More information, greater transparency
Your project overview offers you visibility, and therefore control, over the time we spend working on your support requests.
Your project overview
Support information
This section gives you a quick comparison between the time you had available at the start of the current month, and what you've used.
Hours spent this month - this is the sum of any time recorded against your support requests. As you can see, whenever we add up the time used, we round to the nearest half-hour.
Hours available - if you're on a Monthly Support contract, this will show how many hours you started the current month with. This would include any rollover if you have that option on your account. If you're a PAYG client, this will always show '0'.
Hours remaining
This number is really important from a cost control perspective.
If it's negative (as in the screenshot), then this is PAYG support time you've generated (or overage). This time is invoiced at the start of the next month; so keep an eye on it so you know what to expect. If you're on a Monthly Support contract, this is in addition to your normal monthly charge.
This is where your Icebox comes into play, in letting us know whether you want us to keep working on requests, or to pause. We look at Iceboxes more in a little while.
Out of hours
When we need to, we'll respond to out-of-hours requests. As this is invoiced separately from monthly service charges, and at a different rate to normal PAYG time, we've separated it out so you can see it more clearly.
Previous month
For a quick, month-on-month comparison we've made your support time and any out-of-hours time from the previous month visible as well.
Iceboxes
Every client has an Icebox. And it's really important to use this.
We want to get through as many of your requests as possible, but each request takes time (which is why we've made the changes described above, so you can see that more clearly).
If a request isn't in the Icebox, we'll work on the premise that you want us to spend time working on it.
If this was to use up your remaining time from your Monthly support contract or introduce PAYG charges, you would see that from your overview (under 'Hours remaining').
So if you'd rather prioritise something else, or save that time for an emergency, you need to move the request into your Icebox.
You can do this by updating the issue, changing the project from Support to Icebox:
We won't work on the issues in your Icebox unless you move them into your Support queue. So check on them regularly and move issues according to your priorities and the time you have available, or the cost you're willing to accept.
We're obviously happy to work with you on this, so you can of course always get in touch and we can discuss your priorities, time estimates or the best sequence of events.
Application updates (e.g. Drupal security updates)
All issues we create for either a security update or it may be a functional update will now use the Tracker 'Application Updates'.
This means that we, and you can more easily identify the issues relating to this type of activity and the time spent on them.
- If you have a contract with the Application Updates product, you'll have a separate project where these will live, as the time is covered under your fixed monthly charge.
- If you don't have a contract with the Application Updates product, you'll see these in your support queue and any time taken applying them will be deducted from your Monthly support time (or be paid for on a PAYG basis).
Looking forward
We're continually looking at ways to improve the control you have over your services with Code Enigma, so keep an ear out for more to come
To start, we're working on introducing a more seamless login experience to our services (you may notice a change in login screen already). This will make it easier for you to access the ticketing system and user management of your accounts, and for us to expand on what you can access without complicating things.
If you have any feedback or suggestions on what you'd like to see in any updates, don't hesitate to let us know. You can email hello@codeenigma.com and we'll happily take a look.
Otherwise, we think you'll find this FAQ question on how to write a useful support ticket worthwhile.