Multiple Product Support Resources
With your Sencha Care support subscription, you get access to three valuable product support resources available only to Sencha Care customers: Premium Forums, the Support Portal, and our nightly builds. The benefits of each of these are described below, along with some tips on how to get the most out of these Sencha Care features.
Premium Forums
Unlike our Community Forums, the Premium Forums are only accessible to support subscribers. The Premium Forums are a valuable way for you to get help and information without using the x-credits of your support subscription, and serve as a knowledge base that’s useful as you complete development projects. Questions asked in the Premium Forums may be answered by Sencha staff and/or by other Premium Forum members, so you and other customers can benefit from our collective knowledge of our products.
When Should You Use Premium Forums?
Premium forums are best suited for how-to inquiries, and to share or learn best practices in the use of Sencha products. Since the Premium Forums are visible to other customers, please do not include any confidential information in your posts.
Support Portal
The Support Portal facilitates creation of support tickets to get private help directly from Sencha Support staff. Each support ticket may only contain one distinct issue. Support tickets are charged in x-credits (see below.) Some support tickets may involve more in-depth research and in turn may take longer and be charged more than a standard ticket. The cost will be determined by the assigned support engineer and will be communicated to the support subscriber for confirmation before any additional charge is made.
When Should You Use the Support Portal?
Use the support portal to create a support ticket when you need assistance with a capability of a Sencha product, you have identified a situation where a products behavior is inconsistent with the product documentation and might indicate a software bug, or when the communication between you and Sencha needs to be private. When filing a support ticket, take care to define a reasonable scope for the ticket. If the scope is too broad, such as cases where a number of different, unrelated questions are posed in a single ticket, the Sencha support team will require you to break the ticket into multiple tickets. This allows us to address your questions more efficiently.
To ensure we can resolve any inquiries as soon as possible, you must include the following information in any support ticket you open:
- Sencha product component name and issue description in subject line of ticket
- Sencha product and product version you are using
- Browser and browser version in use when you noted an issue
- Test case that we can use to reproduce the issue
- Log files or error reports
- Any screen shots or short video clips that clearly show the behavior in questions
A test case is essential for a successful resolution to a support ticket. A test case can prove that an issue is caused by Sencha products as opposed to customer code or products from a third party. A test case will enable Sencha to better experience the issue, isolate the cause and provide a solution. In some situations, these test cases are incorporated into Sencha Quality Assurance tests.
The test case should be:
- A simple example that shows an issue in a Sencha product
- Reproducible
- In a supported environment
- Isolated from third party products
- Without requirements to access any remote resources
Support Portal and X-Credits
Your product purchase typically comes with 40 x-Credits per license. When you use the support portal, you consume x-Credits from your support account. The assignment of x-Credits to a request can vary. The following table lists some typical x-Credit allocations and serves only as a guideline.
You will be told ahead of time if the services provided will cost more than the 10 x-Credits charged for opening a basic Support ticket.
| Support Activity Requested | x-Credit Charge |
|---|---|
| Open basic support ticket | 10 x-Credits |
| Assistance in preparing test case | 50 x-Credits per hour, 25 x-Credit minimum |
| Creation/delivery of workaround prior to GA | 50 x-Credits per hour, 25 x-Credit minimum |
| Report bug (confirmed) | No charge, refund of x-Credits for opening ticket |
Nightly Builds
The nightly builds provide Sencha Support subscribers with exclusive access to the latest bug fixes/code changes for the Sencha product(s) included in their support subscription(s). This often includes changes that are not available to the public. Through Source Code you can obtain maintenance releases that are released to support subscribers as complete software builds.
When Should I use Nightly Builds?
Use the Nightly Builds to obtain the most recent code changes, whether bug-fixes or new features. Only official releases are available outside of the Nightly Builds, and those releases are less frequent than changes to source code, so if you want access to the absolute latest changes, the Nightly Builds are the way to get them. Having early access to code changes can be very beneficial in many cases, including testing of new features in upcoming releases, or for testing changes that fix known issues in a previous public release.
Getting Access to Support Subscription Benefits
Accessing the Support Portal
When we process your Support Subscription order, we will send you an email with an activation code. This automatically generated email will come from orders@sencha.com and will contain all the instructions you need to begin your access to the Support Portal.
Accessing Premium Forums
Once you have registered yourself on the Support Portal, you can grant yourself access to Premium Forums by entering your forum id into the Support Portal’s Account Settings page. If you do not have a forum id, you can get one at https://staging.sencha.com/forum.
If you already have a forum id, we will check email addresses and attempt to automatically associate your forum id to your Support Portal account. If we can detect a match, we will grant that forum id access to Premium Forums.
Accessing Nightly Builds
To gain access to Nightly Builds, check the Source Code Access page when you log in to your Support Portal account. It will give you the credentials you need to enter into the Source Code client of your choice.
Adding Others
If your Support subscription allows for others to access Support services, then you will be able to register those additional users by going to the My Team page in your Support Portal account.
Getting Help
Should you require assistance accessing any of the resources described above, or with establishing or changing access entitlements for people within your organization, please contact us by email.
