Worldwide Support Services Delivery Guide - 2024

Information

To our Citrix customers and partners, we want to thank you for choosing our products and services. Our goal is to ensure your success, and we have created this Worldwide Support Services Delivery Guide to help you achieve just that. The guide provides an overview of the Citrix support services delivery, resources, and program guidelines intended to maximize your investment, reach your business outcomes, and get more value faster. 

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.

Table of Contents

1. Support Services Scope, Delivery and Process

2. Support Coverage and Response Times

3. Support Services Guide Program Terms and Guidelines

4. Citrix Customer, Partner, and Support Roles and Responsibilities

5. Contacting Support, Case Lifecycle and Escalation

Support Services Scope, Delivery and Process

Note: Our support offerings, including Select, Priority, Priority Plus, and TRM, will remain available until the expiration of current support contracts. Moving forward, our new support offerings are Citrix Standard Support and Citrix Unified Services. Any references to Priority, Priority Plus, or TRM should be understood as legacy offerings, with Citrix Standard Support and Citrix Unified Service being our new offerings.

Regarding Appliance Maintenance - Bronze, Gold, Silver, and Gold Plus - will be considered legacy offerings. Our updated offerings will be Standard and Expedited Hardware Maintenance.

1. Scope of Citrix Technical Support Services

2. Service Delivery Process and coverage

Scope of Citrix Technical Support Services

Citrix Technical Support Services is an industry recognized that takes you beyond the traditional world of break-fix. We have trained our team in critical-thinking techniques that serve to provide a consistent approach to problem solving and faster problem resolution. We also offer configuration assistance, upgrade guidance, and work with major third parties to solve problems you may encounter – faster, and with less interruption to your operation.

We have seven Citrix Technical Support Centers around the globe and provide you access to our technical experts by chat, web, and phone. All other Citrix services related to product training and best practice advice on product usage, personalized design and implementation assistance, upgrades or environment design and architecture configuration, are covered by Citrix Unified Services or Partner Services.
 

Service Delivery Process and coverage.

Our support engineers have certifications for industry leading technologies and products to help support your diverse environments, including the Citrix Certified Associate, Citrix Certified Professional, Citrix Certified Expert, Citrix Certified Integration Architect (CCIA), Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS), Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP), and AWS Certified Solutions.

Citrix continually invests in refining our support engineers' skills and expanding their expertise through extensive training and certification programs. Our technical support engineers use remote support to quickly resolve complex issues using screen sharing, chat, and other tools, which leads to increased first-time call resolution and customer satisfaction.

Geographical Coverage

With seven support centres around the world, cases are transferred from one support centre to the next, following the sun, to ensure cases are continually worked for rapid resolution. Citrix regions are defined as follows: 

• Americas: North America, Latin America and the Caribbean

• EMEA: Europe, Middle East and Africa

• APJ: Asia Pacific Japan

Note: Customers are supported based on the registered Geo Account Org ID on record.
Please review the Support Coverage section for details on Business Hours and 24/7/365 Support.
 

Citrix Global Support Centers

Language Support

All services are primarily provided in the English language. Our technical support centers offer support in other languages during local business hours. Subject to availability, you may request to be supported in a language other than English when opening a support case. Our support centers offer support in eight languages, although we cannot guarantee availability:

• Americas: English, Spanish, Portuguese

• EMEA: English, French, German, Spanish

• APJ: English, Mandarin, Korean, and Japanese

Citrix Technical Support for XenServer/Citrix Hypervisor is available only in English, 24/7, to ensure consistent, high-quality support for our XenServer/Citrix Hypervisor products worldwide.

Remote Assistance

Support services are generally provided remotely, except where expressly indicated otherwise. Support is delivered based on the support services package. An incident may require multiple sessions and offline research data collection, traces/dumps to achieve final resolution. In the event that you cannot provide remote access requested by Citrix, we will continue to work the support case to the extent reasonably practicable.

24/7/365 Support

Citrix Standard Support and Citrix Unified Services provide Business Hours support and 24/7/365 for Severity 1 issues only.

Note: Severity is determined jointly by the customer and Citrix. For more information on Severity Levels see Response Times section.

Engineering

In instances where Citrix Technical Support determines that a code level modification to the product is required, we will engage the Product Development team to provide such, in accordance with Citrix policy. There is no guarantee of resolution for all support issues.

Multi-vendor Coordination

We will work with your other key partners to resolve problems in a heterogeneous environment, if you have an appropriate support agreement in place with these vendors. In order to resolve a case, Citrix will engage with other supported product vendors to share diagnostic information and collaborate on finding a solution.

Support Coverage and Response Times

1. Support Coverage

2. Response Times

Support Coverage:

Support coverage is provided based on a customer's selected support package and incident severity level. Please see below for the breakdown by package and severity. Note: Severity is determined jointly by the customer and Citrix. For more information on Severity Levels, see the Response Times section.

Citrix Support

• Citrix Standard Support and Citrix Unified Services provide Business Hours support and 24/7/365 support for Severity 1 issues only.

• XenServer is the hypervisor optimized for Citrix workloads, support for non-Citrix use cases will be best effort with no guarantee of a fix.

Appliance Maintenance & Hardware Maintenance

• Standard Hardware maintenance provides 24/5 (business days) RMA replacement for all severity issues.

• Expedited Hardware maintenance provides 24/7/365 RMA replacement for all severities within 4 hours.

Business Hours

Assistance for Severity 2 and all other issues will be provided during the region's local business hours of customer’s registered Citrix Account Org ID, excluding local public holidays.
For example, customers with a registered Citrix Account Org ID registered in America’s region will be supported during America’s business hours only. 

Note: How to find your Citrix Account Org ID

Business Hours per Region (8 a.m. - 6 p.m.)

Business hours support is provided as listed below for each region.

Americas 

• • Americas, EST: USA (EST), USA (CST), Latin America, Central America, Canada (EST)

  • Americas, PST: USA including Hawaii (PST), USA (MST), Alaska, Canada (MST)

EMEA

• • EMEA West GMT: Benelux Region, France Region, Iberia Region, Italy Region, Denmark Region, Finland Region, Norway Region, Sweden Region, UKI Region, South Africa, West Africa

  • Europe East/Middle GMT+3 (TRT): Czechia Slovakia Hungary, Israel, Poland, Southern Eastern Europe, Bahrain, East Africa (Egypt), UAE, Saudi Arabia

APJ

• • India GMT+6: India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia

  • East Asia GMT+8: China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Western Australia (Perth), Japan, South Korea

  • ANZ GMT+11: Eastern Australia, New Zealand

Note:  Time zones may vary based on countries that observe daylight savings time (DST).

Response Times:

• Standard and Unified Service provide only Business Hours support and 24/7/365 for Severity 1 issues only.

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.

Citrix Technical Support provides a range of targeted responses depending on the urgency of your issue. We do not guarantee resolution times–with no exceptions–given environmental nuances that can impact infrastructure products. For a complete list please refer to the table for initial response times

Response time for Citrix Standard Support and Citrix Unified Services support offerings: 

Customer Service cases have a 2 business hours SLA. 

Note: Citrix Unified Services is an invite-only program.

Support Severity Levels

Support Services Guide Program Terms and Guidelines

Citrix Technical Support Services adheres 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

1. Configuration Support
2. License Compliance
3. Appliance Maintenance
   1. ​Expedited Program Criteria

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 should work with their Citrix account team or Partners .

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.

Appliance Maintenance:

Hardware Maintenance options include:

• Standard - Ships within 1 business day after issuing the RMA number.

• Expedited - Delivery within 4 hours after Citrix authorizes the issuance of a replacement product from the service center.

Please note: In countries where regulation requires export approval documentation in advance of RMA shipment, the time for shipment may be longer.

Expedited Program Criteria:

• With Expedited Hardware Maintenance the service includes delivery within 4 hours after Citrix authorizes the issuance of a replacement product from the Service Center.

• This service is only available if the Customer location where the replacement product will be delivered is within 70 miles of a Citrix Service Center for locations in the United States, or 50 miles of a Citrix Service Center for locations outside the United States, and the Customer location and the Citrix Service Center are located in the same country. Customer is responsible for ensuring that it is located within such a radius. Any questions related to Citrix Service Center locations should be sent to 4hrdepotrequest@cloud.com.

• Customers must submit the physical address of the product with Expedited Hardware Maintenance coverage to 4hrdepotrequest@cloud.com immediately after the product has been installed. Addresses can also be updated by emailing 4hrdepotrequest@cloud.com. This address is the Customer location referred to above where the replacement product will be delivered. Any variations to such an address will not be accepted at the time of the service request.

Please note: If the Customer location meets the requirements above but a new Citrix Service Center needs to be set up, this will require a lead time of up to (6) weeks in the U.S. or three (3) to six (6) months outside of the U.S. prior to Expedited Hardware Maintenance being available. Customers will receive Standard Hardware Maintenance (next business day RMA shipment) for the applicable products until the Citrix Service Center is set up. Some product components are not available under the Expedited RMA.

Availability and Lifecycle

• Appliance Maintenance is available during a product’s General Availability (GA) to End of Life (EOL). After a product release reaches its End of Maintenance date, no further code-level maintenance will be provided; however, the product will continue to be supported until it reaches End of Life.

Extended Support

• For support on End-of-Life products, please contact Citrix Sales.  A separate contract is required. Certain products are not eligible.

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.

*Please note: In countries where regulation requires export approval documentation in advance of RMA shipment, the time for shipment may be longer.

Citrix Customer Partner, and Support Roles and Responsibilities

1. Customer and Partner Roles

2. Roles within Citrix Support

3. Customer Responsibilities

Customer and Partner Roles:

As a Citrix Technical Support Services customer, it is important to understand the roles and responsibilities of the different contacts in your company. These may include but not limited to the technical, renewal, and contract administration personnel.

Technical Contact

The Technical Contact is the designated resource available to open cases and work with the Citrix team while an issue is being investigated. The Technical Contact may be responsible for but not limited to support remediation (run debug tools, apply potential fixes/ workarounds, etc.).

Renewal Contact

The Renewal Contact is the designated primary administrative contact regarding your support option. The Renewal Contact receives notifications of renewals, price changes, and other important account updates. It is essential that you let us know when the Renewal Contact of your company changes, otherwise, important notifications may not be received.

Updating or Changing Contacts

During the initial purchase or at renewal of a support and maintenance contract, if a contact person is not submitted, a Renewal Contact will be automatically assigned to your renewal memberships based on the most frequent contact you have registered with Citrix.

• If you would like to change your designated Contacts, please contact Citrix Customer Service to submit your contact change request.

• Renewal Contacts are assigned with certain rights within the www.citrix.com/MyAccount tool and can perform actions such as the following:

• Adding or removing a contact to the company contact profile in www.citrix.com/MyAccount

Partner and Third-Party Contacts

You may also choose to appoint a preferred Citrix reseller, or any third party named contact to act on your behalf.

• In this case, you must add the Partner/third party named contact to your organization record via www.citrix.com/MyAccount .

• You can then have the third-party contact use your Account/Org ID or Hardware Serial Number (in case of Appliance Maintenance).

• The Partner/third-party contact may use the Account/Org ID or Hardware Serial Number and the associated support solely on your behalf. You will be solely liable to Citrix in the event any Partner/third party fails to perform.

Note: It will be your responsibility to remove the Partner/third party records (on www.citrix.com/MyAccount) from your organization records if you no longer wish to have them act on your behalf.
 

Roles within Citrix Support

Citrix maintains seven Technical Support Centers throughout the world with locations in every geo, and provides support via chat, web, and phone. There are several roles within Citrix Technical Support and each one can assist you in different ways.

Customer Service

The Customer Service team is your first point of contact when you log a case by chat, web, and phone. First, they make sure your case is opened correctly in our system and verify your entitlements. Once that has been done, the Subject Matter Expert (Support Engineer) troubleshoots your particular issue and begins working with you on a solution.

Citrix Customer Service Licensing Administrator 

Our Licensing Administrators are available to assist you with license-related issues such as downloading or re-downloading license files, allocation, re-allocation, or returns. They can also advise you on how to manage your licenses best in the www.citrix.com/MyAccount portal. These specialists are available through our Customer Service team in the Americas, APJ, and through our Licensing Support in EMEA.

Support Engineers

Engineers are specialized in a number of Citrix products and reside in one of the following product expertise:

• Citrix App and Desktop Virtualization

• Performance Observability

• Security Analytics

• Citrix Secure Private Access

• Citrix Endpoint Management

• NetScaler Application Delivery and Security
  
  
  

A Support Engineer is responsible for responding to and resolving complex customer problems by chat, web, and phone.

Customer Responsibilities

Customers are responsible for performing basic troubleshooting steps before contacting Citrix Technical Support with an issue. Please perform basic troubleshooting steps which can be found using our self-help resources listed below. These self-help resources can help determine what problem you are experiencing and enhance the solution process.

Self-help Resources

Knowledge Center

• A database of articles and bulletins written by Citrix technical experts.

Product Documentation

• A library of product documentation for Citrix solutions and technologies.

Discussion Forum

• Discussion forums where you can ask questions and get real world answers from other customers.

Insight Services

• Citrix Insight Services (CIS) is a Citrix platform for instrumentation, telemetry, and business insight generation. Its instrumentation and telemetry capabilities enable technical users (customers, partners, and engineers) to self-diagnose and fix problems and optimize their environments.

Performance of Problem Determination Activities and Resolution Activities

By enrolling with Citrix Technical Support, your organization agrees to cooperate with requests for support problem determination and resolution. Problem determination activities may include network tracing, capturing error messages, collecting configuration information, and providing sample versions of applications to facilitate in-house debugging. Problem resolution activities may include changing product configurations, installing new versions of software or new components, or modifying processes. Failure to facilitate these activities will impact our ability to troubleshoot the issue and may result in your case being closed.

Procuring, Installing and Maintaining Equipment

By signing up with Citrix Technical Support, you agree to allow Citrix Technical Support to access your facilities as reasonably required to find a solution to a reported problem and to perform the service required. It is your responsibility to procure, install and maintain all equipment, communication connections and interfaces, telephone lines, and other hardware at your site.

Implementation of Current Updates and/or Code Releases

As part of your agreement, you must implement all currently available updates and/or code releases to the licensed products in a timely manner; otherwise, Citrix may deny you technical support for an issue. In certain instances, as mutually agreed upon to provide resolution to problems, customers may be required to send CPU and peripherals to Citrix-designated locations for diagnosis and testing. Customers will ensure that no confidential or personal data resides on the test machines.

Contacting Support, Case Lifecycle and Escalation

1. Contacting Citrix Technical Support

2. Lifecycle of a Support Case

3. Escalating a Support Case

Contacting Citrix Technical Support

You can connect with our support team to resolve inquiries and technical challenges. We are available by chat, web, or phone to open a case. Just follow the chat, web, or phone prompts for fast, easy, and convenient support.

Lifecycle of a Support Case

Below are the steps followed to work your case as quickly and effectively as possible.

STEP 1: Open a Support Case

1. Contact Citrix to open a support case.

2. Customer Service verifies your support entitlement.

STEP 2: Engagement with Citrix Technical Support Team

A Support Engineer works with you to identify the issue and begin troubleshooting. This may involve:

1. Requesting more information via, traces

2. Reproducing the issue

3. Gaining remote access

4. Requesting the installation of hotfixes, code releases, or feature release upgrading to a new software version

5. Implementing a workaround

6. Testing a solution in a non-production environment

7. Requesting to open a ticket with a third-party vendor.

A Support Engineer may engage a Senior Engineer when necessary. Once all action items have been completed, if the Support Engineer cannot resolve the problem and no progress is made on the case, it may be transferred to the Citrix Escalation team.

Note: If the issue requires a code fix or code-level analysis, the Citrix Engineering team will be engaged.

STEP 3: Close a Support Case

Before closing a support case, you will be asked to confirm that the issue has been worked to your satisfaction and that the support case can be closed. After the closure, a summary will be sent to you with a description of the problem and the reason for closure or resolution.

• After case closure, you may receive a survey to ensure your case was worked to your satisfaction. Other reasons for closing a support case may include:

• You are not entitled to support from Citrix Technical Support

• No response has been received after several attempts to contact you.

Progress of your Support Case

To review the progress of your case, please log in to www.citrix.com/MyAccount.

Support Case Severity

The case severity is determined mutually by the Support Engineer and the customer according to the severity description. Severity levels will not increase once mutually established but may be reduced per Citrix’s reasonable discretion.

Support Case Closure

Your support case will be closed when it is resolved, no further troubleshooting is possible, or you authorize the engineer in an email to close the case. Your case will also be closed if no feedback has been received by you within a specified time frame.

Reopening a Support Case

You will have 30 days from the support case closure to reopen a request if necessary. If the 30 days have elapsed, a new support case will be opened.

Reassignment of a Support Case

In situations where your support case needs to be re-assigned (e.g., holidays, sick leave, or escalation to a senior engineer or an engineer with additional skills, etc.) you will be informed who to contact going forward.

Escalating a Support Case

Our goal is to provide world-class customer service and support. Our support team is committed to working with you through the lifecycle of your case to ensure that the appropriate resources and level of attention are focused on a timely resolution of your issue(s). If you are not satisfied with your Technical Support experience, you can raise the case to the attention of the Citrix Technical Support Management Team.

How to Escalate a Support Case to Management?

To contact the Citrix Technical Support Management Team, take any one of the following steps:

• Web: Customers can also raise a case to management attention in the eService portal on a specific case.This notifies the internal case manager and on-call manager to review.

• Phone: Call one of our Technical Support Service Center phone numbers and work directly with the support engineer assigned to your case to request further escalation, or simply request to speak with the on-call manager. This is the recommended option for time-sensitive issues. Response: 1 hour (24/7/365)

• E-mail: Email your support engineer’s manager. The email address is included in the support engineer’s email signature. Response: Same business day.

What is Needed to Escalate a Case?

When communicating with Citrix, please be prepared to provide the following information in order to accelerate our response to you:

• Case Number

• Business Impact: Help us understand the impact of the issue to your current production users and/or any project deadlines that may be adversely affected as a direct result of the ongoing issue(s)

• Summary: A summary of your request and desired outcome (escalate; speak with a manager, etc.)

• Contact Information: (If different from the contact noted in the existing case)

What Happens after an Escalation Request is Made?

Once your request for escalation has been received, someone from the Citrix Management Team will acknowledge receipt of your request and contact you to communicate the next steps that will be taken to address your concerns. If your concern/issue requires extended engagement, a plan will be discussed with you to bring these issues to resolution.

DISCLAIMER

• Citrix Standard offerings are supported for all customers.

• Citrix Unified Services is by invitation only. Review services included here.