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Novell Support — Electronic Service Request

To learn more about accessing support and using the electronic service request (SR) system, please review the sections below.

Note: There is a new electronic service request system available through Novell Customer Center which provides a consistent interface and increased functionality.

 You may also view our online tutorials that will guide you through the process of creating a Novell Account, submitting a service request and viewing your service request history online.


Create or Manage My Novell Account

In order to access the electronic service request system, you will be prompted to login with your Novell Account. You may already have a Novell Account if you have registered a product or created a service request online in the past. The following links will help you locate an existing Novell Account or create a new one:

Accessing and Navigating Self Service

The URL for the self service site is: http://support.novell.com/eService/.

The fist time you log in to the self service site, you may be asked to enter your last name and contact ID (CID). Once this information has been entered, it will be stored under your Novell Account profile for future logins.

If you do not know your CID, please contact your local Novell Customer Service Center at 1-800-858-4000 (USA) or +31-10-286-4700 (EMEA). Note: As a Premium 3000 - Premium 5000 customer you are entitled to contact your assigned Service Account Manager or your Primary/Designated Support Engineer.

Submit a Service Request

The following fields are found on the service request form. All required fields are marked with an asterisk (*).

Field Definitions:

SR#: This number is automatically generated and is used to identify your Service Request.

*Account: To select an account, click the pick list icon that is next to the field. In most cases the Account is your company name. If you did not specify an account on your Novell profile, your Account name may show as "INDIVIDUAL". For Beta customers, the Account is the name of the Beta you are participating in. For CNE's the Account name begins with "CNE". After selecting an account, the eligible entitlements are displayed.

*Entitlement: Depending on the account which you selected in the Account field, the corresponding entitlements are displayed. The Entitlement you select affects the assignment of the service request inside Novell and controls the response time. In addition, once an SR is applied to an Entitlement, the number of SRs remaining is reduced accordingly. Therefore, if you have more than one Entitlement available to you, please ensure the correct Entitlement is selected for each SR you open.

*Product: Depending on the entitlement that was selected, a list of corresponding products will be displayed.

*Platform Select what platform you are using.

On-site Phone: You may enter an alternative phone number here. This field is not required.

Respond Via: The response method varies according to your support program with Novell. Most programs include both phone and email support, however, if your program is limited to only email the technician will respond accordingly.

*Severity: The default severity level is medium. If you feel the situation is a high severity, we recommend calling your local support center for the fastest response time. Support center phone numbers can be found here.

*Brief Description: This is where you will provide a brief description of the issue. This field has a 100 character limit, so it should be kept brief but specific enough to differentiate from other SRs.

Detailed Description: This is where you can enter more detail about your issue. You can include information such as: configuration information, patches applied, steps to duplicate the problem, error messages, etc. Provide as much detail as possible as this will help us resolve your issue as quickly as possible. If the details exceed 2000 characters, the entire description will be appended as an attachment to the SR.

Once you have submitted your service request, you are presented with a list of your SRs with the most current listed first. If you need to add an attachment (i.e. screen shots) click the SR# hyperlink to open the details of the SR. Click the Add button under the Attachments section, find your file and click OK. You may enter a description of the attachment if you wish. Click Submit and the attachment is added to the service request. Additional attachments may be added using the same process.

Please note: If your file is larger than 50MB, we recommend that it be submitted via the FTP site. Please review the FTP Process for more information.

Check My Service Requests

This section is where you can view all of the service requests (SRs) which you have created. If you are a contact with more than one company, all SRs you have created under your companies will display here. The SRs are listed ten at a time, sorted by date created, with the most recent being first. To scroll through the SRs select the arrow arrow in the upper right hand corner of the list. Additionally, all columns can be sorted in ascending/descending order by clicking the up or down arrow buttons at the top of the columns.

Clicking the SR# hyperlink will take you to the SR Detail View where you can view updates from the engineer assigned to your SR, add your own updates and attachments to the SR. It is recommended that you submit any config.txt or log files after creating a Service Request to help speed up the resolution process. If your file is larger than 50MB, we recommend that it be submitted via the FTP site. Please review the FTP Process for more information.

You may also follow up on an existing service request by calling Novell Technical Support at 1-800-858-4000 (toll free) or 1-801-861-4000. Select option 1 and then enter the service request number. You will then be routed directly to the engineer that is assigned to your service request.

Here are the descriptions for the vaious fields and buttons found on the Check My Service Requests page:

Status: The status of the SR can be either Opened, Closed or Monitor. Once an SR is closed, updates cannot be made to it via the website. If you need to reopen the call, you will need to call your local support center. Support center phone numbers can be found here.

Sub Status: The Sub Status provides a quick look at the progress of your SR. This field gets updated when the engineer or customer updates the SR. It's good practice to sort this column in ascending order to view the SRs listed as 'Awaiting Customer'. This tells you that the engineer has provided an update and is now waiting for a response from you.

Last Update Date: This is the date and time of the last update made to your SR. The time of the update will be based on your local time zone if you have your browser settings set correctly. Otherwise, it will be GMT.

 New button: Select this button to create a new Service Request.

 Query button: Select this button to query your Service Requests. The query form has the following fields: SR#, Product, Platform, Last Name, First Name, Account, Entitlement, Status, Sub Status, Brief Description, and Detailed Description. Enter your parameters and select the Go button at the bottom of the form.

Please note: When performing free text queries, the first two letters are case insensitive. Any remaining letters are case sensitive. For example in searching for last name of McDonald, you would need to enter ‘mcD’ or ‘McD’ to get any results.

Check My Company's Service Requests

This section is where you can view all SRs created by all contacts on your account. If you have more than one Account, only the SRs for your 'Current' Account will display. To change your 'Current' Account follow the steps in the Check My Accounts section. All contacts have rights to view and update all SRs for their account.

The same querying capabilities as noted in the Check My Service Requests section are available here.

Check My Accounts

This section lists all accounts for which you are a contact. Here you can check entitlements, review the expiration date of entitlements, view how many SRs have been used, and view the contacts associated to each entitlement.

To view contacts and entitlement details: Click the account name hyperlink, and then the agreement number hyperlink. Entitlements are listed at the top of the page and can be scrolled through by selecting the arrow arrow in the upper right corner. To view details about each entitlement, select the record by clicking the diamond at the beginning of the row. Contact and entitlement details for the selected record will be displayed in the windows below.

SRs Remaining: The 'SRs Remaining' column under the Agreement Detail View displays the number of SRs available for each entitlement. This number is updated nightly.

Current Account: For customers associated with more than one account (i.e. Beta customers), a 'Current Account' must be selected. The 'Current Account' is designated with a check mark and controls the SRs displayed in the Check My Company's Service Requests view. To view SRs for an account that is not designated as 'Current', you must change this setting by following the steps below:

  1. Click the Check My Accounts link.
  2. Click Edit ( ) at the end of the row for the account record you wish designate as the 'Current Account'.
  3. Select the Current check box. (The box is "checked" or selected.)
  4. Click Save.
  5. You must log out and log back in for the changes to take effect.

Manage Authorized Contacts

Contact identification numbers (CID) are confidential and should only be used by the person to which they are assigned. To add or remove authorized contacts, send an e-mail to our contract administrators with the following information:

  • Name, phone number, and e-mail address of new contact(s)
  • Name and/or contact ID of contacts to be removed
  • Service agreement number (optional)

Depending on your location, contact one of the following contract administrators:

Americas: nts_dbmaint@novell.com
EMEA: EMEA-CustomerCare@novell.com
Asia Pacific: apac_premium@novell.com

 


Latin America Support Center Help

Here are some tutorials in Spanish and Portuguese that will show you how to setup your access to and use the self service site:

Here are some documents, in English, Portuguese and Spanish, with details on how to access Novell Technical Services in Latin America:

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