Wholesale: Products & Services

Open Product/Process CR PC090501-1 Detail

Description Of Change

Project Meetings

Wednesday, August 22, 2001, Status Meeting with CR PM and SME. Attendees: Peggy Esquibel-Reed and Lynn Loftus / Qwest Lynn is currently investigating interval guidelines. Methods and Procedures have been developed and distributed to Help Desk personnel. Will also check into a document (Communicator) previously provided to Qwest Wholesale Customer's.

Tuesday, August 21, 2001, Internal clarification meeting. Attendees: Peggy Esquibel-Reed, Jeff Thompson, and Todd Mead / Qwest CR PM obtained status of investigation from IT Director. Lynn Loftus assigned as the SME.

CenturyLink Response

The IT Wholesale Systems Help Desk supports Competitive Local Exchange Carriers who have questions regarding connectivity, outputs, and system outages. The Help Desk serves as your first point of contact for reporting trouble. If the Help Desk is unable to assist you, they will refer information to the proper subject matter expert, also known as Tier 2 or Tier 3 support, who may call you directly. Often, however, an IT Wholesale Help Desk representative will contact you to provide information or to confirm resolution of your trouble ticket. General Information IT Wholesale Systems Help Desk Telephone Number (888) 796-9102 IT Wholesale Systems Help Desk Hours of Operation Monday-Friday 6:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m. Mountain time Saturday 7:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. Mountain time

Ticket Response Times and Severity Levels The chart below indicates the response intervals a CLEC can expect to receive after reporting a trouble ticket to the IT Wholesale Systems Help Desk on a single outage. Response intervals are based on the severity level of the ticket. An explanation of severity levels is included in this Communicator. Normal business hours of operation apply to all specified time frames.

Severity Level 1: Response interval for initial ticket is immediate acceptance. Response interval for any change in status is within 1 hour. Response interval for no change in status is 1 hour. Response interval upon resolution is within 1 hour.

Severity Level 2: Response interval for initial ticket is immediate acceptance. Response interval for any change in status is within 1 hour. Response interval for no change in status is 1 hour. Response interval upon resolution is within 1 hour.

Severity Level 3: Response interval for initial ticket is immediate acceptance. Response interval for any change in status is within 4 hours. Response interval for no change in status is 48 hours. Response interval upon resolution is within 4 hours

Severity Level 4: Response interval for initial ticket is immediate acceptance. Response interval for any change in status is within 8 hours. Response interval for no change in status is 48 hours. Response interval upon resolution is within 8 hours.

A response interval is defined as the time between when a subject matter expert contacts the IT Wholesale Help Desk with new information or the resolution details of your trouble ticket, and the time the IT Wholesale Help Desk representative notifies the affected CLEC. The response intervals apply to single company tickets.

Severity Levels An outage is a critical or serious loss of functionality. Severity level is a means of assessing and documenting the impact of the loss of functionality to the customer and the impact to the business. The severity level gives restoration or repair priority to problems causing the greatest impact to the customer or business.

The guidelines for determining severity levels are listed below. Examples of some trouble ticket situations follow. Please keep in mind these are guidelines, and each situation is unique. The IT Wholesale Systems Help Desk representative will make the determination of the severity level based on the individual situation.

Severity 1 is a Critical Impact which includes high visibility, a large number of orders or customers are affected, affects online commitment, production or cycle stopped - priority batch commitment missed, major impact on revenue, major component not available for use, many and/or major files lost, major loss of functionality, problem can not be bypassed, no viable or productive work around available. Examples: Major network backbone outage without redundancy, environmental problems causing multiple system failures, large number of service or other work order commitments missed.

Severity 2 is a Serious Impact and includes moderate visibility, moderate to large number of customers, or orders affected, potentially affects online commitment, serious slow response times, serious loss of functionality, potentially affects production - potential miss of priority batch commitment, moderate impact on revenue, limited use of product or component, component continues to fail. Intermittently down for short periods, but repetitive, few or small files lost, problems may have a possible bypass; the bypass must be acceptable to the customer, major access down, but a partial backup exists. Examples: Frequent intermittent logoffs, service and/or other work order commitments delayed or missed.

Severity 3 is a Moderate Impact and includes low to medium visibility, low customer, or order impact, low impact on revenue, limited use of product or component, single client device affected, minimal loss of functionality, problem may be bypassed; redundancy in place. Bypass must be acceptable to the customer, automated workaround in place and known. Workaround must be acceptable to the customer. Example: Equipment taking hard errors, no impact yet.

Severity 4 is Minimal Impact and includes low or no visibility, no direct impact on customer, few functions impaired, problem can be bypassed. Bypass must be acceptable to the customer, system resource low; no impact yet, preventative maintenance request. Examples: Misleading, unclear system messages causing confusion for users, device or software regularly has to be reset, but continues to work.

System Event Notification - Planned/Unplanned Outages

Qwest recently announced a new System Event Notification process in Release Notification SRN060101- 4, dated June 1, 2001. The System Event Notification provides e-mail notifications regarding unplanned outages. You may subscribe to the System Event Notification list via e-mail at majordomo@qwest.com. The required subject line is "Add to wshdnoti mail list". A copy of the June 1st Communicator is attached with more details.

Qwest provides several additional ways for you to find out about severe outages affecting more than one area or company. The IT Wholesale Systems Help Desk VRU at 888-796-9102, Option 2, provides a list of current known system outages and is updated with new information as soon as it becomes available. Improvements are being made to the present VRU notification system to provide for more detail.

IMA has the capability to provide pop-up windows detailing system outage information to users of a given system. You will receive the information when trying to log on to the system. If you are already logged on to IMA however, this information will not appear unless you try to log on to the system again.

For scheduled outages, e-mail notifications are sent by the IT Wholesale Systems Communications Manager. The e-mail contains basic details of the planned outage, such as the systems affected, restore time if known, and a referral to the VRU for updated information. This e-mail distribution is for scheduled outages where at least 48 hours notice can be given. Please contact your Service Manager to be placed on this e-mail distribution list.

We hope the information in this Communicator will assist you when calling the IT Wholesale Systems Help Desk. Please see the attached Communicator dated June 1, 2001, containing all details of the System Event Notification. You are always welcome to discuss any questions with a Help Desk representative, or contact your Service Manager for assistance.

COMMUNICATOR INFORMATION To: Qwest Wholesale Customers From: Tina Hubis, Qwest IT Wholesale Systems Communications Manager Dated: June 1, 2001 Subject: System Event Notification Process

This Communicator is to advise you that effective June 5, 2001, Qwest plans to begin a new System Event Notification process. The process will provide e-mail notification regarding system events. The Qwest systems covered in this process include, Interconnect Mediated Access, (IMA)-EDI and GUI Interfaces, TELIS/EXACT, E-Commerce Gateway, Customer Electronic Maintenance and Repair (CEMR), Resale Product Database (RPD), Mediated Access (MEDIACC).

To receive e-mail notifications regarding system events, you may subscribe yourself to the notification list via e-mail. To subscribe to the notifications: 1. Send an e-mail to majordomo@qwest.com 2. The required subject line for your e-mail is: Add to wshdnoti mail list 3. In the text area of the e-mail enter only the following required command: subscribe wshdnoti 4. Send the e-mail to complete the process.

NOTE: There are a number of points to consider before you subscribe to this new notification list: The e-mail address of the sender will be added to the distribution list so be sure to send the request from the e-mail address you want the notifications sent to. Those who subscribe to the list will receive notifications on all the included systems. It is not possible to request only specific systems. To ensure timely receipt of these notifications, Qwest recommends that each company have at least two people subscribe to the list. This information will be of most value to those personnel in your operations centers. These may not be the same people who currently receive notifications through the Co-Provider Industry Change Management Process (CICMP).

If you need to remove yourself from the notification list at a later time: 1. Address an e-mail to majordomo@qwest.com 2. The required subject line for your e-mail is: Changes to wshdnoti mail list 3. In the text area of the e-mail enter only the following required command: unsubscribe wshdnoti 4. Send the e-mail to complete the process.

If you need to change your e-mail address at a later time: 1. Address an e-mail to majordomo@qwest.com 2. The required subject line for your e-mail is: Changes to wshdnoti mail list 3. In the text area of the e-mail enter the first required command: unsubscribe wshdnoti This is will remove your old e-mail address. 4. Enter a second required command: subscribe wshdnoti to subscribe your new e-mail address. 5. Send the e-mail to complete the process.

If you need any further assistance on this process, please contact the Qwest Wholesale Systems Help Desk at 1-888-796-9102 and select Option 3.

Prepared by: Jeffery Thompson, Information Technologies Director