DB Education Service Level Agreement

This document outlines the level of helpdesk support provided by DB to schools. It also outlines the process schools should use to contact the Customer Support Centre (CSC) and targeted response times.

DB will provide schools with:

  • Telephone and email support for a designated staff member within the school available Monday to Friday 8:30am to 5:00pm excluding public holidays
  • Committed response times to reported issues
  • Regular feedback on reported issues outlining progress and/or resolution
  • Issue escalation management to ensure timely responses



2 School Support
2.1 Customer Support Centre

The Customer Support Centre (CSC) is the primary point of contact for all incident logging, requests or queries relating to the services being provided to you. The CSC is accessed via the DB Support Line or via email.


Telephone number

08700 777 655  (Option 1)

Fax number

01273 729757

E-mail (General support)

customersupport@dbeducation.co.uk

2.2 Hours of cover

The DB Customer Service Centre (CSC) is available during the hours of 8:30am to 5:00pm, Monday to Friday, excluding Public Holidays. The services provided by DB are designed to be available and operational 24 hours a day, 52 weeks a year.

2.3 Query logging

In order for DB to provide an effective support service it is important to provide as much information as possible to assist in the diagnosis of the problem, queries may be logged via telephone or email.

At the point of logging the query (via email or phone) the customer must provide full and accurate details of the problem being reported including:

  • Date and time of occurrence
  • Details of the problem experienced or what was trying to be achieved
  • Frequency / scale of the problem
  • Details of operating environment and versions of software being used


2.3.1 Queries logged by telephone

Once the full details have been provided, the CSC team member will:

  • Log the call within the CSC ticket system
  • Assign a ticket priority, based on the query classifications
  • Provide a reference number, ticket priority and time of call logging
  • Perform 1st line troubleshooting and diagnostics with the help of the caller to attempt to resolve the problem, or gather enough information to do so after the call


If the query cannot be resolved during the initial telephone conversation, the query will be placed in the support queue, and dealt with according to query priority. The caller will be contacted with query updates and resolution, according to the ticket handling procedures described below.

2.3.2 Queries logged by email

Once the full details have been provided the CSC team member will:

  • Log the query within the CSC ticket system
  • Assign a ticket priority, based on the query classifications
  • Provide a reference number, ticket priority and time of query logging


The query will then be placed in the support queue, and dealt with according to call priority. The caller will be contacted with query updates and resolution, according to the ticket handling procedures described below.

If the problem is logged by email and is not clear, the customer will be contacted by telephone and /or email to clarify the query before the query is accepted and logged in the CSC ticketing system. If the email is received outside working hours, DB will treat the email is if it had been received at the start of the next working day.

2.4 Ticket Handling

All tickets are allocated a ticket priority by DB at the time of logging. Below is a description of the priorities.

Priority

Example

Target Response Time

Escalation

1

Service unavailable to all users.

Immediately

Managing Director - Immediately

 

2

Service available but major impact on a significant portion of the service, e.g. email outage.

4 hours

General Manager - Immediately

 

Managing Director - 4 hours

3

Service available but minor query affecting a small number users, e.g. loss of functionality through group membership deletion.

1 working day

Customer Support Manager - 2 working days

General Manager - 5 working days

4

Service available but advice / changes sought, e.g. Deleting condemned accounts, Statistics requests.

2 working days

Customer Support Manager - 4  working days

General Manager - 10 working days


During normal service conditions DB would expect most tickets to be issued with a Priority 3 or 4 status.
Any request requiring a DB site release, will be subject to the normal release schedule.

2.5 Standard maintenance windows

DB operates standard maintenance windows very rarely when the DB site may be unavailable, between the hours of:

  • 00:00 - 06:00 on Wednesdays
  • 05:00 - 11:00 on Sundays


There may be other instances where DB wishes to perform planned maintenance on targeted areas on the site outside the windows shown above and which may lead to a temporary reduced level of service. Where this is the case, DB will endeavour to do this outside school hours.

Where possible, DB will endeavour to perform non-essential maintenance activities during academic holiday periods. Service outages caused by planned maintenance are not measured as downtime under this SLA.

3 Security incidents

DB reserves the right to remotely disconnect services for any accounts, portals, devices, site or sites where there is reason to believe that their presence on the network constitutes a significant risk to the integrity, legality or performance of the network, especially where such risk is spread across multiple customers.
Examples of such situations are:

  • Accounts or space being used to host illegal or unsuitable content, whether intentionally or otherwise (examples include pornography, promotion of criminal activity, abusive or offensive material)
  • Portal sites infected with viruses, posing a threat to other sites of the same, and other customers
  • Devices or sites participating in any attempt to hack or perform a Denial of Service attack


Where DB deems it necessary to disconnect accounts, site services or devices, DB will attempt to contact both the site and the school. In the event that contact cannot be made, the accounts, site services or devices will be disconnected and messages left.

Services will be reinstated once the risk has been removed to DB's satisfaction.

 


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