Customers are vital to Kuali. Kuali provides Customer Support and a Service Level Agreement (SLA) to support its customers, ensuring they have a baseline understanding of how we provide support and clarity on what our commitments entail.
Kuali Customer Support Services Commitment and SLA
In this commitment, references to Application Services refer to the whole suite of software that Kuali provides on a “software as a service” basis: Kuali Academic Ops, Kuali Advisor, Kuali Build, Kuali Financials, Kuali Focal, Kuali Ready, and Kuali Research. Other terms used in this commitment are defined in the Definitions section below.
We will update this commitment from time to time as things change. You can always find the latest version of this commitment on the Kuali Support Page (https://kuali.co/support).
Support and documentation for Kuali software are provided in English.
- Definitions
- Use of Kuali Support Services
- Backups and Business Continuity
- Maintenance
- Feature Requests
- SaaS Service Level Agreement (SLA)
Definitions
For the purpose of this commitment, the terms below have the following meanings:
- "Designated Representative" means designated customer administrators and support representatives.
- "Disaster" means an event that causes disruption of operational capabilities that renders your production Application Services unusable for a 12-hour period.
- "End User" means any of your faculty members, students, staff, employees, or agents whom you have authorized to access and use the Application Service.
- "Feature Request" means a request to incorporate a new feature or enhance an existing feature of the Application Service that is currently not available.
- “Governing Agreement” refers collectively to either the Kuali Subscription Agreement (KSA) or Kuali’s Master Subscription Agreement (MSA), as applicable, that describes the terms and obligations of our relationship.
- "Impact" means the classification or priority of your Support Request; it is used to establish target response times and how the issue is managed.
- “Scheduled Downtime” means periods of time during which Application Services will be unavailable to You for routine maintenance.
- "Support Request" means an official request logged in our Support Portal from you to us for assistance answering questions and/or to resolve a problem with the Application Service.
- “Support Services” means our normal provision of advice, direction, and support for the Application Services you subscribe to, provided in English.
- “Support Portal” means our official support system, where your Designated Representatives are authorized to submit support requests or emails that generate a Support Request.
- “Unscheduled Downtime” means any period during which the Application Services are unavailable to you other than Scheduled Downtime.
Use of Kuali Support Services
Our Responsibilities
We will make all reasonable professional efforts to:
- Provide support services as described in this commitment 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
- Respond to customer support requests within the target response times.
- Keep application services up to date.
- Provide current and relevant online self-help tools for end users and administrators.
Your Responsibilities
You are responsible for:
- End users’ compliance with the terms of service, the Governing Agreement, and any other applicable or appropriate agreements.
- Using reasonable efforts to resolve errors, configuration problems, malfunctions, or network connectivity issues before escalating to us.
- Working collaboratively with Kuali support staff to resolve support requests by providing timely responses to inquiries from our support staff.
Services Not Provided as part of our Support Services
Some services are not included in our standard Support Services and may require a separate work order or customer-specific agreement. Examples include:
- Direct support to customer end users.
- Data migration issues.
- Managing integrations with or troubleshooting/diagnosis of issues originating within 3rd party systems. Support for Kuali-native integration tools is included.
- Usage of the application services not consistent with the intended functionality of the application.
Assistance understanding data relationships as presented in the database schema documentation in order to write or format queries. - Non-supported 3rd party tools used with application services.
Issues arising with products hosted by a third party, unless optional support is identified in the Governing Agreement. - Issues arising from changes made to the code locally if software is used on premises and not a SaaS customer.
- Issues known by us not to be related to the application service itself.
- Any data or file restoration that requires accessing backup databases or file systems will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
- Direct-line telephone support.
Customer's Designated Representatives
You may designate up to 3 individuals per Product Family (Academic Ops, Academic Advising (Advisor, Focal), Build, Financials, Ready, Research) for the purposes of initiating support requests, and you may designate substitutes as needed. These designated representatives should be staff members who have been trained as application service administrators. Designated representatives will have the ability to initiate support requests as described in this commitment.
Support Window
Designated representatives may contact us with a support request 24/7/365 using our Customer Support Portal. Please see the Support Request Impact and Urgency section below for further detail.
Support Request Impact and Urgency
You will designate the impact level for each support request. Upon receiving a support request from your designated representative, we will begin evaluating the request and will respond within the target response time for the designated impact level. If we have any questions about the impact level assigned to your support request, we will work with you to come to an understanding with the appropriate designation.
| Impact | Description | Initial Response Time |
| Urgent |
One of the following:
|
Within 30 minutes of request submission. |
| High | The service is materially impaired, but it remains functional. |
Within 4 hours between 7AM and 7 PM Mon-Fri US Mountain Time, excluding Federal holidays. |
| Normal |
One of the following:
|
As soon as possible between 7 AM and 7 PM Mon-Fri US Mountain Time, excluding Federal holidays. |
Our approach to resolution depends on the Impact of a support request submitted to us by your designated representative via our Support Portal. Support requests that are emailed to our support portal are automatically assigned an impact of “Normal.” Support requests with an impact of High or Urgent must be submitted directly through our support portal. We will use professionally reasonable means to resolve Support Requests as quickly as possible and to respond to questions or issues that come from sources other than our support portal
End User Support
We provide support for customer end-users only through self-help mechanisms such as our online knowledge bases and/or community forums, which are available on our Support Portal. Use of Kuali’s support portal for help ticket submission is limited to your designated representatives. You are responsible for responding to any questions and requests from end users or other third parties relating to end users’ use of the application services, with such support to be provided by your personnel at your expense. We will make professionally reasonable attempts to respond to support requests submitted by users other than your designated representatives, and include your designated representatives in such responses.
Backups and Business Continuity
For details, refer to our Kuali Security, Engineering, and Operations documentation ( provided upon request).
Maintenance
Default Maintenance Windows
In most cases, maintenance has limited or no negative impact on the availability and functionality of the application services. Unless otherwise arranged, these are our standard maintenance windows for customer Production and Sandbox environments:
Kuali Academic Ops, Kuali Advisor, Kuali Build, Kuali Focal, Kuali Ready, Kuali Research
Kuali Academic Ops, Kuali Advisor, Kuali Build, Kuali Focal, Kuali Ready, and Kuali Research utilize a continuous change delivery model, where changes are automatically deployed to production once they have been reviewed and approved. Continuous changes are those where stable automated testing and deployment processes manage the process of releasing changes, including platform updates, configuration changes, and code changes. These changes result in no system downtime for customers.
Kuali Financials
Kuali Financials updates are continuously staged for deployment. Validated changes may be promoted to Production during one of the following times:
- Environments used by customers who primarily use the system in a continental US timezone: Daily, beginning at 8:00 PM, US Mountain Time.
- Environments used by customers who primarily use the system outside of continental US timezones: Daily at a standard, mutually agreed-upon time that does not interfere with regular business hours.
Standard Change Window
A Standard Change window is reserved for updates that cannot be accommodated within Default Maintenance Windows. This is a standing maintenance window that may be used without prior notification:
- Production: Each Sunday, 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM US Mountain Time.
- Non-Production: Each Saturday, 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM US Mountain Time (non-production customer-facing environments).
Any outage that happens within these defined windows will not be considered a service outage.
Emergency Maintenance
We may perform unscheduled emergency maintenance at any time. Professionally reasonable efforts will be made to provide advance notice if unscheduled emergency maintenance is required that could negatively affect the availability or functionality of the Application Services.
Feature Requests
We value your input and welcome your ideas for improving Kuali software. Anyone at your institution may use our Feature Idea process to share their ideas for new or enhanced product capabilities. Feature ideas are each reviewed and logged in a product management system. Ideas submitted via support requests will be reviewed and logged in our product management system before being closed.
We may reach out for more information about Feature Ideas and/or request the submitter to participate in a feature design study.
SaaS Service Level Agreement (SLA)
This SaaS Service Level Agreement ("SLA") is incorporated by reference into the Governing Agreement. It is effective between You and Us as of the date of Your accepting this Agreement.
Application Services
Service Availability Commitment. Subject to your performance under the Agreement, including without limitation the timely payment of Fees, we will use our commercially reasonable efforts to make Application Services available for use by you and End Users at least ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent (99.9%) of the time in any calendar month, exclusive of Scheduled Downtime. In any month where Application Services are not available for use by you and your End Users as provided above, you will be eligible to receive a reduction in price of the otherwise applicable Fees for Services according to the Service Credits provision below. The Service will be deemed unavailable if it is unresponsive for more than two (2) minutes during Planned Service Periods.
Your Data. You own your data. We just make it easy for you to collect, use, and share with individuals you designate. More information on requesting copies of your data can be found in your governing agreement.
Standard Data Protection and Archive Retention. We will: (i) mirror your production data, no less than once a day, to a cloud storage service that is geographically remote from our primary data center; and (ii) upon the occurrence of a Disaster, use reasonable business effort to provide a production operating environment for your application as soon as possible.
Your Data Portability and Deletion. Within 30 days of the termination or expiration of this Agreement, upon your request, we will provide you with access to your data for export or download. After this period, we are not obligated to maintain or provide your data, except as required by law. Data stored in our backup systems will be deleted or anonymized in accordance with our regular backup cycles.
General Provisions
Service Credits. In order to receive Service Credits, you must notify us within thirty (30) days from the time you become eligible to receive a Service Credit. Failure to comply with this requirement will forfeit your right to receive a Service Credit. Service Credits may not be exchanged for, or converted to, monetary amounts
Service Credits are calculated as the percentage of time in a month that the Application Service is unavailable beyond the Service Availability Commitment listed above, multiplied by the Annual SaaS Fees paid by You, prorated for the month during which You are eligible for a Service Credit. We will apply any Service Credits against future Services at the time of service renewal or extension. Service Credits will not entitle You to any refund or other payment from Us.
Maximum Service Credits. The aggregate maximum number of Service Credits to be issued by us to you for all Unscheduled Downtime that occurs in a single calendar month will not exceed fifteen (15) days of Service.
Comments
0 comments
Article is closed for comments.