Christmas technical support.

Overview

During the holiday period, DNA will operate with reduced staffing, and only essential technical support services will be available. Below is an outline of the support structure, responsibilities, and procedures for handling technical incidents during this time.

Over this period, most critical incidents, such as website outages, will continue to be handled 24/7 by your infrastructure provider.

If you have an ongoing support agreement with us, DNA will provide support for critical code-related issues that severely affect your site or platform and for which no workaround exists. The impact level will be assessed and agreed upon when the incident is raised.

If both parties agree that an incident has a critical (P1) impact and the cause lies within DNA’s control, rather than with hosting infrastructure or third-party services, DNA will resolve it according to the response and restoration targets described below. Any incidents that are not classified as P1 will be deferred until full support resumes after the holiday period.

Incident classification

P1 (Critical Impact)

• Complete website outages
• Critical security breaches
• Payment system failures
• Data loss scenarios
• Core functionality is completely unavailable

P2 (Major Impact)

• Significant performance degradation
• Partial system outages
• Major functional components are unavailable with workarounds
• Security vulnerabilities requiring immediate attention

Hosting Provider responsibilities

Your hosting infrastructure provider will continue to monitor server uptime and performance at all times. They remain responsible for infrastructure-level issues, including outages, network connectivity, database availability, server resource management, and standard security monitoring.

Support scope

During the holiday period, DNA will provide support to resolve critical code-level issues that directly impact business operations, particularly where normal service cannot continue without a fix. This includes security-critical patches and data integrity issues.

Assessment process

Both parties must agree on the level of impact, and clear documentation describing the business impact will be required. Our technical team will verify whether the incident qualifies as a critical issue.

Incident reporting procedure

Step 1: Documentation

Create a new JIRA ticket including:

• Date and time of occurrence
• Detailed reproduction steps
• URL(s) affected
• Visual evidence (screenshots/videos)
• Technical details: Error codes; System logs; Browser information; Operating system
• Impact assessment
• Success criteria for resolution
• Priority classification

Step 2: Notification

Notify the DNA of the issue:

• Email the JIRA ticket URL to tier1@dna.co.nz
• Follow up with a phone call to the Level 1 contact
• Reference the JIRA ticket number in all communications

Step 3: Escalation path

If you do not receive a response or encounter a significant issue, follow this escalation path. Resolution of issues may be delayed if the problem reporting incident process is not followed correctly.

Level 1 — On-call team

Primary contacts:

• Daniel Cairns: daniel.cairns@dna.co.nz (0211632424)
• Julian Thomson: julian.thomson@dna.co.nz (0273636983)
• Matt Bondi: matt.bondi@dna.co.nz (021606022)

Responsibilities:

Complex technical problem resolution, resource allocation, client communication for critical issues and strategic decision making.

Escalation Triggers:

• Issue unresolved within four hours
• Business-critical system failure
• Major security incident
• Multiple system components are affected

Level 2 — Technical contacts

Primary contacts:

• Matt Bondi: matt.bondi@dna.co.nz (021606022)
• Steve Maskell: stephen.maskell@dna.co.nz (021 565 606)

Responsibilities:

Executive decision-making, resource prioritisation, client relationship management, and strategic business impact assessment.

Escalation Triggers:

• Issue unresolved within four hours
• Business-critical system failure
• Major security incident
• Multiple system components are affected

Client Responsibilities

Incident management

• Follow proper escalation procedures
• Provide accurate and complete information
• Respond promptly to queries
• Test solutions in UAT environment

Third-party management

• Manage relationships with external providers
• Obtain necessary documentation
• Coordinate between parties when required

Stakeholder communication

• Gather and relay stakeholder feedback
• Manage external communication
• Coordinate user testing
• Approve changes in UAT

Service exclusions

New feature requests

Including new functionality development, UI/UX changes, and feature enhancements. These will require separate project scoping.

Infrastructure management

Including physical hardware support, system software maintenance, server performance monitoring, security updates outside the application code.

Third-party services

Including domain name management, SSL certificates, external API maintenance, database system administration, search engine infrastructure, payment providers (e.g. Windcave), CDN and WAF providers.

Environment monitoring and configuration

Including Apache settings, MySQL configuration, server environment setup, network configuration, CDN and WAF configuration.

Additional notes

We recommend avoiding non-critical changes during the holiday period. Out-of-hours support, non-standard deployments, or emergency changes may incur additional charges.