Support requests are triaged and categorized according to the (1) type of request, (2) severity level, and (3) support plan. All these factors influence ticket priority in the queue.

Type of Request

You may have already read about Technical Support vs Professional Services. If not, please take a moment to review this important distinction.

• Inquiries to the Vertican Client Success Team are categorized first into these two types of requests.
• The categorization of a support request as Technical Support or Professional Services is at the sole discretion of Vertican.

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Severity Level

Technical support cases are categorized according to Vertican’s severity levels, which reflect business impact.

• Once we are aware of the nature of the situation, Vertican will assign the severity level, with expedited support for Severity Level 1 incidents. The severity level is determined solely by Vertican.
• Technical support requests within a severity level are generally processed on a first-come, first-served basis. However, Severity Level 1 requests may be processed out of turn.
• If you have a Severity Level 1 emergency, as determined by Vertican, you have an initial response time Service Level Agreement (SLA) regardless of your plan. This is a new policy. See the chart in the next section called Response vs Resolution.

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Support Plan

Your support plan (Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond) determines how quickly we need to provide an initial response to your case. Together with the severity level, your support plan determines our initial response time service level agreement for certain support tickets as noted in the next section.

• Silver and Gold clients only receive a response within a certain time frame based on the severity level scale.
• Platinum and Diamond clients receive a response within a certain time frame, regardless of severity.
• Additionally, if you have a Diamond plan, we provide a Diamond Response Time Guarantee.

As stated, please note that our service level agreement (SLA) is for initial response time and not for resolution. The resolution time for your case is heavily dependent on the information you provide to Vertican, as well as other factors under your control.

Vertican technical support cannot guarantee a resolution of your issue within a set time period due to a number of influencing factors, amongst them:

• Documentation you provide and the timeliness of your replies
• Response time of a third-party partner
• Ability of the client to replicate the issue

When submitting a support ticket, we ask that you supply detailed information in order for Client Success to properly identify and diagnose the issue and resolve the ticket as soon as possible. Failure to supply this information may result in a delay of assistance and even prevent a resolution of your issue. Please familiarize yourself with Vertican’s support guidelines, which describe the type of information we require, the response we require from you, and other guidelines.

Vertican offers two types of solutions:

• Vertican-hosted systems: vExchange
• Client-hosted software: Collection-Master, Q-Law, Q-LawE, and vMedia

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Vertican-Hosted Systems

With vExchange, Vertican is responsible for the environment. If the FTP site goes down, we are responsible to get it up and running asap.

Our commitment with Vertican-hosted systems is to ensure maximum application uptime and system availability to the best of our ability. Vertican will use commercially reasonable efforts to make the Hosted System(s) available during customary business hours, other than when performing scheduled and unscheduled maintenance. Vertican will schedule maintenance at times when, in Vertican’s judgment, the Service is least likely to be used by Hosted System subscribers. Scheduled maintenance is generally associated with new releases, patches to correct defects, and general system modification and upkeep. Vertican will use commercially reasonable efforts to minimize unscheduled maintenance.

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Client-Hosted Software

With Collection-Master, Q-Law, Q-LawE, and vMedia, the software is running outside Vertican’s environment and control.

Vertican does not manage your firm’s network, internet connection, email system, or database, nor do we have control over your firewalls, malware protection, or security patch practices. If a firm has encrypted a debtor file, Vertican cannot unencrypt it; you’ll need to go to your firm’s system administrator. If a client unplugs the server, there will definitely be an adverse effect on Vertican software’s uptime. (This really happened.)

Vertican is not able to guarantee the operability of applications hosted by clients. Therefore, our commitment with client-hosted software is response time rather than application uptime.

For this reason, if you encounter ransomware, you should contact your insurance company, activate your disaster recovery plan, and restore from backup. If you require additional assistance from Vertican, please request Professional Services.