User's Manual
NOTE: Support cases opened prior to SupportAssist installation, do not appear in the
SupportAssist dashboard.
• Proactive parts dispatch — Based on examination of the troubleshooting data, if the Dell technical
support agent determines that a part needs to be replaced in your environment, a replacement part is
dispatched to you with your consent.
Features Supported With Dell Service Contracts
The features supported in your environment may vary based on your Dell service contract.
The following table provides a comparison of the features available with the Dell Basic Hardware and Dell
ProSupport service contracts.
Feature Basic Hardware ProSupport ProSupport Plus
Remote monitoring
Automated log and configuration
collection
Automatic support case creation
Proactive parts dispatch
Environmental intelligence
reports
Case Data Handling
For increased performance, SupportAssist case data is cached prior to display in the dashboard, and is not
displayed in real time. When launched, SupportAssist:
• Queries Dell once every three minutes for cases in the Submitted state to determine if it needs to
update the case status.
• Determines the last time the case data was updated for a submitted case. It then queries the cases for
which cached status information has expired in the last three minutes.
• Queries Dell once every 15 minutes for cases in all status other than Submitted.
NOTE: If the data for a particular case is older than 15 minutes by the next poll time, SupportAssist
queries for that data in the current poll. Therefore, SupportAssist may only poll for cases that are in
the Open state for case data every 12 minutes.
Event Handling
SupportAssist intelligently handles event storm conditions, allowing up to nine separate alerts from your
OpenManage Essentials-managed environment in a 60-minute time span. However, if it receives 10 or
more separate alerts it automatically enters Maintenance Mode. For information on Maintenance Mode,
see Preferences and Setting SuppotAssist To Maintenance Mode.
Maintenance Mode suspends any further processing of alerts, enabling you to make infrastructure
changes without generating unnecessary alerts. After 30 minutes in Maintenance Mode, SupportAssist
automatically exits Maintenance Mode and resumes normal alert processing.
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