About Support Buckets

What are LIMS Support buckets?

The customary retaining support and maintenance contracts based on a % of the LIMS license fee, normally between 18 and 23 %, obviously cannot apply to zero license fee Open Source software

Neither do they reward hard working labs that require less support than others

Only pay for
true support hours consumed

Over time, inhouse skills grow and support requirements diminish, rendering a monthly payment irrelevant. On the other hand, labs require more support immediately after implementation, often more than budgeted for in the retaining fee

A better equilibrium can be maintained by Service providers selling prepaid support credit, Support buckets of say 15 hours, that labs only consume when they really need to. Win Win

Why are Support hours so expensive?

What do I get?

Bika makes exclusive use of non disruptive unintrusive text based tools to optimise capacity and budgets. A lot gets done in one support hour if managed properly. Bika's Jira tracker, sponsored by Atlassian, is a phenomenal piece of project management work 

Unobtrusive text based tools
Jira tracker, Slack and Google docs

render each support hour real potent

Voice comms is only used for blockers -  elsewhere it is too disruptive, and no records. For quicker turnaround, Slack for messaging is mobile and clean. Shared Google docs and sheets, instead of email, improve efficiency further. Bigger topics are often discussed at the Bikanero user group, The Bika Corral

Project specific matters we find best discussed in private Google Groups. It provides a single email address for mail, and neat record keeping. Google account required for all their tools' web access...

Regardless, without disruptions, a lot gets done in one support hour - users logging well researched bug reports, including screenshots, see their tasks resolved quicker and save on support bills

Where do I get free support?

Voluntary Community assistance

If you are in a rush under pressure to get a critical problem fixed soon, it is best to enter a professional support agreement with a qualified Bika service provider to take care of prioritised issues, and use the Bika forums for everything else

Labs opting to use ofhe public Bika channels for generic questions cannot be billed for voluntary support by project participants. It also contributes hugely to your lab's organic marketing and SEO visibility pursuits

Well researched questions, showing that you tried and are not a spoon feeder, attract good replies on the Bika forums, Slack chat, online user forum the Bika Corral, and Issue Tracker.  There are very good guidelines to do effective bug reports. Meaningless 'It is broken' posts get nobody nowhere

Do Google first as much information is available online and it is likely that other users had the same issue before. The Bika Corral superseded the earlier bika-users mailing list hosted by Sourceforge started 15 years ago...

Always remember that the participants on these forums do so voluntarily, for the kicks they get from helping others. They owe nobody nothing. Respect. Humour comes at a premium and they can be sharp witted - you do not want to be told You are mistaking yourself for a client Sir/Madam. RTFM :)