Overview
At CircleCI, we are committed to providing the highest level of support to our customers. This article explains our escalation policy as it applies to features in Preview or Beta, end-of-life (EOL) software versions, and technical debt — so your organization can set the right expectations before engaging support.
Our Product and Its Design
Our product is designed and tested to work within certain parameters, including:
- The intended use case of the product
- The product's performance within its design
- The product's integration with other systems
Issues that fall within these parameters are treated as bugs or incidents and are our responsibility to address. Issues outside these parameters may be treated as feature requests or may require paid consulting services if your organization does not wish to resolve them independently.
Support Expectations by Feature Phase
The level of support available for a given feature depends on which phase of the release lifecycle it is in.
Preview Features
Preview features are early-stage and not yet covered by standard SLAs. When a ticket is submitted for a Preview feature, our support team will respond promptly, but formal SLA response times do not apply. This allows the team adequate time to properly gather context on the new feature and assist with troubleshooting effectively.
Bug reports or defects identified in Preview features are escalated to the Product team but are not treated as breaking events and do not carry a targeted resolution timeframe. The primary channel for Preview issues is direct engagement with the product team, who are active collaborators during this phase.
Beta Features
Beta features are supported through standard support channels (Zendesk, Discuss) with the standard SLA for your plan applying. However, customers should be aware that:
- SLOs are measured but not guaranteed during Beta
- Known issues are documented publicly on docs.circleci.com
- All responses will include the disclaimer: "This feature is in Beta"
Beta features are stable enough for broader use, but some rough edges may remain. These are not treated as escalations in the same manner as a production incident against a GA feature.
Generally Available (GA) Features
GA features carry full production support with standard SLAs. No preview disclaimers apply, and issues are handled through the standard escalation process.
Dealing with Technical Debt
We understand that some organizations may have exceptions in place to run production workloads alongside technical debt or legacy integrations. We are willing to coordinate with these customers regarding expected functionality on a case-by-case basis.
Software Versions and Supportability
The first requirement for a supported escalation is that an organization is running a supported release of the CircleCI product — including, but not limited to, convenience images, runner versions, and CircleCI Server.
From there, we provide support based on known, tested functionality against current versions of software. If you are is running a current version of CircleCI but encounters an issue with an EOL version of an external service, we will make our best effort to assist. However, the issue will not be treated as a CircleCI escalation until your organization is on current, supported versions of all relevant software.
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