When Contracts are used by the support organization, the Contracts option is displayed in the Self Help tab Menu options of the Customer Portal.
Within the Contracts screen, Customers can view details of Service Contracts they have with the support organization. This information includes a list of all Service Contracts and an audit trail of requests that have been applied against the Service Contracts.
If a support organization's service is
managed using Service Contracts, valid maintenance contracts may need
to be in place before Service Desk staff can commence work on a Customer's
request. This means that requests associated with an out-of-contract Item,
Customer and Organizational Unit are not addressed until a valid support
contract is in place.
If a Customer does not have a valid contract with the support service when they log a request, they are notified during the request creation process by the following message: The maintenance contract or warranty has expired. Requests that trigger this message are saved with a Pending- No Contract status and locked until a valid contract is in place.
Customers can contact the support service to ensure a new contract is created. When a maintenance contract is approved and processed, the status of any outstanding Pending-No Contract requests is changed to an open State, which allows Technicians to commence work on the requests.