The primary channel for Customer Support is the NLP Support Ticket system. The NLP Support Ticket system contains the archive of support tickets from all Users and is provided by NLP to all Customers current with Annual Maintenance. Users may access the NLP Support Ticket system by having the parent company complete the self-registration form to create a new account. NLP also encourages voice or video calls whenever it is helpful because we can often solve urgent issues more quickly when working together with a representative or end user.
Standard Support Includes
NLP’s Standard Support Services are available during our normal business hours of 7am-4pm Monday-Friday PST, excluding NLP’s observed holidays or other related closures.
NLP offers 24/7/365 support for those that need it. After hours support tickets should be created by email as an Emergency Severity Level if possible but a phone call to the support desk should always be placed. This phone number is 425-949-3313 x 505.
24/7/365 support is billed in one-hour increments and two times the current NLP base rate.
SEVERITY LEVEL | DESCRIPTION OF ISSUE | TARGET RESPONSE | NLP ACTION |
Emergency | Critical issues affecting all users, including system unavailability, data integrity issues, or bugs having a significant impact where no workaround is available. This severity level requires maximum effort of support until an emergency fix or bypass is developed. Critical situations may require Customer and NLP personnel to be at their respective work locations or available on an around-the-clock basis. Emergency support requests should be called in to NLP directly and if possible accompanied by an email noting "Emergency" in the subject with any related attachments, screenshots or information. | ASAP | NLP will prioritize Emergency-level support above all else. The primary objective is to solve the issue but in some cases the solution may be a workaround in order to allow the user to continue work as quickly as possible. |
Urgent | Major functionality is impacted or significant performance degradation is experienced. Issue is persistent and affects many users and/or major functionality and no reasonable workaround is available. A fix is required as soon as possible. Urgent support requests should be emailed to Help@TheNLP.com. | Response within 3 business hours | The primary objective is to solve the issue but in some cases the solution may be a workaround in order to allow the user to continue work as quickly as possible. |
Other | System performance issue or bug affecting some but not all users. Short-term workaround is available, but not scalable. This may include items such as requests for new features or additional licenses and inquiries regarding a routine question; information requested on application capabilities, navigation, installation or configuration. (This is the default level for most requests.) Other support requests should be emailed to Help@TheNLP.com. | Response within 24 business hours | The issue will be prioritized based on the level of severity and volume of open support tickets, which will determine the processing time of solving the issue. |
The following list identifies the types of support issues that should be sent through the support email or entered via the Customer Portal. This list is not meant to be exhaustive but is instead meant to provide examples.
The following services are beyond the scope of NLP’s Support Services:
All requests for support, other than emergencies, must go through the support email at Help@TheNLP.com or be created through the customer portal.
Northlake Partners employees will not work on support sent directly to personal email accounts but will reply back with instructions to send them to the support ticket system. Emails sent to the support account (Help@TheNLP.com) will automatically create a support ticket. All support tickets will come to us with a status of ‘Submitted’ and will be visible to the user immediately.
The first time an email address that does not belong to an existing user sends a support ticket to help@thenlp.com the sender will receive an email prompting the user to activate his or her account. The sender must activate his or her account in order to receive email updates.
To activate your account, click the ‘Activate my account’ button in the email and follow the instructions to create a new user.
Once the user has been created, all future emails sent to help@thenlp.com will create new support tickets without any additional effort needed from the user. The user will also receive an email each time a comment is added to his or her item(s) by another user. If the user wishes to add a comment to an item, the user can send subsequent emails to help@thenlp.com with the same subject line as the original email.
Note: If a past issue reoccurs once the original issue has been closed, do not respond to the original issue’s email, as this will send a comment to the original issue that has been closed and is therefore no longer visible in NLP’s open ticket queue. In order to verify the issue gets the proper attention, send a new email to help@thenlp.com detailing the issue. Feel free to reference the original ticket in the body of the email.
Guidelines for Sending Support Issues Via Email
The following guidelines are to help ensure issues can be closed as quickly as possible:
Users can also submit tickets via the customer portal, which can be accessed here: https://northlake.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portals. This interface can only be accessed by current users and there are four important components to this interface:
Ticket Creation
The Ticket Creation page allows users to submit a support ticket if they choose not to email help@thenlp.com. If created through this interface, users will still receive email notifications when an NLP employee responds to their ticket, they will not have to check their created tickets for responses.
To create a ticket from the Ticket Creation page, a product (NorthScope or Dynamics GP) must first be chosen, and then an issue type can be selected.
Once a user chooses an issue type, the user will be taken to a screen where the user can describe the issue/request. From this screen the user will summarize the problem/request, select the severity of the issue to determine the time frame required for resolution, provide a description of the issue, and be prompted with documents that could help solve the issue. Once the user ‘creates’ the issue, a support ticket is created with the entered summary, severity, and description.
Once a ticket has been submitted, the user can view the ticket’s status, respond to NLP questions or solutions, and add attachments.
Requests
The Requests page is a page for the user to look through open and closed issues for which he or she has requested help or on which he or she is a participant. From the Requests page, the user can also open the tickets to which he or she has visibility in order to view the activity, make comments, add attachments, etc.
Documentation Search
The Help Desk home page allows users to search NorthScope documentation for solutions to issues. This is particularly helpful for users who need clarification on NorthScope functionality or how it integrates with GP. When a user enters search terms in the search bar, a list of help documentation related to the search terms appears, allowing the user to click on an article to view the article.
User Profile
By clicking the avatar toolbar icon users can access the user profile or log out. The user profile screen allows the user to change his or her password, name, time zone, or avatar.
Support tickets will advance through a set of pre-defined statuses. The most common workflow will contain the following sequence of status changes:
Occasionally, it may be necessary to move a support ticket outside the normal workflow. To accommodate this, additional statuses have been added that include:
Our first step will be to qualify ‘Open’ support issues. In order to qualify an issue we must understand the severity and have enough information to effectively troubleshoot and subsequently solve it. New support issues will either be moved to:
Once ‘To Do’ support tickets have been reviewed, they will be updated to one of the following statuses:
Once ‘In Progress’ issues have been reviewed, they will be updated to one of the following statuses:
Once we believe we have done everything to solve the support ticket, it will be updated to ‘Customer Approval’ and the sender will receive an email indicating the solution. This will ensure the sender agrees the issue has been resolved. We will allow up to 5 days for the sender to approve the issue before we automatically update it to ‘Resolved.’
Once an issue has been approved by the sender it will be updated to ‘Resolved.’
Issues that ‘Waiting for Customer’ are on a soft hold because they cannot be advanced without additional information from the sender. Issues ‘Waiting for Customer’ will automatically be changed to ‘Closed’ if there has not been any progress for 60 days.
In some situations, a support request may never be resolved. If this happens it will be updated to ‘Closed,’ indicating that it is no longer in consideration even though it was not resolved. When this happens, the sender will receive an email indicating the change.
Occasionally, support tickets are submitted that span beyond the scope of completion in three business days. When these tickets are submitted, the following will occur:
Note: Users will be able to view the status of NLP Tasks items that they have reported by logging in using their company’s https://northlake.atlassian.net/login and password.