Christmas technical support.

Over the Christmas holiday period, from 5pm Thursday 19 December 2024 to 9am Monday 13 January 2025, DNA’s technical support will be reduced.

Overview

During the Christmas holiday period, we maintain essential support services while operating with reduced staff. This document outlines the support structure, responsibilities, and procedures for handling technical incidents during this time. 

Over this period most P1 and P2 incidents, such as website outages, will remain handled on a 24/7 basis by your hosting infrastructure provider (such as CWP, SilverStripe Cloud, or SiteHost).

If you have an ongoing support agreement with us, DNA will cover any critical code-related issues, such as a major impact on your website or platform where there is no easily available workaround. When you raise an incident, the level of impact will be assessed and agreed upon by both parties.

If the incident is mutually defined as having a critical impact (P1) on your services, DNA will be responsible for resolving the issue in accordance with the response and restoration targets outlined below. Incidents that are not defined as having a critical impact (P1) on your services will not be supported during the holiday period and will be resolved after our team is back to full support.

Incident classification

P1 (Critical Impact)

  • Complete website outages
  • Critical security breaches
  • Payment system failures
  • Data loss scenarios
  • Core functionality is completely unavailable

P2 (Major Impact)

  • Significant performance degradation
  • Partial system outages
  • Major functional components unavailable with workarounds
  • Security vulnerabilities requiring immediate attention

Hosting Provider responsibilities

Your hosting infrastructure provider (e.g., CWP, SilverStripe Cloud, or SiteHost) will continue to provide 24/7 coverage for:

  • Server uptime monitoring
  • Infrastructure-related outages
  • Basic security monitoring
  • Network connectivity issues
  • Database availability
  • Server resource management

Support scope

Over the holiday period, DNA will provide support for:

Critical code-related issues

  • Issues affecting core business operations
  • Problems without viable workarounds
  • Security-critical patches
  • Data integrity issues

Assessment process

  • The impact level must be mutually agreed upon
  • Clear documentation of business impact required
  • Verification of critical status by the technical team

Incident reporting procedure

Step 1: Documentation

Create a new JIRA ticket including:

  • Date and time of occurrence
  • Detailed reproduction steps
  • URL(s) affected
  • Visual evidence (screenshots/videos)
  • Technical details: Error codes; System logs; Browser information; Operating system
  • Impact assessment
  • Success criteria for resolution
  • Priority classification

Step 2: Notification

Notify the DNA of the issue:

  • Email the JIRA ticket URL to tier1@dna.co.nz
  • Follow up with a phone call to the Level 1 contact
  • Reference the JIRA ticket number in all communications

Step 3: Escalation path

If you do not receive a response or there is a significant issue, then follow this escalation path. Resolution of issues may be delayed if the problem reporting incident process is not followed correctly.

Level 1 — On-call team

Primary contacts:

  • Email: tier1@dna.co.nz
  • Response Time: Within SLA

Responsibilities:

  • Complex technical problem resolution
  • Resource allocation
  • Client communication for critical issues
  • Strategic decision making

Escalation Triggers:

  • Issue unresolved within four hours
  • Business-critical system failure
  • Major security incident
  • Multiple system components affected

Level 2 — Technical contacts

Primary contacts:

  • James Ayers: james.ayers@dna.co.nz (021 270 8292)
  • Luke Edwards: luke.edwards@dna.co.nz (0224395853)

Responsibilities:

  • Complex technical problem resolution
  • Resource allocation
  • Client communication for critical issues
  • Strategic decision making

Escalation Triggers:

  • Issue unresolved within four hours
  • Business-critical system failure
  • Major security incident
  • Multiple system components affected

Level 3 — Principal Escalation

Primary contacts:

  • Josh Burt: josh.burt@dna.co.nz (021 996 988)

Responsibilities:

  • Executive decision making
  • Resource prioritization
  • Client relationship management
  • Strategic business impact assessment

Escalation Triggers:

  • Issue unresolved within four hours
  • Significant business impact
  • Reputational risk
  • Contract/SLA breach risk

Client Responsibilities

Incident management

  • Follow proper escalation procedures
  • Provide accurate and complete information
  • Respond promptly to queries
  • Test solutions in UAT environment

Third-party management

  • Manage relationships with external providers
  • Obtain necessary documentation
  • Coordinate between parties when required

Stakeholder communication

  • Gather and relay stakeholder feedback
  • Manage external communication
  • Coordinate user testing
  • Approve changes in UAT

Service exclusions

New feature requests

  • New functionality development
  • UI/UX changes
  • Feature enhancements
  • These require separate project scoping

Infrastructure management

  • Physical hardware support
  • System software maintenance
  • Server performance monitoring
  • Security updates outside the application code

Third-party services

  • Domain name management
  • SSL certificates
  • External API maintenance
  • Database system administration
  • Search engine configuration (Solr)

Environment monitoring and configuration

  • Apache settings
  • MySQL configuration
  • Server environment setup
  • Network configuration

Additional Notes

Change freeze recommendation

  • Avoid non-critical changes during the holiday period

Cost implications

  • Out-of-hours support may incur additional charges
  • Non-standard deployments subject to extra fees
  • Emergency changes may have cost implications