At Somos®, our highest priority is the businesses of our customers, which means we work to ensure that our products are always running at optimal service levels. In the event of issues, maintenances or outages, we are committed to ensuring users are notified in a timely manner.
Notification of Issues and/or Outages
The Help Desk will notify users of reported issue and/or if an outage has occurred. For reported issues and/or outages, the notification status interval should not be more than 2 hours nor less than 30 minutes. Users will be provided with the following:
- An incoming phone message greeting by calling 844.HEY.SOMOS (844.439.7666), Option 1;
- An alert on the Somos Portal Website (portal.somos.com), or;
- A Somos notification distributed via email.
The Help Desk will notify users of reported issues based upon the following ticket priority levels:
- Priority Urgent (1), High (2), Normal (3): Voice response message, an alert on the Somos Portal Website and/or a Somos notification.
- Priority Low (4): Users will be notified as appropriate.
For more information on the ticket priority levels, please click here.
The Help Desk will provide continual status updates until the issue and/or outage has been resolved.
Notification of Maintenances and Outages
Scheduled Maintenance
Scheduled downtimes for maintenance are neither an issue nor a malfunction in the TFNRegistry™ (tfnregistry.somos.com). Routine scheduled downtimes occur approximately 12 times per year and may last from 6 to 12 hours per event. A routine scheduled downtime is required for major software, hardware, and environmental maintenance and upgrades. Resp Orgs will be notified of routine scheduled downtime at least 14 days in advance of the event.
Non-routine scheduled downtimes may be required from time to time for such activities as software and security updates. Resp Orgs will be notified of non-routine scheduled downtime at least 24 hours in advance via a Somos notification and/or calendar event notification. Somos support personnel will work with users to ensure that routine and non-routine scheduled downtime occurs at a time and in a manner least disruptive to users.
Unscheduled Outages
The Help Desk will provide the following information in a notification if an unscheduled outage has occurred:
- Current date and time.
- Time and type of outage and/or if the TFNRegistry is degraded (e.g. experiencing slowness).
- Data loss incurred, if any.
- What should users do (e.g., no resends, etc.)?
- When is resolution expected?
- Time of next status report.
The Help Desk will provide the following additional information, as appropriate:
- Detailed workarounds if available for reported issues will be communicated in the initial notification.
- Any detailed workarounds for reported issues, Resp Org procedures for sending records and/or if a disaster is declared, they will be communicated in the first notification. If a more extensive workaround is necessary, users will be advised in a follow-up within one hour.
- If a disaster is declared, Somos and Somos support personnel will take the necessary actions to recover from the disaster as quickly as possible.
Root Cause Analysis
If the reported issue has a ticket priority level of Urgent (1), a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) will be provided to users through a Somos notification within 14 business days of the report and it will include the duration of outage. Normally, this will not be provided for a reported issue with a ticket priority level of High (2), Normal (3) or Low (4). However, if a user requests, a Somos Notification may be sent to the industry for an RCA ticket that has a priority level of High (2) and it is approved by Somos. The Somos notification for an RCA will include the following information:
- Activity
- Occurrence(s)
- Cause
- Impact
- Result
- Notes (if any)
- Preventative Action(s)
For more information on the ticket priority levels, please click here.
Please Note: Any follow-up information will be provided in a subsequent Somos notification, if all the information is not immediately available.