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2. Describe your problem and gather background information.
3. Submit your problem to IBM Software Support.
Determine the business impact of your problem
When you report a problem to IBM, you are asked to supply a severity level.
Therefore, you need to understand and assess the business impact of the problem
you are reporting. Use the following criteria:
Severity 1 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 Significant business impact: The program is usable but is
severely limited.
Severity 3 Some business impact: The program is usable with less
significant features (not critical to operations) unavailable.
Severity 4 Minimal business impact: The problem causes little impact on
operations, or a reasonable circumvention to the problem has
been implemented.
Describe your problem and gather background information
When explaining a problem to IBM, be as specific as possible. Include all relevant
background information so that IBM Software Support specialists can help you
solve the problem efficiently. To save time, know the answers to these questions:
v What software versions were you running when the problem occurred?
v Do you have logs, traces, and messages that are related to the problem
symptoms? IBM Software Support is likely to ask for this information.
v Can the problem be re-created? If so, what steps led to the failure?
v Have any changes been made to the system? (For example, hardware, operating
system, networking software, and so on.)
v Are you currently using a workaround for this problem? If so, please be
prepared to explain it when you report the problem.
Submit your problem to IBM Software Support
You can submit your problem in one of two ways:
v Online: Go to the ″Submit and track problems″ page on the IBM Software
Support site (http://www.ibm.com/software/support/probsub.html). Enter
your information into the appropriate problem submission tool.
v By phone: For the phone number to call in your country, go to the contacts page
of the IBM Software Support Handbook on the Web
(techsupport.services.ibm.com/guides/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 Software Support creates an Authorized Program Analysis
Report (APAR). The APAR describes the problem in detail. Whenever possible,
IBM Software Support provides a workaround for you to implement until the
APAR is resolved and a fix is delivered. IBM publishes resolved APARs on the
IBM product support Web pages daily, so that other users who experience the
same problem can benefit from the same resolutions.
Appendix B. Support information 227