Meeting User Needs with Tivoli Support

Support is a classic challenge for technology providers, and often the challenge scales in proportion to the technology. In the case of a company like IBM, the challenge is immense. No technology company has as rich and diverse a portfolio of software and hardware. Toward this end, IBM has responded with many different forms of support, some of them automated, thus essentially using technology to support technology.

One example of automated support is the IBM Tivoli Support Site, which is optimized to leverage all the power and ubiquity of the Web. Through the Tivoli Support Site, customers can get access to detailed information on every Tivoli product IBM sells, from anywhere they happen to be.

Fortunately, despite the intrinsic complexity of providing support for such a vast range of products, IBM has worked aggressively to optimize the site for user convenience. A quick glance tells users all the basic features are broken down into five broad categories, represented as tabs: Overview, Search, Download, Report Problems, and Help.

Elegant Access to Detailed Information
Overview is the first tab. It's effectively a support portal which addresses the most immediate needs many customers will have. In addition to recent news likely to interest or affect IBM customers, there's a subsection titled Support for Specific Tivoli Products. This is an updated short list of particular Tivoli products that is updated to reflect emerging customer needs. As customers change the focus of their support queries, this short list will change to reflect that focus. Users can also select from a comprehensive list of all Tivoli and Tivoli-relevant IBM software solutions via a pull-down menu.

Finally, the bottom Overview subsection, titled Support for all Tivoli Products, gives users access to a variety of other support mechanisms. The Information Centers link, for instance, jumps offsite to provide product documentation. Selecting this link brings up a comprehensive list of Tivoli solutions in categories, and product documentation can easily be obtained by clicking through the list to drill down to the particular product involved. Let us suppose a hypothetical user is interested in obtaining the documentation for Tivoli Monitoring v.6. Clicking Information Centers brings up the documentation site. Here, the user can click Monitoring, and then, in the frame that appears to the right, IBM Tivoli Monitoring version 6.1 Information Center for documentation on exactly that subject.

From the OS pull-down menu, the user would choose Solaris, then enter a query such as "tivoli monitoring v.6 install." This, in turn, brings up two search results, one of which is a Quick Start Guide. Clicking on this brings up an assortment of supported languages. The user can select English. This selection leads to the Quick Start Guide for Tivoli Monitoring version 6.1, which walks the user through an installation checklist.

It's also possible to refine searches still further through a cluster of checkboxes at the bottom of the Search tab. These cover the types of documents to be searched; all are selected by default, but users can obtain more granularity by unchecking any of them. They include Troubleshooting documents (technotes, flashes, InfoCenters), APARs (Authorized Program Analysis Reports), and Learning Documents (manuals, redbooks, white papers). Results can be sorted by either date (ascending or descending) or expected relevancy.

The third major tab, Download, works in much the same way as Search except that searches yield troubleshooting tips and software updates. Here, as a result, the checkboxes to refine search granularity cover Updates (Fix Packs, patches), Utilities (add-ins, diagnostics), Drivers, and APARs. If we again submit Tivoli Monitoring v.6 as a search term, then we obtain three troubleshooting results, all three of which cover exactly that product.

Report Problems is the fourth tab, and the simplest. It can be used in the event that the site doesn't yield the necessary solution to a technical issue, and the user instead wants to escalate the issue to IBM by way of an Electronic Service Request (ESR). This ESR will give IBM all the relevant deployment and usage scenario information necessary to research and find a solution.

Finally, the Help tab provides assistance on the site itself. Subcategories here, available from both a pull-down menu and links, include a glossary; a What Is? section, which defines site areas; a How Do I? section, essentially a site FAQ; a tour of the site; and assistance creating an ESR in the event one is required.

Multiple Roads to Technical Support
One interesting aspect of IBM's customer-centric support philosophy is that support information should be available to customers in different ways to meet different needs. For instance, suppose a customer has presales questions about a Tivoli monitoring product or simply wants to know if there exists a Tivoli product that will meet her application monitoring needs.

She might begin by looking at a page such as the Tivoli Products by Category, in which products are covered by function instead of title. Since she's interested in application monitoring, she would likely click on Application Performance and Availability; subsequent perusal of specific Tivoli products might lead her to Tivoli Monitoring v.6, since it, as the site tells her, "automates monitoring of essential system resources to detect bottlenecks and potential problems." If she wants detailed technical information on it, she could then click Support, which would lead her to that product's specific Support subpage, exactly as if she had begun by searching for it on the Support site.

Once there, this user will likely be impressed. The Tivoli Monitoring v.6 subpage, for instance, includes an Information Center link; clicking on it will take her straight to the product documentation she might have found via a slower search in the Overview tab. There is a Search subsection, which will generate results specifically for Tivoli Monitoring v.6. Similarly, there are targeted subsections for Downloads, Forums and Newsgroups, Technotes, APARs, and even a Learn section designed to train her in using the product.

Users will be pleased to know that IBM continues to refine the site to address customer needs in even more forward-thinking ways. For instance, the Tivoli Monitoring v.6 subpage contains a Featured documents link, which leads our hypothetical user to specific documents selected for maximum utility to users of that product. While this particular feature is still being rolled out, it's expected to be delivered across the entire Tivoli portfolio inside calendar 2007.

Meeting User Needs with Tivoli Support
IBM's Tivoli Support Site gives Tivoli customers quick access to all the technical information they need to solve emerging problems.

Meeting User Needs with Tivoli Support
Learn how IBM is using it's technology expertise to better streamline is technology support.