Support Services Program Terms and Guidelines

Support Services Program Terms and Guidelines

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Article ID: CTX426101

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Description

This article is part of the (Legacy) Worldwide Support Services Delivery Guides, which focuses on delivery of support services. Please go here to view the latest guides.
Citrix reserves the right to make updates to its Customer Success Services packages and requirements, at its sole discretion, from time to time, as business needs require. The relevant Citrix web pages will be updated with respect to any updates as of their effective date.   

Support Services Guide Program Terms and Guidelines

Citrix Support Services adhere to specific terms and guidelines based on the program purchased. This section will provide terms and guidelines based on the various support and services packages.

Program Terms and Guidelines

End-User License Agreement 

Citrix offers a single end-user license agreement (EULA) for its on-premises software and hardware offerings, and for its Citrix Cloud and other SaaS offerings, which can be reviewed at any time under our user agreement page. See the references in the EULA to Maintenance.

Customer Success Services General Program Rules and Terms
For Subscription and Perpetual Licenses

Response Times

  • Citrix provides 24/7/365 for Severity 1 issues only. CSS Priority, Priority Plus, TAM with Gold, or TAM with Gold Plus customers receive 24/7/365 for Severity 1 and Severity 2 issues. Business Hours support coverage is provided for all other Severity Levels 2 through 4 during local business hours (8 a.m. - 6 p.m.). Note: Severity is determined jointly by the customer and Citrix. For more information on Severity Levels see the Delivering Citrix Support Services under the Resolution Times and Response Times section.

Configuration Support

  • Configuration support provides general guidance and assistance during product installation, upgrades, or configurations. Customers who require additional assistance for requirements like personalized design and implementation assistance can leverage our Partners  for fee-based design and implementation assistance.

License Compliance

  • Through your purchase of Customer Success Services from Citrix you agree to allow Citrix to audit your license compliance pursuant to the license compliance terms explained in the CSS Support Guide. You understand that Citrix License Server collects and reports limited license telemetry to Citrix for on-premises product licenses to support license compliance.  For those licenses, Citrix requires that you transition to License Server Version 11.17.2 Build 40000 by March 31, 2023, and subsequent new License Server versions within 6 months of the release of each new Version.  License Server license collection and reporting (electronic or manual) must be active for License Server Version 11.17.2 Build 40000 and beyond.  Unless you have elected manual reporting, you agree to adjust your firewalls as necessary to allow electronic license reporting.  For a detailed explanation of the license telemetry functionality and reporting requirements, see the Citrix Licensing product documentation.  Should you have questions or concerns, contact Customer Care.  Citrix may suspend or terminate your Customer Success Services for non-compliance with these requirements without liability in addition to any other remedies Citrix may have at law or equity.  These requirements do not apply to the extent prohibited by law or regulation.
  • As part of NetScaler telemetry program, all NetScaler Console on-prem customers need to upgrade to the most recent NetScaler Console on-prem build (14.1-25.53 or later or 13.1-53.22 or later) within 3 months starting from 18th June 2024 and send telemetry data to Citrix. After upgrading to the above-mentioned NetScaler Console build, one of the telemetry collection modes (automatic or manual) must be chosen and utilized. Unless you have elected manual reporting, you agree to adjust your firewalls as necessary to allow automatic telemetry reporting. If you opt for manual telemetry mode, the first upload must be completed within 30 days, latest by 18th October 2024 and thereafter the manual telemetry upload must be done every 90 days, for your NetScaler Console on-prem to be compliant with the NetScaler telemetry program. For a detailed explanation of the NetScaler telemetry program and the telemetry data being collected, see the NetScaler telemetry program for NetScaler Console on-prem. NetScaler telemetry program is enabled automatically on NetScaler Console service starting from NetScaler Console service release 14.1-28.33 build. For a detailed explanation of the NetScaler telemetry program and the telemetry data being collected, see the NetScaler telemetry program for NetScaler Console service. To remain compliant, the number of days since the last successful upload must not be greater than 90 days. Citrix may suspend or terminate your Citrix Support for non-compliance with these requirements without liability in addition to any other remedies Citrix may have at law or equity. These requirements do not apply to the extent prohibited by law or regulation.

All-in-Rule

  • In order to receive Customer Success Services (CSS) benefits, customers must have active CSS for 100% of their licenses. This is known as the "All-in Rule" .

    Partial CSS coverage is not permitted. A customer is not permitted to extend the benefits of CSS to any licenses not covered by an active CSS agreement. A customer is not permitted to extend the benefits of CSS to any licenses that do not have an active CSS agreement.

    Compliance will be monitored and without waiving other remedies, Citrix reserves the right to suspend CSS benefits and invoice a customer for any underpaid CSS fees for compliance violation(s).

Service Level Compliance

  •  At point of upgrade to CSS premium offerings including Advanced or Priority/Priority Plus, all software licenses must be upgraded (i.e., customers may not have a mix of CSS Select or Core with Advanced or Priority/Priority Plus  services on Software licenses).

Service Level Compliance Rule:

  • Service Level Compliance requires the customer to maintain the same CSS level of service across all product lines. In the event that service level compliance is not maintained, the customer will be supported at the lowest of their active service levels. Customers will be notified of noncompliance. No refunds will be given.
  • Please review the Service Level Compliance product category breakdown below for further details: 
 

Consulting Services

  • With respect to consulting services included with Citrix Support services, intellectual property rights in all deliverables, pre-existing works and derivative works of such pre-existing works, as well as developments made, conceived, created, discovered, invented, or reduced to practice in the performance of the consulting services are and shall remain the sole and absolute property of Citrix, subject to a worldwide, non-exclusive license to you for internal use.

Late Renewals: Applies to Perpetual Products Only

  • Reinstatement of expired Maintenance is offered only at the sole discretion of Citrix. If offered, reinstatement and recovery charges may apply.

Priority and Priority Plus Program Terms and Guidelines

Assigned Technical Account Manager

  • Your Technical Account Manager will work with you to proactively understand your business or mission-critical environment, your business and technology objectives, and work to ensure supportability of your Citrix solutions with leading practices. They accomplish tasks through a streamlined engagement and discovery process, conducted through business and technical discovery workshops, providing a holistic view of where you are today compared to where you need to be tomorrow.

  • A success plan is then jointly aligned to help you move quickly, while reducing and minimizing risk. In addition, the business and associated technology objectives identified in your success plan feed into the Environment and Success Plan Review deliverables and are used to identify improvement areas for solution optimization.

  • With Priority Plus, you can choose customized service options based on your needs such as assigned support account managers in multiple geographies, exclusive access to support resources who only work with your business and additional services for system monitoring and optimization.

  • In addition, Priority Plus offers an Executive-level Support Sponsor to advocate within Citrix and make sure all your requirements and issues are dealt with promptly.

Service Delivery

  • Priority/Plus Support Discovery Workshop Program initiation and remote or on-site discovery workshop.

  • Priority Support Success Plan (define/implement) Success mapping for outcome based engagement.

  • Annual and Quarterly Reviews Annual environment and supportability review plus quarterly success plan updates.

  • Monthly Progress Updates Monthly updates on support service and customer health.

Program Conditions

  • Account Manager Weekdays: English, German, Spanish and French languages available.

  • Business and Technical Discovery Workshop to take place via 1 remote or in-person meeting; up to 6 hours in duration.

  • Business and Technical Discovery Workshop, and Success Plan should be completed within first 8-10 weeks of service activation.

  • Annual environment and supportability review plus quarterly success plan updates.

  • Customer acknowledges that Technical Account Managers are assigned to a portfolio of Priority customers and their service time is allocated as appropriate between customers within the portfolio group; should a Customer require additional service time on a consistent basis above and beyond the intention of Priority Support or resource coverage across multiple geographies, Citrix will recommend a Support service upgrade to Priority Plus at then current pricing.

  • Priority Plus coverage will be determined at the time of definition for the scope of the services.

Customer Responsibilities

  • Customer to fulfill prerequisite tasks prior to business and technical discovery workshop, as laid out during the introductory meeting.

  • Designate appropriate personnel to participate in business discovery workshop with Citrix.

  • Participation by stakeholders in Success Plan definition and adherence to time frames.

  • Provide feedback on satisfaction with the value received from the program through our Transactional Net Promoter Score and Relationship Net Promoter Score programs, annually and periodically as reasonably requested.
     

Environmental and Supportability Reviews

  • Your assigned Technical Account Manager will work with you to conduct a review of your environment, identifying product versions and configurations, use cases, risks, barriers to adoption and opportunities to optimize supportability.

Service Delivery

  • Review based on single (main) production environment

  • OR Review based around a single POD (or similar architecture)

  • OR Review based around a single XA/XD farm/site, supporting Citrix products from a single location (Data Center, Environment)

  • For Priority Plus only - Customizable to multiple environment

Environment Review Report Scope

  • Product Supportability, Lifecycle, Functionality & Adoption

  • Customer Overview (Business objectives, IT objectives, Key initiatives & Milestones)

  • End of Life (EOL) / End of Maintenance (EOM) & Long Term Service Release (LTSR) Compliance

  • Support Readiness by Product

  • Applicable Citrix Leading Support Practices

  • Product Inventory

  • Key Findings and Recommendations

Environment Workshop Scope

  • One onsite (or remote) technical discovery workshop between Citrix and customers technical management and engineering team (up to 6 hours maximum).

  • Customer to comply with Citrix automated data gathering requirements before or during workshop for productive discourse.

  • Report completion is subject to customer delivery of prerequisites; time spent attempting to obtain missing components from customer will be subject to allocated hours from annual Scheduled Support pool.

Exclusions

Environment Review Report Scope excludes the following:

  • Infrastructure Assessment (a Citrix Consulting Services separately available service)

  • Design & Sizing

  • Performance & Scalability

  • Citrix EOL products

  • 3rd party vendor technologies

  • Endpoint analysis

  • Networking and storage review

  • Peripherals

  • Detailed Policy review

  • Hardware comparisons against Citrix HCL

  • Application Installation process or methods

  • Cloud based environments

  •  Anything else not specifically listed in Environment Review Report Scope section above

Customer Responsibilities

  • Customer to fulfill prerequisite tasks prior to technical discovery workshop.

  • Requisite technical management and engineering personnel are made available to participate in Technical Discovery Workshop within first 50 days of Priority Support service start.

  • Requisite technical management personnel are made available to participate remotely for the delivery of the findings of the Environment Review, draft and final reviews. 

Scheduled Support

  • Assigned remote support hours for Advanced Citrix Implementations, Migrations, and/or Update install.

Service Delivery

  • Priority 40 hours

  • Priority Plus 80 hours

Annual Hours

  • Hours must be consumed annually; unused hours expire at the end of each 1 year period.

  • Each scheduled support engagement is charged at a minimum of 4 hours.

  • Designed for pre-schedule events, including planning of a change event, during the event, or post-event wrap-up activities.

  • All Support hours provided remotely by Citrix.

Consumption Hours

  • Pre-schedule event with Citrix which only can be: Implementations, Migrations, and/or Update install.

  • Hours will be consumed for any work performed related to a Change Event whether during or outside of business hours.

Exclusions

  • Design & Architectural work

  • Scalability & High Availability

  • Performance optimizations

  • Project work outside of change window

  • Any other work typically carried out as a separate service by Citrix Consulting Services

  • Excludes onsite support

Customer Responsibilities

  • Advanced email notice required to Technical Account Manager: minimum of 10 business days prior to scheduled Change Event.

  • Acknowledgment on Scheduled Support Checklist, summarizing work to be performed; to be provided to Technical Account Manager, subject to advanced notification requirements.


Response and Restoration Targets

  • Citrix Technical Support provides a range of targeted response times depending on incident severity. We do not guarantee resolution or restoration times at any support level - with no exceptions.
  • Restoration means production use of the supported product has been restored however, additional incidents may still remain and further troubleshooting may be necessary to complete resolution.

Service Delivery Priority Response Targets

  • Severity 1: <15 minutes

  • Severity 2: 30 minutes

  • All Others: 4 business hours

Service Delivery Priority Plus Response Targets

  • Severity 1: <10 minutes

  • Severity 2: <30 minutes

  • All Others: <4 business hours

Severity 1 Restoration Target

  • Cloud platform uptime availability in any 30-day calendar period. Learn More.
  • Non-Platform Restoration Target

    • Priority: Severity 1 <6hr

    • Priority Plus: Severity 1 <4hr

Incident Creation

Additional Response and Restoration Terms

  • Fastest response times and accelerated restoration targets are based on competitive offerings in the same industry and price tier.

  • Incidents involving Microsoft delivered elements provided by Citrix under a Citrix cloud subscription, will be escalated by Citrix to Microsoft for support, however because Citrix does not control Microsoft support, the Citrix estimated incident response times and restoration targets herein (if applicable) could be adversely impacted.

Priority Queue with Experienced Support Engineers

  • Accelerate issue diagnosis and resolution with Priority access to an enterprise-level team of seasoned Support Engineers, 24/7.

Service Delivery

  • Priority - Precedence level access to experienced engineers

  • Priority Plus - Highest priority level access to experienced engineers

Language

  • English, German, Spanish and French languages upon availability

  • Weekends and public holidays: English only

24/7/365 Support

  • Citrix delivers 24/7/365 support for Severity 1 and 2 issues. All other issues will be handled during local business hours.

Customer Responsibilities

  • Before contacting Citrix Priority Technical Support with an issue, please perform basic troubleshooting steps which can be found using our self-help resources; these self-help resources can help determine what problem you are experiencing and enhances the solution process.

  • Citrix provides 24/7/365 support to continue case work for Severity 1 and 2 issues provided that you make resources available allowing 24/7 interaction on both sides.

Critical Situation Management and Root Cause Analysis

  • In the event of a Severity 1 situation, a critical situation manager will be assigned to expedite remediation, and upon request a formal root cause analysis will be conducted.

Service Delivery Priority

  • Automatic assignment of Critical Situation Manager upon Severity 1 determination.

  • Root Cause Analysis available upon request for Severity 1 incidents only.

Service Delivery Priority Plus

  • Automatic assignment of Critical Situation Manager upon Severity 1 determination.

  • Root Cause Analysis available upon request for Severity 1 and Severity 2 incidents only.

Target Response Severity

  • Priority: <15 minutes

  • Priority Plus: <10 minutes

  • Critical Situation Manager engaged within 15 mins of incident submission.

  • Incident Review Document will be delivered with a target of 24hrs of the request, after the mitigation of the issue.

  • Formal Root Cause Analysis will be delivered with a target of five business days of the request, and subject to the availability of appropriate diagnostic data after the proposed solution is verified (depending on availability of data, a root cause may or may not be determined).

Customer Responsibilities

  • Provide all customer contacts whom require updates during the Severity 1

  • Technical resources available 24/7 until issue mitigation

  • Request Incident Review Document if desired

  • Request Root Cause Analysis if desired (within ten days maximum of case closure)

Appliance Maintenance Program Rules & Terms

When Customers contact Cloud Software Group Support Services for resolving Hardware issues, one of the options Cloud Software Group Support Services might exercise to resolve the support issue would be to initiate a warranty replacement of the Hardware units via Hardware Return Material Authorization (RMA) program. 

Hardware Return Material Authorization (RMA) Support Program

If Cloud Software Group deems RMA is required to resolve a support issue, Standard RMA support will strive to place into shipment a replacement Hardware Unit within 1 business day* after Cloud Software Group issues an RMA number based on a valid RMA support claim by a Customer. 

  • Standard Hardware RMA support covers all NetScaler hardware box versions ("Hardware Units") that are not designated End of Life under our Lifecycle Product Matrix. Customer replacement Hardware Units will equal the model/version of the returned RMA Hardware Units. 

  • Hardware accessories must be purchased separately from your Hardware products and RMA support does not include replacement Hardware accessories. 

  • To continue to maintain active RMA support, Customers must comply with the RMA Return Policy. Failure to comply with the RMA Return Policy may result in suspension of RMA support as well as Customer being liable to pay Cloud Software Group for the full cost of the unreturned Hardware Unit. 

  • Cloud Software Group otherwise reserves all other rights and remedies as listed in our End User Agreement covering the Hardware Units. 

All Hardware RMA support claims should be submitted through your Cloud Software Group Support Services. 

*Note: In countries where trade regulations require export approval documentation in advance, shipment may take be longer and the Customer agrees to cooperate with Cloud Software Group in executing any export compliance documentation to complete RMA support. Cloud Software Group is not responsible for delays in RMA support due to Customer failure to timely execute any export compliance documentation provided. 

RMA Return Policy

  1. Hardware Units covered under RMA must be placed in shipment back to Cloud Software Group no later than 5 days after receiving the RMA replacement Hardware Unit. A return shipment label will be provided with the RMA replacement Hardware Unit. 

  2. If the applicable Hardware Unit(s) are not placed in shipment back to Cloud Software Group by the 15th day after receipt by Customer of the replacement Hardware Units, Customer will be provided a late return notice and warning that RMA support will be suspended after the 21st day following delivery of the RMA replacement. 

  3. If the applicable Hardware Unit(s) are not placed in shipment back to Cloud Software Group by the 21st day after delivery of the replacement Hardware Units, Customer will be provided a notice that RMA support has suspended and continued delay may result in Customer being Invoiced for the full cost of the unreturned Hardware Unit. 

  4. If the applicable Hardware Unit(s) are not placed in shipment back to Cloud Software Group by the 30th day after delivery by Customer of the replacement Hardware Units, Customer will be Invoiced for the full cost of the Hardware Unit and Invoice payment will be due to Cloud Software Group within 30 days of issuance of the applicable Invoice.

 

Issue/Introduction

This article is part of the Worldwide Support Services Delivery Guide, which focuses on support services program terms and guidelines.

Additional Information

More Information

For more information on Citrix support services delivery, resources, and program guidelines, please review the full contents of the Worldwide Support Services Delivery Guide, located here.

Looking to review your services benefits: 

  • Subscription customers, go here.
  • Perpetual customers, go here.