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Overview

We are committed to our customers' success with gmStudio and welcome all customer feedback.

Standard support is included with the product and includes help with installation and with producing standard translations and resolving translation issues.   

Translation Issues are situations where the tool is unable to produce a well-formed, standard translation from a well-formed set of inputs.  We consider these high priority matters. We prefer to receive support requests via email but phone is acceptable.  An on-line support forum and gmStudio User Community site is in development.  We will use email, web meetings, and phone in responding to support requests.

Licensed users are also entitled and encouraged to use the latest version of the product.  Product updates are typically published every 3-6 weeks.  Active license holders will receive a notification when a new release is published. The content of each release is determined at our discretion based on needs and priorities of our customers and the resources available.

• First priority goes to resolving product defects that prevent customers from making use of standard features 
• Second priority goes to resolving product defects affecting the correctness of the translations
• Third priority goes to new capabilities and product enhancements of a general nature. 

We will also respond to email requests for help with advanced use of the tool (i.e., customization and automated re-engineering)  at a best-efforts level of service. 

Time to resolve defects and implement enhancements varies based on the nature of the work and when it can be scheduled for a release.  In some circumstances, to deliver high-priority fixes, we publish releases off-cycle.  In other circumstances, we may suggest a work around that allows a customer to solve their problem without requiring a gmStudio update.

Enhanced support is available on request and includes help with improving the quality of translations produced by the tool; please contact us here to discuss enhanced support. 

How does the Standard Support process work?

• Support is typically requested via email (support@greatmigrations.com) or the contact form on our web site.
• Suspected product defects must be submitted with a detailed description of how to reproduce the problem and the expected resolution.
• We use email, web meetings, and phone to provide responses. 
• We attempt to respond to support requests within 1-3 business days. 

What types of problems do we want to help you solve?

• Installation issues: unable to install gmStudio
• Licensing issues: unable to use a valid gmStudio license file
• gmStudio issues: unable to use the supporting features of the gmStudio UI such as migration project setup, running external processes, reporting, and analysis.
• Default Translation issues: unable to produce a complete standard translation of your source code
• Translation Configuration Issues: unable to process your custom translation configuration as expected
• Code Quality Problems: unable to produce a translation that meets your code quality standards: failure to build, undesirable coding patterns, and functional defects.

Note that the above issues may be caused by a variety of factors including but not limited to the following: 

• Incorrect or incomplete source codes
• Environmental or deployment problems including missing COM dependencies
• Incorrect product usage
• Product defect
• Needed product enhancements

Disclaimer: some of the above factors may be out of our control and their resolution is beyond the scope of standard support.

What is not included in Standard Support?

Standard support does not include the following types of work:

• Preparing of Making your translations build in .NET
• Preparing or verifying custom configuration files or generated code translations
• Developing and/or presenting training material for a custom translation
• Functional testing of client applications

These types of work are considered out of the scope of standard support, but they are available as custom services -- subject to Statement of Work (describing tasks, deliverables, schedule, and price for the effort) between GM and the customer. Customer's working in a self-service mode should submit there questions, most are answered with 24 hours, but there is without service level agreement, response time varies.

Requesting Support

Please make sure that you are using the latest version of gmStudio and that you have carefully read this User's Guide.

If your problem is not addressed by the documentation, the following information is required to provide support:

• A full description of your problem. 
• gmStudio version and License Information (See [Help/About]). 
• Operating System version. 
• .NET Framework version. 
• How the error or condition has occurred, including the sequence of actions leading up to the error condition, error messages...etc.

Occasionally support cases require sample files to reproduce the error condition. Please compress related material into .zip archives. 

Quality of generated code

We assume complete, well-formed source codes as input and we attempt to produce a complete, well-formed .NET codes as output.  We attempt to produce codes that build with no warnings or few warnings but this is rarely achieved without tuning the translation process.  We provide users with the means to customize the translations – to improve code quality in terms of correct syntax, maintainability, correct functionality, and conformance to unique coding standards.  However, implementing a custom translation process require research, analysis and skillful implementation and there are limitations; so, we do not guarantee any specific level of subjective "quality" for the custom translations.  Migration teams should plan to expend manual effort to finish any migration task.  Migration teams should also plan to put all generated code through functional and technical testing that is both rigorous and comprehensive and verify that it meets your criteria for quality.

Training

In addition to software updates, standard support also includes basic training and guidance in the use of our product.

• We provide a standard web-based training session to new customers, typically as part of a Smart Start engagement.  The duration of the standard training session is about 2-3 hours.
• We attempt to maintain a complete and up to date gmStudio User's Guide and gmStudio videos.
• We answer questions about using the tool including how to tune it by modifying your translation configuration files.  

We recommend customers planning to use advanced features study and reproduce the samples and read this gmStudio User Guide. Advanced training and higher-order services are recommended for teams planning extensive translation customization.