FrontLine Support Resolution Processes
When you experience a problem or encounter a question about product usage, there are several avenues that you may want to investigate:
- Reference product documentation
- Search FrontLine, the technical support web site
- Use the product's internal help topics
If you have not been able to satisfactorily resolve your issue, the next step is to log a call following the instructions on the Incident Reporting Home page on Frontline.
In case of a high priority issue you can call the product support hotline at (800) 538-7822 in the USA or +800 78776788 (+800 SUPPORTU) in Europe or your local support office. Calls can be serviced most effectively if you can provide the following information:
- Compuware customer number
- Company name
- Caller's name
- Phone number
- Email address
- Product name and version number
- Platform
- Operating system and version number
- Database type and version number
- Description of the problem
- Error messages, if any
- Problem priority
After reporting the issue, you will receive a unique call reference number. This reference number will be used to track all conversations and activities surrounding your call. Your call will be dispatched to the appropriate subject matter expert in one of four areas:
- Product usage and product issues
- License administration and product security
- License management and contracts
- Sales
Your assigned expert will work with you to resolve or recreate the problem. If the issue cannot be satisfactorily resolved at the first level of contact, each product expert area has their own escalation process to keep open calls moving towards completion.
Description of Priority Levels
When logging a call, you will be asked to assign a priority number to your issue. The following table provides a guideline to help you assign a priority to your issue.
| Priority |
Response Time |
Description |
1 (Critical Problem)
|
1 business hour
|
- No known workaround or solution to the problem at the time the call is logged
- Causes the software or operating system to fail completely
- Requires constant restarting of the software or operating system
- Results in corruption or loss of data
- Prevents the installation of the software
|
2 (Major Problem)
|
4 business hours |
- No known workaround or solution to the problem at the time the call is logged
- Prevents the use of an explicitly documented major function of the software
- Causes a software or OS crash
- Use of the software is seriously impacted (mission critical usability problems)
- Installation issues
|
3 (Normal Problem)
|
8 business hours
|
- It does not meet the criteria of a priority 1 or priority 2
- Product does not work as explicitly documented
- Non-mission critical usability issues
|
4 (Minor Problem)
|
2 business days |
- It does not meet the criteria of previous priorities
- Low priority requests for information (e.g. what is the most current release?)
- Documentation errors
| |
 |
Uniface Support Lifecycle
The Uniface product has three typical release types:
-
A "major release" or "version" like Uniface 9. Major releases typically contain significant new functionality and require a migration process to convert applications from previous releases to the new release.
-
A "minor release" like Uniface 9.1 or 8.4. Minor releases typically contain minor new functionality. A migration process may be required when moving to the next minor release. Minor releases typically have a release frequency of once a year.
-
A "maintenance release" like Uniface 8.4.05 or 9.1.01. Maintenance releases typically include bug fixes and support for new platforms or databases. A migration process is normally not required when moving to the next maintenance release. Maintenance releases have a release frequency of a couple of times per year.
All Uniface releases are defined as "a.b.0c" where:
- a = major release or version number
- b = minor release number
- c = maintenance release number
Next to these releases, Uniface patches on maintenance releases are made available every month. The last patch on a maintenance release is called a service pack. The maintenance release plus the service pack becomes the next maintenance release: Maintenance release 9.1.01 + service pack MN01 = maintenance release 9.1.02.
The Compuware Uniface Support Lifecycle policy specifies for how long support will be available for a Uniface product. Uniface customers can use this site to track how long their version and release of Uniface will be supported. Using the information on this page, you will be able to effectively plan your migration to the next release, without any breaks in support.
The Compuware Uniface Support Lifecycle policy makes sure that at any moment in time at least two minor releases are supported.
Table showing the planned end of support dates of current Uniface versions (as of April 9, 2008):
| Uniface minor release |
Release date |
End of support |
| 8.3 |
Apr 2003 |
Apr 2008 |
| 8.4 |
Apr 2004 |
Dec 2009 |
| 9.1 |
Dec 2006 |
May 2009 |
| 9.2 |
Nov 2007 |
(June 2010)* |
| 9.3 |
(Dec 2008)* |
TBD** |
* Tentative dates in parentheses
** If the table does not yet show a (tentative) date for the End of support of a release you can use the following rule of thumb to determine the approximate date on which support will end.
- Minor releases are supported at least until 18 months after the subsequent minor release has been made available.
- The last minor release of a version is supported at least until 30 months after the subsequent version has been made available.
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