Xinix is committed to providing reliable, high quality IT services. This document outlines targeted service availability levels and obligations of Xinix to maintain those levels as described below.
Definitions and Scope
Xinix Support – provided by Xinix staff to the customer. Business hours: Monday to Friday: 8:00am to 7:00pm UK time (excludes Public Holidays) After hours emergency faults only: All hours not within Business hours coverage
This Service Level Agreement covers services provided directly by Xinix. It is limited to the equipment, software and network infrastructure that Xinix has direct control of. Services provided by third parties (e.g. internet supply, customer equipment etc.) are covered by the SLA of the respective third parties.
Our monitoring service runs 24x7x365 and major issues are dealt with by our out-of-hours incident team regardless of your cover, and you can elect to increase cover for critical systems if you wish.
Reporting Faults
Customers of Xinix can lodge faults directly with the support team.
Faults can be reported in two ways:
- 1. By calling Xinix on 03333 055 888 or dialling 7878 from your VoIP handset supplied by Xinix
- 2. By sending an email to: [email protected]
How we work out priorities
Our SLA timers also depend on the priority of your issue or request. When you raise a ticket with us, we make an assessment based on the information you have given us.
We let you know the priority we have assigned, but are happy to take extenuating circumstances into account, if you think we’ve got it wrong.
Priority is based on two factors: urgency and impact.
Urgency
Roughly, this is how many people are affected by the incident, e.g.
- LOW – one person or small group of people affected
- MEDIUM department or large group of people affected
- HIGH whole organisation is affected
Impact
Again, roughly speaking, this relates to how disruptive the incident is, e.g.
- LOW – there’s an easy and effective workaround, so this is more an irritation than a stoppage
- MEDIUM operational efficiency is degraded, but there is either a reasonable workaround or other members of the team are unimpeded
- HIGHthe issue is critical and one or more major business processes are stopped
| HIGH Impact | MEDIUM Impact | LOW Impact | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High Urgency | Priority 1 | Priority 1 | Priority 2 |
| MEDIUM Urgency | Priority 1 | Priority 2 | Priority 3 |
| LOW Urgency | Priority 2 | Priority 3 | Priority 4 |
In our experience most issues fall into priority 3, so that tends to be a default. The priority assigned dictates the amount of time we give ourselves to deal with your incident or request.
Overriding our priorities
We aim to be flexible and recognise that sometimes there are extenuating circumstances. Perhaps the issue affects your customers, or key staff are having issues with a critical project with an impending deadline.
Our technicians are able to override our standard priority assessment where there is good reason, if you have made us aware of it.
The clock is ticking
We have various clocks (timers) running on every ticket you raise, though most of our clients are only interested in two of them (“respond within” and “resolve within”).
These timers represent maximums – we generally come well within these time limits.
“Respond within…”
- This is the maximum amount of time (within your hours of cover) that it should take us to get back to you, and confirm who is dealing with your ticket – you get to speak to a trained technical expert straight away, rather than a recorded menu system or a call-logger.
“Resolve within…”
- This is the one that everyone is really interested in: the maximum time it should take to get everything up and running.
| Resolve within | Respond within | |
|---|---|---|
| Priority 1 | 1 working hour | 4 working hours |
| Priority 2 | 1 working hour | 8 working hours |
| Priority 3 | 2 working hours | 16 working hours |
| Priority 4 | 2 working hours | 24 working hours |
| Priority 5 | 8 working hours | 40 working hours |
Some examples of priorities
- Priority 1 –nobody can send or receive emails (everyone is affected, and a major business process is stopped)
- Priority 2 –Internet access for the whole company seems slower than usual (everyone is affected, and efficiency is degraded)
- Priority 3 –After the web browser has been upgraded for the company some of the shortcuts have disappeared (everyone is affected but there is an easy workaround)
- Priority 4 – Your computer is slow starting up in the morning, but everybody else is fine (your efficiency is lower but you’re the only person affected)
- Priority 5 –Someone is missing the shortcut everyone has to a shared folder, though they can save files to it by manually navigating to the folder (there’s a straightforward workaround, and only one person is affected)
Other exceptions to our priorities
- Paid workshop repairs –very often we’re dependent on supply of parts or arrangements with you for collections and returns, so we usually allocate a priority of 5 for these jobs.
- Quotes – we have no timers on these requests, but we do our best to be prompt and keep you fully up to date.
- Low priority admin requests – these have response times that match priority 4 but a resolve time of a priority 5. Generally we get plenty of advance notice and these requests are not urgent.
