• Contacting a Technician
• Response and Resolution Times
• Support Hours
• Special Considerations
• Problem Severity
• Response and Resolution

Contacting a Technician

Call the ISU Helpdesk at 502-1919 or contact us via email.

• In most cases, a technician will be available to answer your call during Business Hours.
• If a technician does not answer your call, please leave a voicemail message with a description of the problem and your contact information.
• If your call is urgent during Business Hours OR on Saturday and Sunday 7 AM - 6 PM, please key 1-1-2 at the end of your message to mark the call as urgent and automatically page an ISU technician.
  
  Note: High Priority Response and Resolution Times will be honored only if 1-1-2 is keyed at the end of your message.
  
• If your call is urgent during other Off-Hours, the Helpdesk voicemail message will provide you with a pager number for the on call support technician. Call that pager directly to contact a technician.
  
  Note: This service is only intended for Priority 1 outages. Fixes for lower priority outages will be addressed the next business day.
  
• Contact us via e-mail for reporting non-critical outages and requests. Email messages will be reviewed periodically during Business Hours.

Response and Resolution Times

** Note: Hours stated in terms of business hours, e.g., 48 hours equal 6 business days.

*Note: This service is only intended for Priority 1 outages. Fixes for lower priority outages will be addressed the next business day.

See a full list of application and server priorities.

Support Hours

Special Considerations

Customers may contact the ISU Helpdesk with one-week lead-time to make special arrangements for more responsive after hours support for a specific period of time for unique projects or activities. For example, it may be imperative that a certain application has high availability over a specific weekend. In this situation, additional on call technicians may be assigned over the weekend and put on high alert to respond to problems in a more timely fashion.

Problem Severity

• Priority 1
• Priority 2
• Priority 3
• Priority 4

Priority 1

E-mail, file/print, Web, application, database, and other hosted services

This includes:

• priority 1 server crashes,
• priority 1 application and database failures
• systems that contain sensitive data including patient or student information
• other critical problems impacting one or more end-users

Desktops:

During Business Hours, includes:

• desktops disabled to the extent that the end user cannot function or perform the basic tasks required for the position. The source of the problem may be hardware, software, server, or the network.
• systems that contain sensitive data including patient or student information

During Off-Hours, includes:

• desktop problems related to campus network or Priority 1 server outages. All other problems specific to the desktop hardware and software will be addressed as a Priority 2 outage the next business day.
• systems that contain sensitive data including ePHI or student information

Priority 2

E-mail, file/print, Web, application, database, and other hosted services

Includes:

• priority 2 server crashes
• inability of a production server to serve a subset of end-users or properly render a portion of services and/or applications provided by the server, i.e., partial server failure; new account creation
• and priority 2 application or database failures.

Desktops

Includes:

• desktops disabled to the extent that the end user cannot perform all of the tasks required for the position but is able to perform other tasks, e.g., unable to access e-mail
• locked accounts
• account password resets.

Priority 3

Includes:

• priority 3 server crashes
• non-critical problems
• "how do I" questions
• software extensions
• new hardware, and
• training related problems.

Priority 4

Includes:

• future requests
• maintenance
• software exceptions, and
• requests for applications/database development and enhancements.

Response and Resolution

• Initial Response
• Initiate Fix
• Resolution
• More About Response and Resolution

Initial Response: Time allotted to respond to an end-user after receiving a support call.

Initiate Fix: Time allotted to begin work on a problem after receiving a support call.

Resolution: Time allotted to resolve a problem after receiving a support call.

More About Response and Resolution:

1. An Initial Response will consist of a phone call or email to the requester to confirm the request, discuss details, assign a priority, and issue a ticket number.
   
   Note: Ticket numbers may not be assigned during Off-Hours.

2. Targeted e-mail and/or phone distribution lists are maintained to notify the appropriate parties affected by server and application outages. During high priority outages, problem status will be communicated periodically to the affected parties as new information becomes available. During off-hours status updates will be communicated through the Helpdesk voicemail system.

3. As reasonably required, feedback on lower priority support calls will be communicated via e-mail or phone to the affected parties.

4. The time required to resolve a Priority 1 outage will be dependant on the severity of the problem and number of Priority 1 calls in the queue.

5. Resolution of Priority 2 calls will be addressed in the order received and after all Priority 1 calls have been addressed.

6. Some Priority 2 server outage calls are related to a subset of users in a single network (i.e., a building or floor) or user population (e.g., Macintosh users) unable to access the server. If the problem is determined to be a network segment outage, the call will go back to the departmental CSC to open a ticket with OAAIS or ISU will initiate the service call to OAAIS.

7. Scheduled Outages: An e-mail or voicemail notification will be sent to the appropriate parties 2-5 days in advance of a scheduled integration or production server outage.

8. Website Monitor: An automated computer program called "Site Probe" checks the accessibility of the SOM website every 5 minutes, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. If the program finds that the site is inaccessible from outside the UCSF network for a sustained period of 10 minutes or more, the Site Probe program pages an ISU technician.
   
   A Priority 1 action will be initiated if the “Site Probe” fails to render either of the following pages:
   
   • http://www.medschool.ucsf.edu
   • http://www.medschool.ucsf.edu/medstudents/
   • http://missinglink.ucsf.edu/sitefinder/XcDirectory.asp
   • https://somowa.ucsf.edu/exchange/logon.asp

   Server Outage Priorities