Introduction
In the EGI Federation there are 3 levels of support.
First level support is responsible for ticket triage and assignment. Ticket triage is regularly and continuously provided during business days. The first-level assigner is responsible for initial analysis of the incoming ticket, requesting additional information from the submitter, and assigning the ticket to 2nd level experts to resolve, to NGIs or specific service managers in case of operational incidents, to VO managers in case of VO membership issues, etc.
Tickets are reassigned mostly when there is a clear action for a specific support unit, when the analysis of the issue identified a software bug, or when after the initial support to the user no solution can be found. If reassigned, the helpdesk support must ensure that the issue is clear and that the user provided all the information needed.
The team responsible for the 1st level of support is called TPM, which stands for Ticket Processing Manager.
Second level support is provided through the Deployed Middleware Support Unit (DMSU) support unit for software services comprising the EGI Core, Cloud and Community platforms. Second level support deals with configuration and deployment issues or suspected software defects. In case a software defect is indeed confirmed, the ticket is reassigned to the appropriate 3rd level support unit to fix. Otherwise, the issue is resolved at 2nd level.
The third level of support is represented by the middleware developers: there is a support unit for each of the middleware product and they usually cope with tickets related to software bugs, request of new features, improvements to middleware documentation, etc. As previously described, the tickets cannot be assigned directly to the third level support units since it is first needed an assessment of the DMSU.
In the dedicated pages of TPM and DMSU there is a description of the activities and a number of guidelines for the supporters.