Enhanced Support Services from SAS Institute's Technical Support Peter Herbertz, SAS Institute GmbH, Heidelberg, Germany Good customer support has always been a priority at SAS Institute. With the start of our european operations in 1980, we immediately opened the first european technical support department in the United Kingdom. While expanding into other european countries it was very important for us to provide technical support services in local languages. Such a setup requires a well functioning network of communication throughout Europe and our development center in Cary, North Carolina. Today we have a variety of online systems helping us to gather information quickly, forward bug reports directly to the developers to make sure that the problem will be fixed as soon as possible. In order to provide the best possible and quickest service to customers detecting bugs of high severity, we internally use a priority system with defined service levels. On the other hand SAS Institute has always been on the listening side whenever you had comments or suggestions. The SASware Ballot is your opportunity to directly influence the development of our software. This makes sure that you get the software you need to make your business successful. The European Technical Support Departments are constantly reviewing their services so that the best support can be available for SAS Software Representatives and Consultants. The availablity of worldwide high speed networks and a growing number of mail services with gateways into these networks offer new possibilities for customer support. The paper discusses how SAS Institute exploits this technology with new electronic services and their benefits for the user community. The new services are: Electronic Mail Interface to Technical Support (EMITS) TSNEWS-L File and Mail List These services allow SAS Software Representatives, Consultants, and Users to communicate with the Technical Support Departments electronically. SAS Institute wants to encourage you to use these services. If you do not have access as of today, we would like you to investigate whether you might be able to become a user of them tomorrow. If you are not directly established by a subsiduary of SAS Institute, please contact the distributor or the representative office whether you are able to use EMITS. EMITS The Electronic Mail Interface to Technical Support (EMITS) service allows SAS Software Representatives and Consultants to use their electronic mail facility to send questions, suggestions for the SASware Ballot, or problem reports using the SAS System directly to the nearest Technical Support Department to be investigated. With EMITS you are able to report using your local language. The technical consultant who will pick up the problem will also respond in your language. In order to use EMITS you have to be able to send mail to the Internet address SUPPORT@SAS.COM. You can send mail to this address from other networks. As of today virtually every network provides a gateway to Internet. 763
Here some examples of how to address SUPPORT@SAS.COM from other networks: ATTMaii!mhs!intemet!sas.com!suppon Compuserve > INTERNET:suppon@sas.com.IBMMAIL In several countries worldwide IBM is currently investigating the possibility to offer an Internet gateway. Please contact your local IBM representative to find out whether this is possible or not. MCI To: suppon(ems) EMS: Intemet MBX suppon@sas.com SprintMaii (ID:suppon( a )sas.com,site:intemet) Note that this is only a partial list. There are many many more networks offering gateways to Internet. Our SAS subsiduaries will send you a brochure or letter shortly listing the networks available in your country. Registering for EMITS In order to use EMITS, you must be a registered user. To register, you need the capability to send E-mail to th, SAS Institute Technical Support E-mail addresssupport@sas.com. The subject field of the message must contain the characters EMITS. The body of the message must start in column 1 and contain the following text:./register=customer Name./company=Company Name./site=Valid site Number./phone=Your Telephone Number Registering to EMITS usually takes about one day. Once your registration is added to the system at the Institute, you will receive a message confirming your registration. " Opening a New Report Using EMITS Once you are a registered user of EMITS, you can use this facility to ask questions, submit suggestions, or forward problems you or your user encounter. You can also E-mail additional information, such as SAS source code, log files, listing files, or data in either ASCII or uuencoded format.. When reporting using EMITS, there are several new control statements that you will use. The./text statement begins the text that is a brief description of your report. You must include this statement in your message. The 764
./ data statement is optional and should precede any data that you would like to send to,support your report. Send E-mail tosupport@sas.com. The subject field ofthe message must contains the characters EMITS. /tn=new./phone=your Telephone Number./site=Valid site Number./area=Area of Your Report./release=Release of Your SAS Institute Product./os=Operating System./text up to 20 lines of text describing your problem./data optional data lines The value you specify for the os control card should be the name of your operating platform such as: Personal Computers Workstations/Midrange Systems Mainframe Systems PCDOS VMS MVS MSDOS VMS/Alpha CMS WINDOWS SUN3 VSE WINDOWS/NT OS/2 MAC SUN4 HP300 HP700 HPSOO MIPS ULTRIX AIX BOS SINIX NEXT DOMAIN AOS PRIMOS CONVEX 765
The value you specify for the.area control card is limited to nineteen characters. This value determines the consultant in Technical Support who will be working on your problem. The following list gives you an overview about possible values of the area field: INSTALL SAS/BASE SAS/ ACCESS-AS400 SAS/ ACCESS-INGRES SAS/ ACCESS-PCFILE SAS/ ACCESS-DB2 SAS/ ACCESS-SQL/DS SAS/ ACCESS-IDMS/R SAS/ ACCESS-IMS/DLI SAS/ACCESS-DATACOM SAS/ ACCESS-ORACLE SAS/ ACCESS-RDB SAS/ACCESS-UNIXDB SAS/ ACCESS-SYBASE SAS/ ACCESS-ODBC SAS/ ACCESS-ADABAS SAS/AF SAS/ASSIST SAS/FSP SAS/C SAS/CALC SAS/CONNECT SAS/CPE SAS/EIS SAS/ENGLISH SAS/ETS SAS/GRAPH SAS/IML SAS/INSIGHT MXG SAS/LAB SAS/NVISION SAS/OR SAS/PH-CLINICAL SAS/QC SAS/SESSION SAS/SHARE SAS/STAT SAS/TOOLKIT SAS/TUTOR JMP RTERM SYSTEM 2000 Once your report has been received, you will get a confirmation message that includes the tracking number assigned to the problem. 766
Updating or Responding to a Track Whenever you want to add something to your report you have to send E-mail to SUPPORT@SAS.COM with thefollowingsynt~./tn=your Assigned Tracking Number./text up to 20 lines of text describing your problem or./tn=your Assigned Tracking Number./data optional data lines Resolving a Track If you feel that your question has been answered or your problem is solved, you should let us know immediately. In case we do not hear from you for a while we will regard your track as resolved. Please inform us by adding a page to your track in case you wish to keep your track open. In order to resolve a track send E-mail to SUPPORT@SAS.COM similar to this:./tn=your Assigned Tracking Number./text Thanks for your help. Please resolve. Requesting Help for EMITS You can receive online documentation by sending E-mail to SUPPORT@SAS.COM with the following syntax: I./help Note that the subject field of your message must be EMITS. Account Information. You can receive online information about you registration by sending E-mail to SUPPORT@SAS.COM with the following synt~./account 767
In case your site or your telephone number changes you can update your registration data by sending an update request:./update./phone=your New Telephone Number or./update./site=your New site Number Note that the subject field of your message must in both cases be EMITS. TSNEWS-L FILE AND MAIL LIST TSNEWS-L is a mail and file list that you can subscribe to in order to receive the latest announcements and technical information from SAS Institute's Technical Support Departments. TSNEWS-L is accessible through the Internet address LISTSERV@VM.SAS.COM. In order to get access to Internet the same rules as for accessing EMITS apply. This service provides information in the form of: Alert Notes Problem Alert Letters General Technical Support Announcements Fixes You should use TSNEWS-L to automatically receive Technical Support announcements. In addition, you can rcquest specific documents by name or by type. Registering for TSNEWS-L You can subscribe to TSNEWS-L by sendiing E-mail tothesasinstituteaddresslistserv@vm.sas.com. For your subscription do NOT send mail to TSNEWS-L@VM.SAS.COM. The message should consist of the following text: I SUBSCRIBE TSNEWS-L Your Name The listserver will confirm your subscription for TSNEWS-L. In case you would like to receive a listing of all available fixes, send E-mail to LISTSERV@VM.SAS.COM with the following text: I INDEX TSNEWS-L TSNEWS-L will respond with a message listing all files that are available for downloading. Once you know thc filename and filetype of the document you want, send E-mail with the following text to retrieve it: GET filename filetype TSNEWS-L 768
Requesting Help for TSNEWS-L You can receive online documentation on commonly used listserver commands by sending E-mail to LIST SERV@VM.SAS.COM with the following text: HELP ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many thanks to John Sims and Werner Bundschuh for their work on developing the SAS Institute electronic services. This paper was originally written and presented by Sally Painter on SUGI 18 in New York. Parts of this handout have been copied from the original. SAS Software and SASware Ballot are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies. 769