Support and services
Support from the engineers who build the products, with 24x7 available and teams in the UK, EU and Australasia.
Xi's support is provided by the engineers who build the products. There is no first line whose job is to establish whether you have tried turning it off and on again.
That is the difference customers comment on most often, and it is a consequence of being small and specialised rather than a policy we invented.
The support provided by Xi has been tremendous, even with the 5 hour time difference.
David Laneville, Manager of I/S, City of Timmins, Canada
What a maintenance contract includes
Access
Telephone and email support
For the use of any Xi product, for reporting faults, requesting enhancements and general enquiries. Email is treated at the same priority as a call.
Resolution
Fixes and workarounds
Reported problems are addressed by a fix or a workaround; some fixes ship in the next release.
Currency
New releases
Including new functionality and performance work, for as long as the contract runs.
Recovery
Emergency licence re-validation
Outside office hours, for sites recovering from a system failure.
Hours and coverage
24x7 support is available. Lines are answered around the clock; engineering attendance outside office hours is by appointment, and the coverage you have is agreed in your contract.
Support teams are based in the UK, the EU and Australasia.
How we handle a problem
Every call, email and message gets a log number and an agreed priority.
| Priority | Definition | What we do |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Critical - the product will not run | Immediate attention and escalation, with regular progress updates until resolved. |
| 2 | Service impairment - part of the product is not working properly | Contact and assessment quickly, with updates through the working day. |
| 3 | Minimal impact | Acknowledged and scheduled. |
If you feel a problem is not being dealt with effectively there is an escalation route to the senior customer service engineer, then the sales director, then the managing director. It is a short company and that ladder is three real people.
Additional services
Available to maintenance customers at the prevailing rate: out-of-hours support beyond the contracted cover, cold standby systems, product training, and Unix and Linux consultancy.
Training
On-site training workshops on any Xi product, in three parts.
Part I
For all users
Architecture and components, the core concepts - form types for Xi-Text, variables and conditions for Xi-Batch - submitting work, and changing queued work.
Part II
For system administrators
Queue maintenance, starting and stopping the system, user maintenance, class codes, and restricting user views.
Part III
For the graphical interfaces
Installation and customisation of the Motif and GTK3 interfaces.
We also provide general Unix and Linux consultancy. We have been doing this since 1980 and aim for a same-day solution wherever it is possible.
Self-service
55 articles
Knowledge base
Real operational topics: user priority ranges, load levels, diagnosing variables that do not reach another host, bulk job deletion, backing up and restoring a configuration.
Every release
Release notes
What changed, why it changed, and which releases it applies to.
Under maintenance
Downloads and licensing
Releases, online licence renewal and the product manuals, in the customer portal.