Support Service Description_Office 365 Dedicated Plans_October 2011

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Support for Enterprises

Dedicated Plans Service Description

Published: October 2011


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2Support for Enterprises Service Description (Dedicated Plans) | October 2011

The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of

publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of

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2011 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Microsoft, Active Directory, ActiveSync, Lync, Outlook, and SharePoint are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. All other trademarks

are property of their respective owners.


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Contents

Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................ 4Document Scope ............................................................................................................................................................................. 4

Shared Support Responsibilities ...................................................................................................................... 5Customer Responsibilities ........................................................................................................................................................... 5Microsoft Responsibilities ........................................................................................................................................................... 5

Microsoft Support Components ...................................................................................................................... 7Self-Service Tools ............................................................................................................................................................................ 7Customer Portal ............................................................................................................................................................................... 7Secure File Store (ITAR-support plans) .................................................................................................................................. 7Technical Support Team............................................................................................................................................................... 7Availability...................................................................................................................................................................................... 8Severity Levels and Response Times ...................................................................................................................................... 8

Appendix A: Aligning Microsoft and Customer Service Desk ..................................................................11Phase 1: Discovery and Planning ........................................................................................................................................ 11Phase 2: Delivery ....................................................................................................................................................................... 11Phase 3: Operate ....................................................................................................................................................................... 12


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Introduction

The Microsoft Office 365 support organization is committed to helping customers quickly and efficiently

resolve service-related issues that users might encounter when using Microsoft Office 365 for enterprises

services.

Microsoft Office 365 support activities include the following:

Help customers align their service desk with Microsoft Office 365 support. The Office 365support team provides training and guidance that enables the customer's service desk staff to

align with Microsoft Office 365 support services and support their end users.

Respond to issues escalated by the customer's service desk. The Office 365 support teamhelps resolve service-related issues that cannot be resolved by the customer's service desk staff.

Record, track, and communicate support issue status. The Office 365 support team that isworking on escalated issues provides, records, and communicates the status of each issue to the

customer until the issue is resolved, service is restored, or the incident is closed.

Improve customer satisfaction with support services. The Office 365 support team iscontinually working to improve customer satisfaction by monitoring and evaluating support

service metrics and internal processes.

Document Scope

This document provides an overview of the support services provided for customers subscribed to Office

365 dedicated plans and customers subscribed to Office 365 plans that support United States government

International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).* These plans include the following Office 365 service

offerings:

Microsoft Exchange Online Microsoft SharePoint Online Microsoft Lync Online

The document also outlines the roles and responsibilities that both the customer and Microsoft have in

resolving service-related issues that users might encounter when using Office 365 service offerings.

* Office 365 for enterprises dedicated plans and ITAR-support plans are delivered from a Microsoft hosting

environment where each customer has their own dedicated data center hardware.


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Shared Support Responsibilities

Microsoft Office 365 service offerings have established Microsoft as a global leader in the delivery of

messaging and collaboration cloud services. This success comes in part from making effective and

responsive support services an integral component of Office 365 cloud service offerings. When customers

invest in Microsoft Office 365, they expect that the support associated with it will be equal to if not betterthan the support they are accustomed to from their on-premises environment.

Office 365 customers will succeed in obtaining the support environment they expect by having a clear

understanding of the roles and responsibilities of both their own organization and Microsoft.

Customer Responsibilities

The Office 365 customer is responsible for providing support to their end users.

The customer must staff a centralized service desk withagents who will handle calls directly from

customer end users who are seeking support for Office 365 services that they use. The service desk may

be staffed by call center staff, on-site technicians, or subject matter experts. The customer's service desk

operation may also include an internal support issue escalation process that is followed before escalating

issues to Microsoft. The customer service desk is responsible for the following:

Troubleshoot issuesusing Microsoft-provided support and diagnostic tools when applicablefor problem determination and issue resolution prior to escalating issues to Microsoft.

Resolve as many issues as possible, including but not limited to:o Issues that can be resolved by reference to provided "how-to" articles and FAQs.o Software configuration.o Client connectivity.o Client desktop support.o Service availability issues within the customer's span of control.o Performance issues within the customer's span of control.

Microsoft Responsibilities

Microsoft Office 365 support teams are the escalation point for one centralized customer service desk.

Microsoft is responsible for the following:

Assist customers in aligning their service desk operations with Microsoft Office 365support. The Office 365 support team provides planning and other assistance that enables the

customer's service desk staff to incorporate support for Office 365 service offerings into its

existing operations. (SeeAppendix A.)

Respond to issues that escalate from the customer's service desk. The Office 365 supportteam helps resolve service-related issues that cannot be resolved by the customer's service desk

staff. Record, track, and communicate support issue status. The Office 365 support team that is

working on escalated issues provides, records, and communicates the status of each issue to the

customer until the issue is resolved, service is restored, or the incident is closed.


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Improve customer satisfaction with support services. The Office 365 support team iscontinually working to improve customer satisfaction by monitoring and evaluating support

service metrics and internal processes.

Note When customers purchase Office 365 services through a reseller partner, the reseller partner,

instead of Microsoft, will provide support services directly to the customer.


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Microsoft Support Components

If a customer ever encounters problems with Office 365 services, Microsoft is ready to help. The Office 365

support teams' goal is to help customers resolve technical problems rapidly and efficiently. As described

in the sections that follow, Microsoft support includes several self-service tools and troubleshooting

resources in addition to around-the-clock assisted technical support.

Self-Service Tools

Microsoft provides a number of self-service tools to enable a customer service desk to configure

operational behavior, perform administrative tasks and resolve troubleshooting issues for a variety of

service features.

Customer Management Portal (CMP). The CMP enables customers to perform commonadministrative tasks and troubleshooting for mailboxes in the Exchange Online environment.

Blackberry Administration Service (BAS). BAS is a web-based administrative console forcustomers using Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) to manage Blackberry devices that are

connected to the Exchange Online service. Customer service desk can perform many

administrative, troubleshooting and reporting tasks.

Exchange Control Panel (ECP). ECP allows customer service desk to perform actions such asremotely wiping mobile devices, configuring MailTips, and searching mailboxes across the

organization.

Remote PowerShell. This remote command line connection allows for common configurationand read only tasks to be performed without escalation to Microsoft.

Customer Portal

The Customer Portal is available to customers and is used by Microsoft to provide customers with a single

location for support documentation including troubleshooting guides, knowledgebase articles, support

reporting, and ticket status. Escalation templates, service desk training documentation, and other tools arealso available to customers on the portal.

Secure File Store (ITAR-support plans)

To comply with federal data security requirements (FISMA/CUI and ITAR), a Secure File Store is provided

as a secure location to exchange files between authorized Microsoft support team personnel and the

customer service desk if needed. The Secure File Store is deployed on a customized SharePoint portal

designed specifically for this purpose and it resides within the Microsoft security boundary.

Technical Support Team

The Office 365 support team is comprised of support engineers who are trained and certified in Microsoftcloud services. Customers unable to resolve issues with the available self-service resources can escalate to

Microsoft support. Common technical support issues escalated to Microsoft include:

Restoring data or mailbox reconnections Mail delivery Difficulty activating users on mobile devices

Unless accepted by Microsoft, support incidents that relate to the following causes are not covered:


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Customer networking infrastructure Customer hardware Microsoft on-premises software that is not part of the Office 365 service offering Non-Microsoft software Customer operational procedures Customer architecture Customer IT service management process errors, system configuration errors, or human error

Availability

The Office 365 support team is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Support services are available in

English only.

Severity Levels and Response Times

A service request specific to a support issue is created when a support issue is escalated from the

customer's service desk and accepted by the Office 365 support team. In the service request management

process, each escalated issue is assigned a unique service request number for tracking purposes. The

customer receives status updates about the service request throughout the service request life cycle via

email or telephone.

Office 365 support engineers are able to resolve the majority of issues and problems that they are

assigned. Issues and problems that cannot be resolved by the support engineers are escalated to

additional resolver groups. If an issue is escalated to an additional resolver group, support engineers are

responsible for customer communications.

Escalation Severity

Microsoft prioritizes support incidents consistent with the severity level reasonably determined by the

customer in accordance with the definitions shown in Table 1. The customer may request a change in

severity level at any time through the life of the support incident by contacting the Office 365 support

team.

Table 1 details the responsiveness and ongoing communications targets based on the severity of a given

incident.

Table 1. Service Request Severity Assignments

Severity Level Definition

Initial

Response

Goal

Microsoft Communication

Goal

1 Catastrophic

Catastrophic business impact in

which a service, system, network,

server, or critical application is down,

impacting production or profitability.

Multiple users or customers losecomplete functionality of all services.

15 minutes

Update customer every one

hour or via live conference

bridge; customer updates

Microsoft every hour or via

live conference bridge.


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Severity Level Definition

Initial

Response

Goal

Microsoft Communication

Goal

A Critical

Critical business impact in which

service, production, operations, or

development deadlines are severelyimpacted, or where there will be a

severe impact on production or

profitability. Multiple customers,

users, or services are partially

affected.

1 hour

Update customer every two

hours; customer updates

Microsoft every two hours.

B Urgent

Moderate business impact.

Significant problem where use of the

service is proceeding, but in an

impaired fashion. Single user,

customer, or service is partially

affected.

2 hours Update customer every day.

C Important

Minimum business impact. Importantissue, but does not have significant

current service or productivity impact

for the customer. Single user is

experiencing partial impact.

4 hoursUpdate customer every three

days.

D Advisory

Used for design change requests

(DCRs), feature requests, research

activities, and similar items.

N/AUpdate customer as

necessary or agreed upon.

Severity 1 and Severity A Incident Response Management

Microsoft uses a formal process for responding to Severity 1 and Severity A incidents that affect service

availability. The goal of this process is to minimize service outage time, and success is reflected in

performance against the service availability service-level agreements (SLAs).

Microsoft classifies incidents that have the potential to impact service availability as Severity 1 or Severity

A incidents (see Table 1). If a service outage occurs, information regarding the outage is gathered and

sent to stakeholders, operations teams, key technology contacts, and impacted users.

As part of its incidence response, the Office 365 support organization takes the following steps:

Sends an outage notification to the customer. If it is determined that Microsoft needs toresolve the incident, the impact of the incident is appropriately reviewed and assessed. Within the

initial response goal described in Table 1, the Office 365 incident management team sends a

notification to the audience that is designated by the customer, covering details of the incident,

its impact, and an expected time of resolution. Additional communications are sent every hour (or

two hours for Severity A incidents) for the duration of the incident, as scheduled by the Microsoft

incident management team, or whenever new and relevant information is available.

Resolves the incident. The Office 365 support team continues to work on the incident until aresolution is in place or a work-around is established. The Office 365 support team may need to

engage the customer over the phone, by email, or through a conference call or bridge call, to

assist in troubleshooting or to validate that the service is back to normal operation. If a bridge call

is required, Microsoft provides a phone number and participant code. After the resolution is

validated, the Office 365 support team sends an outage resolution alert to the customer.


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Contributes to a post-incident review document. A post-incident review (PIR) document iscreated and published for all incidents that impact service-level availability and are resolved by

Microsoft. The PIR is delivered to the customer by a Microsoft Services Resourcetypically the

customers Technical Account Manager (TAM) or deployment consultantaccording to the terms

outlined in the Service Management Service Description document. The PIR report includes a

summary of the incident, a list of applicable action items, and the root cause (if known).

Customers may request additional detail through the Services Resource. Requests for follow-up

meetings with the Services Resource are evaluated on a per-incident basis.


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Appendix A: Aligning Microsoft and Customer Service Desk

The Office 365 teams work with the customer's support organization to develop processes and

procedures to support Microsoft Office 365 services at the customer's organization.

The alignment process typically occurs in three phases.

Phase 1: Discovery and Planning

The first phase is completed by performing discovery and planning sessions that clearly define and

establish the support objectives, goals, and deliverables for the customer. Participants in these sessions

include the Microsoft Deployment Project Manager (DPM), Microsoft Release Program Manager (RPM),

and customer management personnel who have responsibility for their service desk infrastructure and

incident management.

The Discovery and Planning phase for the customer's service desk alignment requires the following:

Understanding customer business needs. Discussion of service desk planning and input-based support requirements. Collecting and validating the range of customer information that is required for support on-

boarding.

Surveying the services and systems that the customer currently uses for providing day-to-dayuser support and for handling incidents, problems, known errors, and processes for change

management.

Discussion of the incident management process and activities. Discussion of the change management process and activities. Identifying training needs for the customers support team and service desk staff. Aligning the customer's service desk to the Office 365 support service framework within the

Service Ready deployment milestone.

To properly address these requirements and track project deliverables, weekly workstream meetings are

scheduled between the Office 365 support team and the customer's key support service stakeholders.

These meetings help to manage expectations, maintain support for the project, and drive conditions of

satisfaction. A project plan is developed and tracked throughout this process to ensure that clear

timelines for each work item are completed before the pilot support phase.

Phase 2: Delivery

The Delivery phase involves setting up and aligning the customers service desk to work with the Office

365 support infrastructure, and then testing the delivery of support processes for Office 365 services.

The Office 365 support team and the customer complete the following service desk requirements:

Integrate customer data into the Office 365 support teams infrastructure. Provision and validate Office 365 support resources and tools. Educate and train customer's service desk trainers to the required level for Office 365 Implement service desk processes, procedures, services, resources, roles, and responsibilities. Coach customers service desk personnel through the steps for escalating a test break/fix incident

to Office 365 support team to validate their ability to escalate, de-escalate, and close service

requests.

Declare the status of Service Ready for all deployed Office 365 services and support functionality. Develop a plan with key stakeholders that address the Microsoft and customer ongoing

relationship and sets expectations.


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The delivery phase is finalized by signing off on Service Ready acceptance and transitioning to the

Operate phase, which is managed by the DPM and the Support Service Manager (SSM).

Phase 3: Operate

The Operate phase occurs while a customer is deploying and piloting Office 365 services to a subset of its

end users. The length of the pilot depends on the number of services being deployed. During this phase,the Office 365 SSM and DPM collaborate with the customer and initiate the support processes that have

been developed.

This phase provides the time to solidify the support partnership and manage the following activities that

come under the support framework.

Issue detection, recording and escalation Issue classification and initial support Issue investigation and diagnosis Issue resolution and recovery Issue closure Issue monitoring and communication Ownership of tasks that are a result of the Operate phase

During this phase, the SSM is focused on customer relationship management, driving the efficiency and

effectiveness of the incident management process, producing management information, and acting as the

liaison for Office 365 support team and the other teams.

Documents

Support Service Description_Office 365 Dedicated Plans_October 2011