RemObjects Software Support

This page lists the various options for obtaining Support for RemObjects Software products.

In addition to the free Basic Support laid out below, we also offer paid Premium Support for customers who need guaranteed faster turnaround times or otherwise have special support needs. For more details on Premium Support, please check here.

Newsgroups

We offer support for our products primarily through our NNTP newsgroups which enable us to target a higher number of requests in the shortest amount of time, while allowing customers to benefit from answers given to others. More detailed information regarding the available newsgroups, as well as some important guidelines can be found here.

Email

In addition to our newsgroups, if you need special assistance on any matter, please send an email to support@remobjects.com, but please be aware that response time for emails is typically longer than for newsgroups.

Email support will be tracked by our support robot Marvoin and our bug tracking system. Within a few minutes of sending an email to support@remobjects.com, you will receive an automated response, with a tracking ID in the subject line. Please keep this ID in place for all future communication and follow-ups on the same support request.

Please also note that our support robot applies spam filtering, and messages that rate too high on our spam metric will be discarded. This has not been a problem in the past, but if you do not get a response from the support robot within 30 minutes, try simplifying your email (for example by avoiding HTML and attachments). It also helps bypassing our spam checking if you send from the email address you have on record with us.

Premium Support

For customers who are interested in upgrading beyond our free basic support, we offer a paid Premium Support program, which guarantees higher priority and faster response times. You can find out more about Premium Support here.

Bug Reports

In addition to our per-product support newsgroups, two newsgroups are available specifically for submitting bug reports (news:remobjects.public.bugreports) and offering suggestions (news:remobjects.public.suggestions), respectively.

Note: the bug reports and suggestions newsgroups are not intended for use with support issues. We typically do not reply to posts in these newsgroups, as we simply log the issues for internal review and resolution. If you need prompt assistance, please use the regular newsgroups.

Please read the following instructions carefully, as they contain guidelines on how to properly report a bug.

1. Post on the following newsgroup: news:remobjects.public.bugreports.
2. Include the product name and summary in the subject, for example "RO/Delphi: Problem when doing something" or "DA/.NET: Cannot display something when I do something else".
3. The message should contain a full and detailed description of the problem and a list of steps and instructions on how to reproduce it.
4. Include attachments whenever possible:

• Keep the project to a minimum. Try reproducing the problem you're experiencing in the simplest project possible. For example, if you can see the problem in a single tier, by simply using the client or the server application, provide just that tier. Also, remove any unnecessary modules or code.
• Do not use third party components in your test applications. Chances are that we will be testing your project in a clean install and won't have any components or third party libraries installed. The exception would of course be if your problem involves certain third party libraries; in this case please make sure to check with us in advance.
• Do not use absolute output and search paths in project options. Please make sure your projects don't contain hard-coded paths in project options, or when they reference files (such as databases or .ini files) at runtime. Your file paths will not be valid on our test system. Also, keep the project output paths empty.
• Include the databases that your project works against. If you submit sample projects that require a database, please make sure to submit all database files that are needed for the sample to run. Ideally you should make your sample work against standard databases such as EMPLOYEE.GDB or Northwind.

Should you have any additional questions regarding our Support program, please email us at support@remobjects.com.

Premium Support

Premium Support is an upgrade service over the free basic support that is offered with all our products. It gives you a faster response time and it guarantees that your inquiries are moved up in our support queue. Premium Support is offered as a yearly subscription and can be purchased independently for any of the products you own.

Pricing

Subscribing to our Premium Support program is available at only $699,— for the first year and $499,— to renew. This yearly subscription includes 10 Support Tickets, but you always have the option to purchase additional ones.

If you wish to obtain Premium Support for one single issue without a subscription, you can purchase a Single Emergency Support Ticket.

Order here:

• Yearly Subscription (includes 10 Support Tickets) - $699,—
• Single Emergency Support Ticket - $199,—

Renewal and additional tickets:

The following items are available to active Premium Support subscribers (please check your account page on my.remobjects.com for order links.

• Yearly Subscription Renewal (includes 10 Support Tickets) - $499,—
• Single additional Support Ticket - $69,—
• Package of 5 additional Support Tickets - $299,—
• Package of 10 additional Support Tickets - $599,—
• Package of 30 additional Support Tickets - $1,299,—

Note: Support Tickets do not expire as long as your Premium Support Subscription remains active. If you have unused ones at the end of your subscription year, they will be automatically rolled over to the following year, when you renew.

Procedure

Once you've subscribed to the Premium Support program, or purchased a Single Emergency Support Ticket, the procedure to report an issue is as follows:

1. You send us an email with your support questions using your registered email address. Please note that we cannot process Premium Support requests unless they come directly from the email address registered with your account.
2. We review your email and send you confirmation of receipt and the ticket number (or provisional ticket numbers) within 6 business hours or less. If your questions pertain to more than one topic, we will open two or more provisional tickets and ask you to approve them. Provisional tickets require your acceptance before we can begin working and they will be cancelled if you decline them. For tracking purposes, all subsequent emails relating to a ticket must contain the ticket number in the subject.
3. We work on your issues with the utmost priority. At this point the time it takes to provide a solution greatly depends on the problem you are presenting, therefore we cannot make estimates, but we can assure you that your issues always take priority over regular support ones.

Please note that because our support team is physically located in Europe, our business hours span approximately between 9:00 and 21:00 Central European Time (CET).

Also, keep in mind that if you have more than one ticket open at any given time, different developers might be working on them, so we ask you to keep communication for each ticket separate and to be prompt with your replies.

In general, all the rules and procedures outlined in our basic support service still apply, but additional information or changes regarding Priority Support might be sent to you once you sign up.

Note: Once a Support Ticket is opened it will be subtracted from your available tickets, regardless of what the reported problem is, and regardless of the outcome of the support request. The Premium Support fee you pay covers the expense of our support team being ready to promptly address your issues.

Priority Call Back Support

With Priority Call Back Support you can opt to have one of our developers telephone you directly. This service is available at $199,— per hour, with a minimum of a one hour charge. Please follow the procedure described above and simply add 'Priority Call Back Support' to the title of your email. Don't forget to include your international telephone number and your business hours.

At present, we can only offer telephone support in one of the following languages: English (preferred), German, Dutch, Ukrainian and Russian.

Note: Priority Call Back Support is only available to those customers who are currently subscribers of the Premium Support program.

Should you have any additional questions regarding our Premium Support program, please email us at support@remobjects.com.

Support Newsgroups (NNTP)

RemObjects Software offers customer support primarily through its newsgroups at news://news.remobjects.com. To access these groups, you will need a NNTP news reader application, such as one of the following installed on your computer.

• Mozilla Thunderbird (recommended)
• Microsoft OutlookExpress (comes preinstalled with Windows XP)
• Windows Mail (comes preinstalled with Windows Vista)
• XanaNews
• Forte Agent

Our public newsgroups are open to everyone. A login is required only if you participate in any of our beta programs and want to access private newsgroups associated with those programs. If you experience any trouble logging in, please try to access without username and password, as the beta newsgroup you are trying to reach might have been closed.

Please make sure to read our Newsgroup Guidelines below, before accessing these groups.

Primary Product Support Groups

The newsgroups listed below are the primary groups for receiving support on the respective products. These newsgroups are monitored daily by our support team and TeamRO, and we are committed to providing prompt responses.

• remobjects.public.dataabstract.delphi
• remobjects.public.dataabstract.net
• remobjects.public.dataabstract.osx
• remobjects.public.hydra.delphi
• remobjects.public.hydra.net
• remobjects.public.internetpack.net
• remobjects.public.pascalscript
• remobjects.public.sdk.delphi
• remobjects.public.sdk.net
• remobjects.public.sdk.osx

Please Note: Response time for newsgroup support is typically 48 hours or less on regular business days: Monday through Friday, excluding public holidays. However, we do not guarantee response times. If you need faster turnaround, we encourage you to consider purchasing Premium Support.

Also note: Support for Oxygene is being moved to the Delphi Prism newsgroups provided on Embarcadero's newsgroup and web forum servers. Please check here for more details. RemObjects software does not provide support for Oxygene or Delphi Prism, except for Premium Support contracts.

Non-Support Groups

The following groups are provided for communication not directly related to support.

The "bugreports" and "suggestions" groups are provided for uni-directional submitting of bug reports or feature suggestions, respectively. They are regularly processed and all posts made to these groups will be reviewed, but we do not commit to providing timely answers to posts in these groups. Questions and support requests should be posted in the product-specific groups listed above.

The "binaries" group is provided for posting large binary files and attachments not suitable for the other groups. It will not be monitored by RemObjects staff, other than to retrieve particular attachments.

Finally, "non-tech" is provided for non-product related discussions and chats between customers, non-customers and staff. RemObjects staff and TeamRO will lurk and occasionally participate in discussions, but no official support is provided. Any topics are allowed and encouraged in this newsgroup, whether they relate to RemObjects Software and our products, or not.

• remobjects.public.binaries
• remobjects.public.bugreports
• remobjects.public.non-tech
• remobjects.public.suggestions

Deprecated Groups

The following newsgroups cover deprecated products and are no longer actively monitored; they remain open read-only for reference. Official support for these products is available on request, please contact us.

• remobjects.public.oxygene
• remobjects.public.debugserver
• remobjects.public.ewfserverpack
• remobjects.public.nexusdb

HTTP Newsgroup Access

As an alternative, you can access our newsgroups on the web:

• http://delphi.newswhat.com/geoxml/forumlistgroups?area=RemObjects
• http://www.tamaracka.com

These links are provided as a courtesy, but we cannot guarantee their accuracy or reliability, as we do not maintain these websites.

If you are unable to use the newsgroups for technical reasons, please send an email to support@remobjects.com instead. Keep in mind that since the newsgroups are our preferred channel for providing support, response time for emails is typically longer.

Newsgroup Guidelines and Rules

The following guidelines and rules apply to working and communication on the RemObjects Software newsgroups.

Keep the following in mind when accessing the RemObjects Software newsgroups:

1. Do not post using anonymous names.
2. Do not post using fake email addresses (but you may obfuscate your address).
3. Direct your comments or questions to the relevant group.
4. Do not cross post.
5. Be respectful and courteous to other users.
6. Do not bash other product vendors, complain about problems with other vendors or their products in these forums - if you have issues with other vendors, contact them directly or use their appropriate forums.
7. Do not post copyrighted materials without the explicit consent of the author.
8. Do not flame or post inflammatory messages.
9. Be aware that RemObjects Software reserves the right to reference and reuse any information posted on the public newsgroups - for example to assist other users with related problems. This might include source code snippets posted to the public newsgroups. You will be fully credited in any such case.
10. Be aware that RemObjects Software reserves the right to remove any message that does not comply with these terms.

Regarding posting style, the usual rules about courtesy to people apply here:

1. People read these messages from everywhere in the world, and local joking styles may not carry very far. Be sure to consider this before posting messages that might be misunderstood.
2. Please avoid posting in HTML. Besides the risk for viruses, this often results in semi-readable messages, and many users are still using news readers that do not support HTML.
3. Be careful about quoting - keep quotes to a minimum, bearing in mind that many people arcross the globe still have metered internet charges.
4. Please make sure that the Subject line under which you are posting is relevant to what you're posting. Threads tend to drift quickly, making Subject lines thoroughly misleading - if the topic of a thread has changed considerably, consider adjusting the Subject line of your reply to reflect this, or start a new thread.