Appendix J. Support resources and problem solving information

This section shows you how to quickly locate information to help answer your questions and solve your problems. If you have to call IBM® support, this section provides information that you need to provide to the IBM service representative to help diagnose and resolve the problem.

For a comprehensive multimedia overview of IBM software support resources, see the IBM Education Assistant presentation "IBM Software Support Resources for System z® Enterprise Development Tools and Compilers products" at http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ieduasst/stgv1r0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.iea.debugt/debugt/6.1z/TrainingEducation/SupportInfoADTools/player.html.

Searching knowledge bases

You can search the available knowledge bases to determine whether your problem was already encountered and is already documented.

Searching the information center

You can find this publication and documentation for many other products in the IBM System z Enterprise Development Tools & Compilers information center at http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/pdthelp/v1r1/index.jsp. Using the information center, you can search product documentation in a variety of ways. You can search across the documentation for multiple products, search across a subset of the product documentation that you specify, or search a specific set of topics that you specify within a document. Search terms can include exact words or phrases, wild cards, and Boolean operators.

To learn more about how to use the search facility provided in the IBM System z Enterprise Development Tools & Compilers information center, you can view the multimedia presentation at http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/pdthelp/v1r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.help.doc/InfoCenterTour800600.htm.

Searching product support documents

If you need to look beyond the information center to answer your question or resolve your problem, you can use one or more of the following approaches:

Getting fixes

A product fix might be available to resolve your problem. To determine what fixes and other updates are available, select a link from the following list:

When you find a fix that you are interested in, click the name of the fix to read its description and to optionally download the fix.

Subscribe to receive e-mail notifications about fixes and other IBM Support information as described in Subscribing to Support updates..

Subscribing to support updates

To stay informed of important information about the IBM products that you use, you can subscribe to updates. By subscribing to receive updates, you can receive important technical information and updates for specific Support tools and resources. You can subscribe to updates by using the following:

RSS feeds and social media subscriptions

For general information about RSS, including steps for getting started and a list of RSS-enabled IBM web pages, visit the IBM Software Support RSS feeds site at http://www.ibm.com/software/support/rss/other/index.html. For information about the RSS feed for the IBM System z Enterprise Development Tools & Compilers information center, refer to the Subscribe to information center updates topic in the information center at http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/pdthelp/v1r1/topic/com.ibm.help.doc/subscribe_info.html.

My Notifications

With My Notifications, you can subscribe to Support updates for any IBM product. You can specify that you want to receive daily or weekly email announcements. You can specify what type of information you want to receive (such as publications, hints and tips, product flashes (also known as alerts), downloads, and drivers). My Notifications enables you to customize and categorize the products about which you want to be informed and the delivery methods that best suit your needs.

To subscribe to Support updates, follow the steps below. Additional information is provided at http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=615&uid=swg21172598.

  1. Go to the IBM software support site at http://www.ibm.com/software/support.
  2. Click the My Notifications link in the Notifications portlet on the page that is displayed.
  3. If you have already registered for My notifications, sign in and skip to the next step. If you have not registered, click register now. Complete the registration form using your e-mail address as your IBM ID and click Submit.
  4. In the My notifications tool, click the Subscribe tab to specify products for which you want to receive e-mail updates.
  5. To specify Problem Determination Tools products, click Other software and then select the products for which you want to receive e-mail updates, for example, Debug Tool for z/OS and File Manager for z/OS.
  6. To specify a COBOL or PL/I compiler, click Rational® and then select the products for which you want to receive e-mail updates, for example, Enterprise COBOL for z/OS.
  7. After selecting all products that are of interest to you, scroll to the bottom of the list and click Continue.
  8. Determine how you want to save your subscription. You can use the default subscription name or create your own by entering a new name in the Name field. It is recommended that you create your own unique subscription name using something easily recognized by you. You can create a new folder by entering a folder name in the New field or select an existing folder from the pulldown list. A folder is a container for multiple subscriptions.
  9. Specify the types of documents you want and the e-mail notification frequency.
  10. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Submit.

To view your current subscriptions and subscription folders, click My subscriptions.

If you experience problems with the My notifications feature, click the Feedback link in the left navigation panel and follow the instructions provided.

Contacting IBM Support

IBM Support provides assistance with product defects, answering FAQs, and performing rediscovery.

After trying to find your answer or solution by using other self-help options such as technotes, you can contact IBM Support. Before contacting IBM Support, your company must have an active IBM maintenance contract, and you must be authorized to submit problems to IBM. For information about the types of available support, see the information below or refer to the Support portfolio topic in the Software Support Handbook at http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/sas/f/handbook/offerings.html.

If you are not sure what type of software maintenance contract you need, call 1-800-IBMSERV (1-800-426-7378) in the United States. From other countries, go to the Contacts page of the IBM Software Support Handbook on the Web at http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/sas/f/handbook/contacts.html and click the name of your geographic region for phone numbers of people who provide support for your location.

Complete the following steps to contact IBM Support with a problem:

  1. Define the problem and determine the severity of the problem
  2. Gather diagnostic information
  3. Submit the problem to IBM Support

To contact IBM Software support, follow these steps:

Define the problem and determine the severity of the problem

Define the problem and determine severity of the problem When describing a problem to IBM, be as specific as possible. Include all relevant background information so that IBM Support can help you solve the problem efficiently.

IBM Support needs you to supply a severity level. Therefore, you need to understand and assess the business impact of the problem that you are reporting. Use the following criteria:

Severity 1
The problem has a critical business impact. You are unable to use the program, resulting in a critical impact on operations. This condition requires an immediate solution.
Severity 2
The problem has a significant business impact. The program is usable, but it is severely limited.
Severity 3
The problem has some business impact. The program is usable, but less significant features (not critical to operations) are unavailable.
Severity 4
The problem has minimal business impact. The problem causes little impact on operations, or a reasonable circumvention to the problem was implemented.

For more information, see the Getting IBM support topic in the Software Support Handbook at http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/sas/f/handbook/getsupport.html.

Gather diagnostic information

To save time, if there is a Mustgather document available for the product, refer to the Mustgather document and gather the information specified. Mustgather documents contain specific instructions for submitting your problem to IBM and gathering information needed by the IBM support team to resolve your problem. To determine if there is a Mustgather document for this product, go to the product support page and search on the term Mustgather. At the time of this publication, the following Mustgather documents are available:

If the product does not have a Mustgather document, please provide answers to the following questions:

Submit the problem to IBM Support

You can submit your problem to IBM Support in one of three ways:

Online using the IBM Support Portal
Click Service request on the IBM Software Support site at http://www.ibm.com/software/support. On the right side of the Service request page, expand the Product related links section. Click Software support (general) and select ServiceLink/IBMLink to open an Electronic Technical Response (ETR). Enter your information into the appropriate problem submission form.
Online using the Service Request tool
The Service Request tool can be found at http://www.ibm.com/software/support/servicerequest.
By phone
Call 1-800-IBMSERV (1-800-426-7378) in the United States or, from other countries, go to the Contacts page of the IBM Software Support Handbook at http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/sas/f/handbook/contacts.html and click the name of your geographic region.

If the problem you submit is for a software defect or for missing or inaccurate documentation, IBM Support creates an Authorized Program Analysis Report (APAR). The APAR describes the problem in detail. Whenever possible, IBM Support provides a workaround that you can implement until the APAR is resolved and a fix is delivered. IBM publishes resolved APARs on the IBM Support website daily, so that other users who experience the same problem can benefit from the same resolution.

After a Problem Management Record (PMR) is open, you can submit diagnostic MustGather data to IBM using one of the following methods:

Always update your PMR to indicate that data has been sent. You can update your PMR online or by phone as described above.