Support

December 2022

Improve performance with Mission Critical Business Applications

With Support for Mission Critical Business Applications, you can refine your business practices and increase your competitive edge with engineers and preventative services.

August 2022

Explore new Business Frontiers with the Confidence that your People, Devices, Apps, and Data are Protected

Proactive Accelerators are packages of support offerings led by experts who can help you modernize and optimize your applications for maximum performance. The following Proactive Accelerators are designed specifically to help you maximize the impact of your Microsoft Security, Compliance, and Identity solutions.

• Proactive Accelerator for Protect and Govern Sensitive Data
• Proactive Accelerator for Security and Compliance
• Proactive Accelerator for Zero Trust

June 2022

Innovate on your timeline with help from Microsoft experts

Sophisticated Microsoft developer tools can help you shorten iteration cycles and build more efficient DevOps processes. But ensuring you’re getting the most from these solutions means diving deeper and consulting the experts, and Microsoft Unified Support has offerings designed to help you do just that.

Featuring a tailored mix of assessments, workshops, and implementation support based on your unique needs, Proactive Accelerators are packages of support offerings led by experts who can help you modernize and optimize your applications on Azure for maximum performance and efficiency.

Proactive Accelerators are designed specifically to help you maximize the value of your Microsoft Digital and Application Innovation solutions:

• Proactive Accelerator for DevOps with GitHub
• Proactive Accelerator for .NET Modernization
• Proactive Accelerator for Cloud Native with Kubernetes

April 2022

Create the perfect modern workplace for your organization with Microsoft Modern Work solutions

The way we work is changing. The sudden worldwide shift to hybrid work is shaping an evolution in our conception of the modern workplace. And Microsoft Unified Support is loaded with the tools, resources, and tailored support offerings you need to perfect your unique modern workplace. Explore the many ways Microsoft can support your Modern Work transformation

Create Inclusive Collaboration experiences with Expert-led services

Unified Support has a wide range of offers for your modern workplace. Take the Proactive Accelerator for Microsoft Teams, for example. Combining a tailored mix of assessments, workshops, and trainings based on your unique needs, this expert-led package can help you optimize your network configuration to handle the Teams video calling and collaboration workloads, accelerate your organization to full utilization fast, and provide your IT teams with the skills they need to keep your Teams implementation running at peak performance.

September 2021

Adapt, learn, and grow your business with a flexible support experience

In today’s cloud-first world, you need a support experience that is simple, consistent, and most importantly, adaptable to your business needs. We’ve made some exciting updates to bring you a more flexible solution that keeps pace with your growing business.

Discover how the enhancements we've made, including new learning features in Services Hub, improve your support experience.

Unified Enterprise Support — experience support that grows with you

As your business grows, you need a support solution that keeps pace. We’ve evolved Unified Support by introducing a new offering called Microsoft Unified Enterprise Support that better adapts to your dynamic needs. Unified Enterprise provides a customizable solution that empowers you to maximize your uptime, get expert guidance from a trusted team that knows you, and feel empowered to do more.

With Unified Enterprise, you get:

• Access to more services and resources with the best capabilities included in a single, enterprise-grade offering
• Faster cloud support with 15-minute response for Azure Critical Business System Down (Sev 1) incidents for your entire organization
• Flexibility and more control of the services included in your support agreement, with an allowance to use towards the entire catalog of support services

Additionally, you’ll be able to continue to benefit from many of the offerings you know and love, including:

• As-needed advisory consults and 24x7 problem resolution support for your Microsoft technology footprint
• An online hub of on-demand learning content and risk assessment tools
• A designated Customer Success Account Manager (CSAM) focused on maximizing your business outcomes
• Access to the largest selection of scenario and technology-specific support services to tailor your experience

Download the Unified Enterprise Datasheet or contact your CSAM to learn more.

Assign and share courses with the new Learning Manager role in Services Hub

Building your team's knowledge helps you get the most from your technology and support experience. Now, your team can designate a Learning Manager within Services Hub who can assign and track relevant courses for members of your team allowing you to accelerate their learning.

The Learning Manager can select courses listed within Services Hub, including hands-on training from the Learning Campus and Services Hub Learning Paths, as well as Microsoft Learn modules and learning paths. They can also track the progress of assignments to ensure team members are able to upskill on the topics and technology that are most critical to your business goals.

Found a course you really like? Learning Managers can Bookmark it for later. That course will show up in the My Courses view. Learning Managers can share a link for any course available to a Services Hub registered user.

Learning users can view all their assignments on the learning page and track their progress. They can also share learning content quickly with teammates and bookmark content for easy access later—empowering continued upskilling across the organization.

With these new features, you now have even more ways to manage your organization’s learning experiences in Services Hub.

Tailor your support experience with Proactive Accelerators

Proactive Accelerators are a key opportunity to tailor your support to meet the specific needs of your organization. These expert-led, solution-specific support services are adaptable packages of Proactive Services and are available in addition to your comprehensive, organization-wide support by applying your Flex Allowance or purchasing as add-ons. They can help you customize your support offering to fit your business needs and onboard and optimize your key solutions with services for Well-Architected, Server Migration, Security, Microsoft Teams, Power Apps, Analytics, and more.

Reach out to your CSAM to learn more about Proactive Accelerators.

The City of Everett leverages Unified Support to deliver timely and effective public service

Transforming a city government to a nationwide leader of digital tools to better serve its community.

The way the City of Everett, Washington, has transformed processes and increased employee productivity with the help of Microsoft solutions has set the benchmark for how state and local governments nationwide use digital tools to better serve their communities. Leaders in IT and city departments are strong drivers for change, and they are willing to advocate for IT initiatives that have cross-departmental benefits and place the interests of the city’s citizens at the heart of everything they do.

It recently activated Microsoft Unified Support to provide cloud success planning, as-needed support assistance, learning on-demand, as well as Proactive Services and On-Demand Assessments. As a result, the City of Everett can continue using the right tech at the right time to deliver public service that empowers the growth and progress of the community it serves.

May 2021

Find what you need fast with the latest features in Services Hub

Gain a better view of your support activity so you can focus on your most important business outcomes. With new features like the Service Incidents Communication page and the Services Hub iOS and Android app, topics that matter most to you are a tap away, empowering you to take control of your support.

Explore all the latest features we've added to enhance your support experience.

Get visibility into all your service incidents across the Microsoft cloud

You wanted an easier view into your service incidents, and we listened. We've started to roll out a Service Incident Communication page preview, so you can now get direct visibility into all incidents across the Microsoft cloud (Azure and M365) impacting your IT environments.

The page is divided into Active and Resolved, making it simple for you to find the details you need. Quickly find the information that's most important to you and dive into the specifics of each service incident including the impacted cloud service, title, status, impact start, last update, the service incident details URL, and any incident communications. You can also search for a specific incident.

This new feature will be released over the next few weeks. You can find Service Incident details on the home page under the IT Health menu in the primary navigation.

Manage your support on the go with the Services Hub mobile app for iOS and Android

In today's remote work world, having the ability to handle your support needs no matter where you are is critical to keeping your business running smoothly. With the new Services Hub mobile app, you and your team can stay updated on your most important support topics whether you're at the office or on the go. It provides you with easy access to support insights and learning courses so you can take care of your support anytime, anywhere. With the Services Hub app you can:

• Create, manage, and view support requests from your mobile device
• Access over a thousand learning titles so you can build your knowledge on the latest Microsoft technology from wherever you are
• Get alerted on important updates to your support requests and upcoming workshops you’ve enrolled in with push notifications

Have you checked out these features?

Get a quick view into your support status and trends in Services Hub. Here are some of the key features that give you easy access and more control over the support topics that matter most to you.

Dashboard on Support landing page: Leverage self-service reporting to understand what reactive support activities are being performed against your support cases. You can also identify trends to proactively improve the health of your IT environment.

View all cases: Find support requests instantly by simply entering the Support request ID in the find request box on the Manage support request page.

Want to enhance your experience and learn more about the latest Support, IT Health, and Learning features in Services Hub? Scroll through the banner carousel located at the top of your Services Hub home page when you log in. There, you’ll find important updates and announcements with critical information about services and new features.

Orion turns to Unified Support to handle change management for their cloud journey

Manufacturer on target for rapid growth with tech support from Microsoft Unified Support.

Finnish pharmaceuticals manufacturer Orion had been a Microsoft Premier Support customer for years but changing times and new challenges required updated support models. Orion now gets the upskilling and just-in-time expertise it needs from Microsoft Unified Support. With support "at the speed of business," Orion is better able to meet its ambitious targets for business growth.

Orion stood up several systems-level infrastructure projects—such as SAP H/4 and R&D—in two months, a feat it couldn’t have accomplished even a short time ago. That's according to Outi Anttila, Head of Core Services for Orion, who notes that implementing those projects in the cloud rather than on-premises was one key to the unprecedented agility. Another key was smoothly handling the massive change-management effort required to become cloud experts. For help with that, Orion turned to Unified Support.

February 2021

Support customized to your business needs

You need a support experience designed to meet the unique demands of your business. With Unified Support, you can leverage Services Hub to help you resolve issues efficiently with a more customized support experience based on your technical needs, activity trends, and expressed interests.

See how the latest Services Hub features can help you can get the support you need in the areas that matter most to you.

Learn about the recent changes we’ve been making to improve your support experience.

Get quick self-serve support with Virtual Agent in Services Hub

Being able to solve issues fast is critical for every business. We launched Virtual Agent in Services Hub to empower you to get the support information your business needs more quickly and efficiently.

Virtual Agent helps you solve technical problems through a self-service chat experience. After entering details about the issue you're experiencing, the bot explains why it's happening and how to resolve it, giving you the skills to address the problem should it happen again.

Virtual Agent currently addresses the top Windows commercial support topics so you no longer need to submit a ticket to get assistance. We're continually adding new product scenarios and updated features to ensure we continue to address your technical issues.

Manage risk tied to peak events with the new readiness playbook

Peak business events, such as new product launches, tax season, or holiday shopping can put a strain on your cloud-based solutions. Your organization needs to prevent downtime and associated loss of revenue. Now Unified Support customers can manage their organization's risk and improve outcomes by proactively planning for these events.

With the Microsoft Peak Business Event Readiness Playbook, you can learn to mitigate risks to your business when the stakes are high. The playbook combines the deep experience of Microsoft’s industry and technology subject matter experts with lessons learned from customers, and innovations in our cloud technologies and support solutions, to create a strategic, repeatable model. This blueprint helps prepare you for handling the special needs associated with supporting narrow event windows.

Contact your Customer Success Account Manager (CSAM) today to get started.

Unified Support helps bolster Commerz Real AG’s digital transformation

Commerz Real: Digitalization from within – in accordance with regulatory requirements.

Since Commerz Real AG has made it its mission to become the first sustainable and digital asset management organization, it seeks to focus on providing customer-oriented digital services and solutions. This is an ambitious goal in the financial sector, which must adhere to the strict rules set by banking regulators. Just as ambitious given these rules was the switch to Microsoft 365 coupled with Unified Support, which is now making life easier for about 700 Commerz Real employees.

Commerz Real AG enlisted the help of Microsoft partner Communardo and together they designed, planned, and implemented the change and adoption measures. The project’s success was built on dovetailing IT and internal communications as well as collaborating closely with Unified Support, which helped bolster the transformation. Launched at the start of 2019, the project was completed in less than a year

If you have general feedback on the documentation, contact your Microsoft representative. If you have any specific requests or content updates for Services Hub, contact our Support Team.

January 2021

Take better advantage of your support capabilities using the Customer Activity Page

A new year is a time for new opportunities. Throughout the past year, we released many exciting changes. And we continue to make updates that provide you an easy support experience while empowering you to achieve even more.

Learn about the recent changes we've been making to improve your support experience.

Coming Soon: Use the new self-serve activity page in Services Hub to view your support services and entitlements

We are releasing the new Services Hub Customer Activity Page for more visibility into what you've purchased and delivered against your current support agreement(s). It's self-serve, so you no longer need your Customer Success Account Manager (CSAM) to manually generate your customer proof of delivery (CPOD) report to review.

The new Customer Activity page--which replaces the Contract Details Page--shows a list of your entitlements for support, assessments, and education along with your service usage. As shown above, it is broken into two sections: Enterprise-wide packages and Enhanced solutions packages.

You can view your Enterprise-wide usage summary for such entitlements as Built-In Proactive Services, On-Demand Learning, and On-Demand Assessments. The page also displays helpful suggestions on how you can optimize your use of support services. The Enhanced Solutions packages section provides details on your detailed activity usage and when your package expires.

The Customer Activity Page was created to give you the information you need to better use and understand your available support services.

Explore some of the features we added to Services Hub in 2020

Thanks to the feedback we received from you, we worked hard in 2020 to expand the features in Services Hub. Here are some of the top changes we've made throughout the past year to enhance your support experience.

You can now:

• Save time with Virtual Agent. Windows* users can get help with their support issues without needing to wait for a live support engineer. When you enter a support request, you have the option to interact with Virtual Agent for immediate help.
• Track your support ticket status through new dashboards. The % Incident Response Met tile helps you to see the percentage of support incident(s) addressed by Microsoft. The Mean Time to Resolution tile shows you the time taken for Microsoft to find a resolution for your support incident(s).
• Benefit from a personalized learning experience tailored to your needs. You can find new, relevant courses based on your interests through recommendations and an improved search functionality. You can also keep track of your course progress and activity. You can now access Microsoft Learn courses in Services Hub where you can search for courses and monitor your progress.
• Enhance your IT health with more Built-In Proactive Services (BIPS). We added an additional 200 titles to BIPS giving you more flexibility to select from services beyond cloud and security. You can easily filter for BIPS from the Services Catalog within Services Hub.
• Optimize your IT health metrics with proactive recommendations. We provide you personalized recommendations generated based on specified incident trends and details from your support cases that link you directly to related resources in the Services Catalog.

Last, but far from least, we improved accessibility across the board in Services Hub. The retooling allows for ease of use with assistive technologies such as screen readers as well as other enhancements like contrast and color improvements, providing a better experience in Services Hub for all users. Throughout Microsoft, we are committed to an ongoing effort for excellence in accessibility.

Virtual Agent currently supports topics related to Windows 10, Windows Server 2012 R2, 2016 and 2019.

A global leader in professional services partners with Unified Support to develop innovative solutions and processes

After digitally transforming and automating HR operations, EY Nordics and Microsoft Unified Support reduce manual processes by 70%.

One of the world's leading professional services organizations employing over 300,000 people and operating in over 150 countries/regions, EY Nordics needed to transform its legacy business processes and help drive digital transformation. They engaged with Unified Support technical advisors to provide high-level architectural guidance and leveraged the Microsoft Power Platform to ensure the transformation's long-term success.

EY Nordics wanted to accelerate the digital transformation of their internal processes. They chose to partner with Microsoft to speed up ideation and the proof-of-concept process. The result was an enterprise application, called Harmony, to automate HR hiring processes, reduce manual administrative tasks, and provide more transparency into the candidate pipeline.

September 2020

Evolving your Services Hub support experience to help you operate better

We hear you. You are looking for support that helps the operational efficiency of your business. That's why we're continually improving your Unified Support experience to give you the ongoing guidance you need to operate more smoothly.

Improve efficiency with new Support insights in Services Hub

We've made enhancements to your Support page in Services Hub to help you address issues proactively and run your business more efficiently! Here are some of the new capabilities you have available now.

Gain greater visibility

You'll be able to see KPI Tiles based on the top three support-related questions customers have asked us. These KPI tiles will help you assess how many support requests you've submitted, their average response time, and the average time to resolution. You can learn the rate at which your support requests are being handled and resolved with the new Mean Time to Resolution Histogram. You also get an at-a-glance look at your most recent support activity with the Recently Updated Support Requests section, as well as a view of your support cases over the past 18 months with the Reactive Support Request History dashboard. Plus, you can now download a copy of your case details with Export Case Data.

Address issues before they happen

Proactively address areas that may need support in the future with Recommendations for helpful assessments, workshops, and trainings based on your most recently updated case. You can also get a better understanding of the root cause of your support requests with Incident Trend Analysis - Preview.

Provide feedback

Let us know what you like and don't like about a section so we can continue to make enhancements with the new Thumbs Up/Down Feedback feature.

Start taking advantage of all the new insights and capabilities available on the Services Hub Support page today!

June 2020

Adapt your technology with Built-In Proactive Services

Digital transformation is more important than ever. The current environment has created the need for many businesses to quickly equip their newly remote workforces with the proper technology. Because of this need to activate solutions fast, Unified Support Built-In Proactive Services have empowered businesses to address critical issues at the speed of, well, technology.

Discover how these services can help accelerate your cloud journey.

More Proactive Services included in your Base Support

We have now added an additional 200 titles to Built-In Proactive Services! This expansion gives you more flexibility to select from services beyond the cloud and security so you can achieve the business outcomes you need--from accelerating your move to the cloud to proactively maintaining your IT health included in your Base Support.

Select Contract Details or visit the Services Catalog within the Services Hub to view the expanded list and connect with your Technical Account Manager today to schedule the right services for your business.

Activate the solutions you need now

With the current environment, companies need to provide their employees the ability to work remotely immediately. Activate Services helps businesses quickly enable the solutions they need when they need them during the most critical times.

Because working remotely is the new normal for many businesses, two technologies have risen to the top--Teams for collaboration and Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS). Through Activate Services, Teams and EMS can be launched quickly so you can enhance your team's productivity.

Contact your Technical Account Manager today to learn more about how Activate Services for Teams and EMS can help you implement your fast-changing technology needs.

Built-In Proactive Services in Services Hub

Major Japanese manufacturer exploits the cloud for continued growth Nitta Corporation considers the creation and growth of new businesses and products among its most important challenges and is advancing its communications infrastructure to keep up. The company has replaced an on-premises system with Microsoft Office 365. And to guide its cloud migration and continuing use, the company turned to Microsoft Services and Microsoft Unified Support. As a result, hardware and maintenance costs are down, system resilience is up, and Nitta has a system to support its continued growth.

View the Case Study here.

Find Built-In Proactive Services in Services Hub

You will now be able to filter for Built-In Proactive Services from the Services Catalog within Services Hub. When searching for Services within the Services Hub, you will see a Service Level filter on the Scheduled Services tab. This filter can be combined with other filters to help find the services that match your organization's needs.

Visit Services Catalog to search from the newly expanded list of Built-In Proactive Services today!

The new Services Hub Learning experience now makes it easier to:

• Find new, relevant courses based on your interests through recommendations and an improved search functionality
• Stay current on Microsoft technologies with direct access to self-paced learning paths, videos, live instructor-led webcasts, and virtual hands-on labs
• Keep track of your course progress and activity

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April 2020

More Services Hub features to help you keep your IT environment running smoothly

When you're managing support requests for your organization or simply trying to stay in the loop, you need the status of those requests to be clear and easy to find so you can get quick answers and stay productive.

With your needs in mind, we improved the experience for managing support requests in Services Hub so you can view more information at-a-glance without the need to click through or expand the selection.

Improved engagement channel with the Services Hub support team

Report issues and provide feedback through a new Contact us form in Services Hub! This feature removes duplicate tickets and adds valuable context so our support team can resolve your issues more quickly.

Simpler management of attachments in Manage Support Requests

The new Attachments tab in Services Hub allows you to upload and view the list of attachments associated with your Support request, giving you more control over your Support Request details

Additional insights at-a-glance for your critical situation cases

Critical situation cases are now indicated with an alert icon and show a support summary and action plan, providing you with more visibility into their status within Manage Support Requests.

We are continuing to enhance the Services Hub support experience, and new features are coming soon. These new features will help you better understand the status of your support request, see the actions you need to take, and view reporting to help you in analyzing and learning from past issues. Check back often to the Services Hub Support pages to take advantage of these new features as they are rolled out. And you can also find new release information on the Services Hub Release Notes page.

Learn more about recent features and content releases.

February 2020

More Services Hub features to help you keep your IT environment running smoothly

We understand that keeping your IT environment running smoothly is vital to the success of your organization, and we know you play a key role in making that happen. Still, there may be times when you need to reach out to Microsoft for help in getting an issue resolved.

We've been listening to your feedback, and the Services Hub now has new features to make it easier for you to manage your support requests entered in multiple Microsoft support portals. Microsoft offers deep troubleshooting and support case creation in cloud portal experiences for Azure, and Microsoft 365. But when you need to manage a multi-product portfolio of cloud and on-premises support requests for your organization, the Services Hub now has you covered.

Services Hub Support Experience

• You can now more easily keep your organization informed about both cloud and on-premises Microsoft support requests with a new feature that enables you to share support requests entered in the Azure and Microsoft 365 support portals with other Services Hub users.
• You can now add attachments to your support request after it has been entered in the Services Hub. This new feature is in addition to the add attachment capability currently available during the initial case creation process.
• The Services Hub is using Microsoft Translator so you can easily view communications about the progress of your support request in the language of your choice by simply clicking a toggle on the Support Request details page.

We are continuing to enhance the Services Hub support experience, and new features are coming soon. These new features will help you better understand the status of your support request, see the actions you need to take, and view reporting to help you in analyzing and learning from past issues. Check back often to the Services Hub Support pages to take advantage of these new features as they are rolled out. And you can also find new release information on the Services Hub Release Notes page.

Learn more about recent features and content releases.

Offline Assessments

Offline assessments, that you purchase separately, are now available on the Services Hub Assessments page. If you have high privacy restrictions and compliance processes where your data must remain at your facilities, offline assessments enable you to assess the health of your environment while maintaining all data at your facility. You may run the assessment on your own schedule.