SAS Support policies

[BenConner]

Hi,

Anyone have any experience with SAS Support after normal business hours?  I'm helping a significant client of theirs who has reached out to get help and have gotten none so far.  This is a critical and urgent issue for this company.

Any guidance is appreciated.

--Ben

[Quentin]

I don't have any experience with outside of business hours support requests, other than posting questions here, where there are lots of SAS employees who participate in their free time.  I'd encourage you to post and see how it goes.

I did notice there is an option to pay for premium support, so if your client pays for that, perhaps there is a possibility: https://www.sas.com/content/dam/SAS/en_us/doc/other1/sas-premium-support-108809.pdf

[dpage · Accepted solution]

If they haven't called (and it's a critical issue)  that's the first thing to do:

https://support.sas.com/en/technical-support/services-policies.html#hours

For Critical Support Requests after Normal Support Hours

Calls to SAS Technical Support for critical requests after normal support hours are directed to one of the SAS worldwide support centers in North America, Europe, or Asia/Pacific, thus providing 24-hour, follow-the-sun support. Customers can update tracks electronically 24x7. However, for new requests or for existing tracks with requests that become critical outside of normal business hours, customers must also call SAS Technical Support. The phone number is available on the Contact SAS Technical Support web page. When customers call, they must press 2 for Technical Support, listen to the greeting in its entirety, and then press 0 to start follow-the-sun support.

Note: After-hours support is available only in English and is limited to critical requests for software products under Standard Support. Because the support is in English, it is important that customers are able to adequately discuss their request in English. SAS provides self-help resources such as support.sas.com and the SAS Support Communities for software products under Limited Support. Customers can search these resources for potential circumventions to issues that are similar to the one that they are experiencing.

In addition, customers can access the SAS Support Site website and email support services 24 hours a day.

[SASKiwi]

Who did they reach out to? In the first instance they should have contacted their SAS Account Manager to explain their support requirements. I am sure there are many SAS customers that work across multiple time zones and / or work longer than normal business hours. SAS has several regional support hubs spread around the globe to deal with these very issues.

[BenConner]

I don't know the specifics but we've been working this issue for over 24 hours.  We're unable to bulk load Oracle tables with production jobs.  Will pass this info along to the other team members.  Thanks!

[SASKiwi]

@BenConner - You are welcome to get whoever is dealing with this issue to also post it on the Community. There is no Community SLA for responses but it certainly wouldn't do any harm to gain additional insights from expert SAS users.

[BenConner]

Understood. Shortly after the replies we got a call from our support manager at SAS and they escalated it, with the result that we were talking with an Oracle expert at 1 am in the morning. She was able to get us going in the right direction. Impressive.

Sure hope she wasn't in Cary. 🙂

--Ben