Service level agreement

Last updated: 7 January 2023

This is the Service Level Agreement (herinafter: "SLA") which forms part of an Agreement with regard to the use of the online learning platform Ans (the "Service"). The Agreement is or will be concluded between Ans Exam B.V. ("Ans") and the institution ("Customer"). The purpose of this SLA is to define service levels and agreements on cooperation relating to Ans’ online learning platform Ans. This SLA is inextricably intertwined with the Agreement between Ans and the Customer. This SLA shall only be applicable with regard to Ans (and not to the development of and/or consultancy regarding Modules). 

lightbulb_outline This SLA is not applicable if the parties have negotiated a different SLA as part of the Agreement or for customers that have the Explore plan.

1. Scope and purpose

The purpose of this SLA is to define service levels and agreements on cooperation relating to Ans’ online assessment platform Ans.

This SLA covers:

• Availability
• Backup management
• Service Window
• Maintenance Window
• Incident management

The terms and conditions contained in the Agreement shall be fully applicable to this SLA. In In the event of discrepancies or ambiguities the Agreement shall prevail unless a clause in the Agreement is specifically put aside by any of the terms and conditions of this SLA.

2. Term 

This SLA comes into effect on the date of signature by both parties of the Agreement and shall remain in effect for the duration of the Agreement. 

3. Exclusions

Ans is not responsible for Incidents relating to the accessibility, interaction with externally hosted applications or security and privacy protection, as a result of causes that cannot be attributed to Ans, such as:

• User errors;
• External causes (including force majeure).

Parties acknowledge that management or other (maintenance) activities following the Customer’s request, can impact the Availability of the Service and fall outside the responsibility of Ans.

4. Consultation

Consultation will always take place at the request of the permanent contact person of one of the parties. Parties will consult periodically through a regular contact person about the implementation of the activities under this SLA.

Consultation will take place at least once a year. During the consultation, the services will be aligned and work agreements and procedures will be discussed and evaluated. Parties will, among other things, focus on improving the quality.

Sporadic consultations will take place if this is required by a party.

5. Availability

Ans guarantees the availability as shown in the table below on a monthly basis. The Service Window is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The Service Window is only interrupted for maintenance.

Availability is measured as follows:

Availability = (t/T)*100%

t = number of minutes that Ans was Unavailable during a month

T = total number of minutes in that month

“Unavailability” shall mean that Ans is unavailable to any user following an unplanned event. If Ans is unavailable to only certain users or if Ans functions incorrectly, this shall be considered as an Issue in which Ans itself is considered available. 

Unavailability shall not be counted if:

• periodic and corrective maintenance is carried out;
• the submitted Incident cannot be attributed to Ans;
• unavailability is caused by the Client;
• force majeure. 

6. Backup management

The backup and recovery of the data will be managed and monitored by Ans as followed:

7. Maintenance Window

Periodic maintenance shall mean the implementation of changes that are necessary for the continuity of the Service in the longer term. Periodic maintenance will take place during the Maintenance Window. The time and duration of this maintenance will, if possible and necessary, be announced at least 7 days in advance. Maintenance work that will not affect the functionalities and with a very limited risk will be carried out unannounced. Ans will endeavour to carry out periodic maintenance, if possible, outside office hours, in order to limit the noticeable influence it may have on the service for the users. Ans may temporarily put all or part of the Service out of operation for the maintenance. 

The following times apply for the Maintenance Window:

Corrective maintenance shall mean the implementation of changes that are important for the continuity of the Service in the short term. Corrective maintenance may be required when circumstances require immediate intervention. In such a situation, the Customer will be informed as soon as possible.

8. Service Window and Issue Management 

The Service Window and Issue Management is intended to provide services to Client of a technical, administrative and supporting nature and include analysis, giving advice, answering questions, elaborating specifications, programming, adapted (tested) code, design and content changes. 

Documentation

Description of the functionality of the service which can be found at support.ans.app. 

Functionality

The user functions and possibilities of the Service.

Priorities

Parties will use the following order for Incidents:

Incident(s): a demonstrable and reproducible defect in the Service which leads to a substantial deviation of the Functionality of the Service from the description thereof in the Documentation.

Reporting of Incidents

Issues can be reported to Ans by the Customer. Ans shall provide the Customer a Service Window from 09:00 to 18:00 (CET) on Mondays through Fridays, other than a bank or public holiday in The Netherlands for reporting Incidents during Business Hours as follows:

A report of an Incident needs to contain the following information: 

1. sender’s name, telephone number and e-mail address if applicable;
2. the date (and time period if possible) on which the Incident took place;
3. satisfactory description making it possible to determine the Incident;
• description with which the Incident can be reproduced, or how the Incident was caused;
• description of the action that the system should have carried out as a result of the actions that caused the Issue;
• environment (URL and version id) on which the Incident is found;
• screenshot or photo of the Incident as a graphic file; 
4. what has been done so far by the Customer to solve the Incident; 
5. an estimated priority according to the Customer.

If Ans determines that urgent maintenance is required, which falls within the scope of this SLA and which has an effect on the Functionality, Ans will carry out the essential tasks. If the reported Incident falls outside the scope of this SLA, the contact person of the Customer will be informed by e-mail without delay. If Ans does not receive a response from the Customer within a reasonable time, Ans will, if maintenance is necessary for the sake of maintaining Functionality, execute the work and justify it afterwards.

Response times 

The following response times are used by the Parties. These times are an indication. Response time is measured by counting the time between the correct submission of an Incident by the Customer and the first response by Ans. 

Resolutions 

The recovery time may be influenced by various factors and will depend on the nature of the Incident (Priority). Ans shall use commercially reasonable efforts to implement a solution for an Incident. Customer understands and accepts that this should not be understood as a guarantee for a resolution to an Incident by such date and that recovery time cannot be stated due to dependency on circumstances beyond Ans’ control. 

The following recovery times are used by the Parties. These times are an indication. If recovery of the Incident takes longer than these recovery times, the contact person will be notified without delay. Ans shall in any case undertake to take measures that lead or could possibly lead to recovery of the Incidents within a period of five (5) Business Days.

9. Change Management

The purpose of Change management is to implement all changes to the underlying systems or specifically the Service in a planned manner. Hereby, the risks of disruption of the services and thus the reduction of the quality of the services provided, are kept as limited as possible.

Change 

A request for a change of the Functionality.

Request for Change

Ans will assess and classify the Requests for Changes (RFC) in the interest of the quality of the services provided. Ans is not obliged to implement Changes to the Service. Implementing a Change may entail additional costs. These activities are delivered on the basis of subsequent calculation or a separate quotation.

Workaround

The Incident or Change can be resolved in such a way that the Customer can continue working within the primary process without a significant loss of time.

If a Workaround is available, Ans may deviate from the Priority pending a structural solution.

Process and execution

RFCs can be submitted by authorized employees of the Customer. The following must be mentioned within the RFC: 

• applicant's name; 
• applicant's telephone number; 
• applicant's e-mail address; 
• applicant's business unit; 
• identification of the Priority of the RFC; 
• description of RFC.

Terms and exclusions

Only Ans is entitled to make changes to the ICT infrastructure that is under the responsibility of Ans. Changes to the ICT infrastructure that fall under the responsibility of the Customer may only be changed after written permission from Ans and must be communicated (by using the RFC form) to Ans within 10 Business Days prior to the Change.

10. Release Management

Release Management ensures the quality of the production environment when implementing new (hardware and software) versions and monitoring similar versions by using formal procedures and controls during planning, design, building, configuring and testing.

Releases are made up of one or more Changes. The first classification that is made is that of the level of the release. Releases can be classified into the following categories:

Ans ensures to keep the Service up to date, provided that the update is important with regards to the core Functionality. 

11. Ticket status

Ans uses Zendesk as platform to handle user requests (questions, incidents and RFC's). All users of the Customer can get access to the Zendesk platform to see the history and progress of all tickets. Access can be arranges by creating an account on support.ans.app. 1 user account of the Customer can get access to all tickets of the whole organisation of the Customer.

12. Security

Ans recognizes the importance of secure environment. the Service contains privacy-sensitive information. Ans has taken the following measures to safeguard the confidentiality of the data:

• Up to date virus scan
• Measures against malicious software
• Unique login code and password
• Login code and password are regularly changed
• Strong passwords are used
• Multi factor authentication is used
• Encryption of personal data
• No unsecured external hard drives
• No unsecured backups
• Do not store documents on private devices
• Control of assigned qualifications
• Logging of access to data
• Security of network connections
• Clean desk policy
• Clear screen policy
• Old data is destroyed in the right way
• There is a separation of duties, powers and responsibilities
• Established security policy
• Responsibilities for information security have been assigned
• Adequate procedures for communication, support and management
• Procedure/protocol to guarantee confidentiality, integrity and availability of information
• Screened and trained employees

13. Other provisions

Changes and additions to any provision of this SLA are only valid if they are agreed upon in writing and/or electronically by the parties.