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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 arise when 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.  There is also a feedback form that can be found on the gmStudio Help menu.  We will use email, web meetings, and phone in responding to support requests and may direct you to technical articles on this portal.

Licensed users are also entitled and encouraged to use the latest version of the product.  Product updates are typically published every 3-6 weeks.  gmStudio will display a link to the new release in the upper right-hand corner of the Main Form if one is available.  

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 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  respond to questions regarding the advanced use of the tool (i.e., customization and automated re-engineering)  at a best-efforts level of service with resources available.

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.  Please send us representative source code and configuration files in addition to the generated code and logs showing the problem.
• We use email, web meetings, and phone to provide responses. 
• We attempt to make a first response to support requests within 1-3 business days. 

What types of problems does Standard Support cover?

• 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 valid source code

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 provide a service level agreement for the following types of work:

• Making your translations build in .NET
• Preparing or verifying custom configuration files
• Developing and/or presenting training materials for a custom translation
• Functional testing of client applications
• Runtime Support Library enhancements 

Under standard support, these tasks remain your responsibility.  However we are very interested in helping you with them and we encourage you to submit requests for help with these tasks.  Most questions are answered within 1-5 business days, but response time can be longer depending on our other commitments.  If you need a higher level of service, we will work with you to define a Statement of Work describing tasks, deliverables, schedule, staffing, and cost for the effort.

Requesting Support

Please make sure that you are using the latest version of gmStudio and that you have looked for answers in our User's Guide first.

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.
• In certain cases we require sample source and solution files to reproduce the error.  Please compress related material into .zip archives. Content may be emailed or exchanged by secure file upload to the Great Migrations web site.

Quality of generated code

We assume complete, well-formed source codes and solution configuration files as input and we attempt to produce 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 requires research, analysis and skillful implementation,  Your ability to implement a custom solution is limited by the resources available; so, we do not guarantee any specific level of subjective "quality" for the custom translations.  Migration teams should plan to finish some upgrade tasks with manual effort.