Maintenance

Maintenance releases of software will include enhancements to the software, but not additional modules that have not been purchased.

Support

Support will be provided between 09:00 and 17:00 Monday to Friday, excluding Bank Holidays and the period between Christmas and New Year.

We do not operate an automated telephone system during normal hours.  All calls are handled first by reception and are then passed directly to the support staff.  On the occasions when nobody is available to answer a support enquiry immediately a reply will usually be made within the hour.

Support requests can be made by phone, e-mail, fax or letter.  All such requests are handled by the appropriate product development team, who have a rota for manning the support desk.  In practice this makes support provision very effective.  Most support requests are handled immediately and are completed within two working days.

Support staff may require the means to obtain secure remote-access to the appropriate clients and server computers.

For non-urgent problems that cannot be resolved within two working days, a timescale for providing a fix is agreed, which is often based on a forthcoming release of the software.

For urgent major problems a complete or a temporary fix will be provided within the shortest possible timescale.

In the unlikely event that a problem cannot be resolved remotely, support staff may visit the site to effect a solution.  Standard rates will be charged for expenses for travelling and, where appropriate, overnight accommodation.  If the problem subsequently proves to be unrelated to our software, we reserve the right to charge for the time incurred at our standard consultancy rate.

Important information about products is emailed to the primary contact for each product.  Information may also be emailed to other contacts that have registered an interest in a product.

Useful product support information is provided on our website.

Many of our products also have dedicated forums that can be accessed through our website.


Live System Support

Where remote access has been given to the live system Compass support staff will adhere to the following guidelines:

1. No changes to the software, system configuration or data will be made before getting authority from the system owner having first made them aware of possible ramifications.
2. No processes, such as backups or re-indexing, will be executed before getting authority from the system owner having first made them aware of possible ramifications.
3. All data will be treated confidentially in accordance with the data protection act.

Received Data

Some issues can be more easily addressed by having relevant data sent to us. Data can be sent to Compass via post, email or FTP. It is recommended that data sent by post is done so as securely as possible.

Compass support staff will treat all received data confidentially in accordance with the data protection act and it will be deleted once the issue has been resolved.