Complimentary Support For Everyone
InstallAware strives to provide complimentary support to all members of the InstallAware community - for all of our products, including all editions of InstallAware, Setup Squeezer, and WiXAware. You do not need to purchase an InstallAware product to receive support.
Three Support Tiers
Three support tiers are available - Gold Support, Basic Support, and Trial Support - as listed in order of decreasing priority in the InstallAware support queue. Only clients who have purchased an InstallAware product are entitled to Basic Support. Clients may also select the Gold Support option at the time of their purchase for highest priority access to expert InstallAware support engineers. All of the considerations on this page apply equally to all available tiers of support, including Gold Support.
Support is a Privilege, Not a Right
While InstallAware support often goes above and over the call of duty to provide knowledgable, timely assistance to all our potential and current clients, support is not your right - even if you are a paid user of InstallAware. As explicitly stated in the InstallAware EULA which must be accepted both when installing a product trial or a purchased version, your purchase comes with NO SUPPORT RIGHTS whatsoever. Your access to any and all InstallAware support resources, including but not limited to peer forums, community center, email based support, and phone support may be revoked at any time, with or without reason.
What Support Cannot Do For You
InstallAware support is NOT a how-to resource. Our products ship with extensive online documentation - just press F1 anywhere in the InstallAware IDE to receive context sensitive help. In addition to online documentation, we have an extensive collection of publications - including printable whitepapers, product guides, comparative reviews, and even community made tutorials. These extensive resources already answer more than half of the support inquiries we receive on a daily basis. Your support inquiries may be ignored, and your access to support eventually banned, if you continuously send us questions which are already answered in these documents.
Do not send your installation projects to InstallAware as we are unable to build and debug each individual installation project. Each project requires many files, databases, websites, and other custom resources which must be replicated by InstallAware support just to get your installer to build and run, save test and debug. As much as we would like to bring this level of complimentary service to each and every customer, it is neither practical, nor necessary. Remember, with your purchase at InstallAware, you are purchasing a setup compiler - and NOT the setup authoring/debugging services. If you would like us to build your installers for you, please consider hiring InstallAware Consulting Services.
Understanding Error Messages
InstallAware is based on Windows Installer technology. If you receive a numeric setup error code, such as 2343, please consult Microsoft's MSDN Library for a description of the error message. For instance, the description of error code 2343 is "Specified path is empty." This information will help you determine the location of the error in your installation project and fix it - all in a fraction of the time it would take for InstallAware support resources to identify the issue on your behalf.
Generating Setup Logs
Any InstallAware setup may be logged using a command line parameter of the form "/l=c:\logfile.txt". Reviewing the log file created after an installation will often pinpoint the exact source of failure when error messages are not sufficient to diagnose an issue. With this information, you can go back to your setup project and fix the cause of the error - again, in a fraction of the time it would take for InstallAware support resources to do so on your behalf.
What Support Can Do For You
If a product is not performing as documented, you may have found a bug. In this case, it is very helpful for you to create a minimum setup project, which has no dependencies what-so-ever on your development eco-system (such as files to be installed, databases to connect to, and so forth). This minimum project must do nothing other than consistently reproduce the suspected bug. Support will then be able to investigate this minimum project, and validate the bug for escalation to InstallAware R&D for resolution.
InstallAware R&D has an internal classification of severity and priority for all bugs reported - while we have established a track record of always being the first to support new and emerging technologies, we have seen that our internal development priorities do not always intersect all of our client's requirements. If a bug cannot be readily resolved, support will undertake best efforts to provide you with a viable workaround in accordance with your schedule. The availability of such a workaround is NOT guaranteed. However, since InstallAware is a very versatile tool, only very rarely is a workaround not possible - in which eventuality, InstallAware R&D will release a hot-fix that resolves your issue in alignment with internal development schedules.
Elusive Issues
InstallAware aims for the highest success rates with all of your installations on all of your target platforms - without compromise. When a defect is elusive and cannot be illustrated consistently with a minimum project as described in the first paragraph of the section What Support Can Do For You above, we still do our best to support you. You will be required to prepare a virtual machine, making use of virtualization technologies such as VMware. This virtual machine must replicate your operating environment sufficiently enough to reproduce the issue consistently. You may then send support this virtual machine for testing, and ultimately, the resolution of your issue. The guidelines in the second paragraph of the section What Support Can Do For You above still apply.
To cover the time and materials overhead during investigation of custom operating environments, you will be asked to purchase an Incident Support package as described in the section below. Do not purchase incident support until you have been directed by InstallAware support to do so. You will be asked to purchase incident support only when an InstallAware engineer is confident that your issue can be resolved in a timely and cost-efficient manner. The purchase of an InstallAware product is not necessary for incident support. The Gold Support tier does NOT waive an incident support package purchase requirement.
Incident Support (5 Pack)
Incident support is sold in packages of 5 incidents each. An incident consists of a single problem presented in a single communication, and any follow-up required to reasonably solve the issue raised in the initial communication, but not to exceed one hour of billable engineering work. An incident is used up at the end of one hour of billable engineering work, or the resolution of the incident, whichever happens first. If an issue consists of multiple problems, separate incidents are required, at least one for each problem. If an issue cannot be resolved within one hour of billable engineering work, separate incidents are required, one for each hour of engineering work.
Click here to order incident support.
Contact Us
The following helpful support resources might already contain the answer to your question:
- Peer Forums - easily search our database containing thousands of posts; or submit a new question
- On-Line Help - browse the latest help libraries for the most up-to-date documentation
- Whitepapers - in-depth overviews of InstallAware technology and best practices
Please contact us if you need further assistance.
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