/B Point-of-Sale, Golf Point-of-Sale, Credit Card Authorization (Food vs. Retail), etc.
- Menu Reference - this is the 3-character code at the top-left of the Menu System (Legacy) or bottom-left of the Menu System Status Bar (441) - for example, GLP for General Ledger Processing, etc.
- Option Reference - this is the selection chosen from the above Menu (which also is displayed in the lower-left of the Status Bar in System 441).
- Description of the Problem:
- What were you trying to do?
- What occurred?
- What did you do immediately prior to this action/problem?
- Has this happened before?
- When and how frequently?
- On a specific PC -- or others? (Identify respective PC's)
- Has anything in general recently changed:
- Network or Connectivity?
- Printers or other Peripherals?
- PC?
- Anti-Virus?
- 3rd-party Software or Operating System (initial loading or updates)?
- On the Server?
- On a particular Workstation?
- Operator Procedures?
- New Operator/User?
- Screen Error Information (if applicable) - a 'print screen' of the the actual error.
- Samples of whatever is pertinent
Support Contact Methods:
