Service Level Agreement (SLA)

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Purpose & Obsolescence Policy

This Service Level Agreement (SLA) issued by Matchbook Services, Inc., dba Matchbook AI, (Matchbook) to Customer defines service procedure about using Matchbook services. The terms defined to support Matchbook contained within this SLA withstand any previous support terms agreed upon between Customer and Matchbook.

This document defines the responsibilities of the forenamed parties in the running of the service. It also records the support requirements necessary for the continued operation of the service. These include problem definition, problem reporting, contact details, and escalation procedures.

While Matchbook makes all reasonable efforts to ensure service availability and performance during the published service hours, Matchbook is dependent on D&B Direct APIs, and as such is subject to D&B’s SLA. Matchbook does not guarantee or warrant systems availability or performance in accordance with the figures within this document, nor does Matchbook accept any liability for damages which may be suffered as a result of placing any reliance on these figures.

Matchbook reserves the right to amend this document at any time and will advise the customer accordingly of any such amendments or changes.

Each version of Matchbook API will be supported from release until 12 months after the release of a subsequent version of the API.

During the period that the API is supported, Matchbook will not require the Customer to make changes to their application to ensure their existing functionality continues to work in the same manner. Should the Customer continue to run their application on an API version that is no longer supported, and should the Customer system cease to work in the same manner, they will be obliged to upgrade to a newer version of the API.

There may be exceptional circumstances when the API becomes unsupported earlier than indicated above. Matchbook could require the Customer to upgrade their version of the API due to, but not limited to, matters of legal compliance, etc.

**Note:

Unless otherwise indicated, all times mentioned in this article are in US Eastern Standard Time (EST) which includes Daylight Savings during summer.

 

Service Level Definitions

Service Hours

Matchbook is accessible 24 x 6.5 to Customers. Normal service hours are between 9am and 9pm EST, M-F.

Routine D&B Direct Services Maintenance

Some of D&B Direct services that Matchbook uses may be unavailable each week from 11pm EST Saturday night until 9am EST (4am GMT to 14:00 GMT Sunday) Sunday morning. This is the routine maintenance period.

Requests placed during the maintenance period may experience a timeout or error message.

Scheduled Maintenance

Matchbook takes reasonable steps to avoid unplanned downtime. When scheduled maintenance is required, Matchbook strives to provide at least 72 hours’ notice to customers via email. Typical maintenance and upgrades happen the last Saturday of the month starting at 11pm EST and lasting up to 3 hours.

Unscheduled Maintenance

Unscheduled Maintenance refers to any maintenance which does not fall into the previously defined “Scheduled” Maintenance category. On an exception basis, there may be a critical need for a hotfix to resolve a high severity production issue or to support a crucial business need.

Service Availability Targets

Service Availability is defined as the amount of time Matchbook services are available and capable of sending, processing, and receiving requests from Customers during Service Hours. Service Availability is calculated based upon the cumulative number of service failures.

The service availability targets for Matchbook are:

US     ⇒        99%

 

High Availability/Disaster Recovery

The database which serves Matchbook’s clients sits on a Premium Tier cloud solution, which is highly fault-tolerant. In the unlikely event of a failure, the system will restore from backup, and the Customer contacted. The backup strategy uses two approaches to ensure the greatest success of the client always having access to their data.

  • Local Storage: Local incremental backups of the database occur every five minutes with a five-minute lag in recovery
  • Geo-redundant Storage: The database itself is backed up every hour using a geo-redundant strategy which allows for a recovery point objective of less than an hour.

 

Intrusion Detection System

In the event of any intrusion detection activity identified on Matchbook AI, the Matchbook AI Support team will immediately perform all the below mentioned activities:

  • Will bring the Matchbook systems down
  • Will notify Microsoft/third party managing the services
  • Will notify the Customers immediately

 

Incident Communication Management

The database and services which serve the Matchbook API are highly available and in the unlikely event of a failure, the Matchbook team will notify the Customers with service incident information as described below.

In the event of any service incidents observed or identified by Matchbook monitoring systems, Matchbook support team will immediately send an incident management notification to its Customers indicating the details of the issue and a detailed plan with the next steps until a full resolution is provided to the problem statement.

 

Problem Management

Matchbook has an established Problem Management process to enable effective management, prioritization and root cause analysis of all incidents affecting its production systems as well as improving management information related to service performance, availability, and reliability.

Problem Reporting and Escalation Procedures

If the Customer experiences a problem with their Matchbook or Direct+ instance, a ticket should be open with the Matchbook Support Team. A case number will be provided to the Customer by the support team and should be referenced in any further communication regarding the incident.

D&B Clients Support Contact

For D&B customers needing assistance, please use the below support portal link: https://support.dnb.com/

Matchbook Clients Support Contact

For Matchbook customers, please contact our MBS support team via email at: helpdesk@matchbookai.com

When in the Matchbook Portal, technical support can be reached via our Resource Center:

Service Level Expectations for Initial Response and Ongoing Communication

  • Maximum timeframe for initial response for all inbound issues will be 24 hours.
  • Ongoing communication with the customer will be determined following initial contact and be based on mutual agreement of the Severity of the issue.
  • All timeframes given are based on normal business hours, 9:00am – 9:00pm Eastern, M-F, excluding Matchbook holidays

Problem Severity Definitions

Each reported problem will be allocated a severity based on the business / customer impact. The following definitions are used as guidelines for the allocation of incident severity 1 through 4. The severity initially assigned to an incident is based on the impact reported at the time. The severity will be reassessed in the event of further information being received and may be raised or lowered accordingly.

Severity 1: Critical Impact

Critical business impact affecting the API, component, or service

Intervention by internal support technicians or external vendors is imperative

Any or all the following constitute a Severity 1:

  • One or more Matchbook services are down
  • Threshold standards for services are exceeded. No alternative or back up is available for a network communication issue
  • A problem causing severely degraded service to the point that a system is essentially unavailable

Customers can expect a response within 4 hours from the reported time. Matchbook will assign sufficient resources and use continuous effort to resolve the problem as quickly as possible with the aim to resolve a Severity 1 problem within 4 business hours.

Severity 2: High Impact

Significant business impact affecting the API

Intervention by internal support technicians or external vendors is imperative

Any or all the following constitute a Severity 2:

  • Alternative or back up is available for a network communications issue within 30 minutes of initial outage report. If downtime, after the initial outage report, exceeds 30 minutes then the problem will be raised to a severity one
  • A problem causing degraded service in which the Customer is affected (e.g. poor response time)
  • Problems with a service affecting 10 or more cases

Customers can expect a response within 1 business day from the reported time and Matchbook will assign sufficient resources to fix the problem within the target resolution timeframe of 24 hours.

Severity 3: Medium Impact

Moderate business impact to production system, component, or service

Any of the following apply:

  • Degraded service experienced by single or small number of users
  • Problems with a service affecting less than 10 cases

Customers can expect a response within 3 business days from the reported time.

Severity 4: Low Impact

Small business impact to production system, component, or service

Any of the following apply:

  • Missing or inaccurate data on a small number of cases and not impacting decision making

Note: Solutions to all incidents may be subject to internal change control procedures (governing Change Request submission, scheduling, testing, implementation, verification, etc.). The timescale for resolution of severity levels 3 & 4 is contingent upon local Service Levels or Management discretion.

 

Appendix A: Support Process Chart