How to Get Support
Our goal is to help you resolve your questions or problems as quickly as possible. To help us do this effectively, please take a moment to review information on this page about our support policy, our Web support tool, and other sources of information for our products.
Support for Customers With a Current Annual Maintenance Agreement
Submit your support incidents using the Web Support Tool.
If You Do Not Have a Current Maintenance Agreement
You either need to ask for a sales rep to contact you about bringing your maintenance up-to-date or see if you can get an answer to your question or problem using one of the Other Resources listed below.
Using the Web Support Tool
Customers with a current Annual Maintenance Agreement are provided support using our Web Support Tool at http://support.alchemysolutions.com/. This tool provides you with the ability to submit new incidents, review and monitor previous incidents, participate in Web conversations with our Technical Support engineers, and browse the NetCOBOL knowledge base. Click on Web Support Tool User's Guide to download the manual which is in PDF format. You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader to view this file.
All support incidents must be initiated through the Web Support Tool. Customers can expect to receive an initial response to an incident within one business day for high priority incidents and within two business days for all other incidents. In the event that clarification is required beyond what is provided in the incident, a support engineer may contact you by phone. If you experience problems logging on or using the Web Support Tool, please send e-mail to support@alchemysolutions.com.
Support Policies
Those who have a current Annual Maintenance Agreement may want to read the Alchemy Solutions Defect Repair and Support Policy which discusses our defect fixing policy in less formal terms than the maintenance agreement. Please note that support under an Annual Maintenance Agreement is intended to resolve issues where our products are not performing as documented. This does not include “How to” questions, requests for samples or documentation links, or questions about interfaces to other third party tools not documented as part of our product. Our support organization will respond to this latter category of questions on a pay-per-incident basis. A statement of work will be provided for all pay incidents, with pricing starting at $125 per incident. Pay incidents are only available to customers who have a current Annual Maintenance Agreement.
Please note that Alchemy Solutions reserves the right to determine whether incidents entered are deemed within the scope of support services. For more complex issues and those that cannot easily be limited in scope, please contact a sales representative to discuss training and services provided by Alchemy Solutions. A sales representative can be reached by sending e-mail to cobol@netcobol.com.
Maintenance Agreement
If you purchase a One-Year Maintenance Agreement, you are entitled to:
- Unlimited technical support provided by use of our Web Support Tool
- Ability to purchase paid incidents as described above for “How-to” questions
- Access to a knowledge base that is part of our Web Support Tool that provides answers to frequently asked questions (FAQ’s), code samples, and utilities
- Free upgrades as they become available during the support year
- Participation in beta programs
Product Updates
Periodically we may issue product update packs between major product releases. These are made available in our SOFTWARE Download area.
Support for Previous Versions
Please follow this link for more information about previous released versions of our products.
Other Resources
The following lists additional places to look for help and samples:
comp.lang.cobol - Main discussion group on the Web for those interested in all COBOL language and usage matters.
COBOL User Groups (COBUG) - This COBOL programming portal is a one-stop resource for the COBOL community where you will find references to programs, jobs, compilers, tutorials, user groups, and other COBOL programming resources.
www.tek-tips.com – This is an independent Web forum that provides free access (after registration) to a wide variety of bulletin board style threads on many aspects of information technology. This Web site hosts a COBOL forum involving people who may be able to answer NetCOBOL-related questions.
