Customers/FAQ

FAQ for customers

What is my current ZK Package?

When you first purchase ZK products, we will provide your company's main contact person a document called “Delivery” which states the product, edition, licensed seats, and the number of support hours your company has purchased. The same information is also included in the invoice as well. If you are new to the team, please ask your company's main contact person for ZK for the “Delivery” document to understand what package you are with. If you are uncertain, please email info@zkoss.org with your invoice or certificate number and we will send you the details again.

How do I request Professional Support?

Instructions are listed in the "Delivery" document as well. Basically if your package includes Remote Support service, you can send an email directly to <support@potix.com>to request for professional support. When you send your email, remember to include your Invoice number or License Certificate number so that we can associate you to our customer database.

Each email will be turned into a support ticket in our support portal, and our support engineer will get back to you via email as soon as there’s an update. To respond to the ticket, you can either login to the support portal and reply/comment on the ticket. Or, simply reply to the same thread through email without logging into the support system. The benefit of logging into the support portal is that you can get an overview of all questions asked by members of your company, and can log additional information such as version number and browser versions.

The support portal is a 3rd party tool, it has its own login system which is different from your ZK forum account. To login to the support portal you will need to create an account based on your email address and activate it. If you are unsure about your password, please use “forget password” to retrieve the password. Or, simply reach us at info@zkoss.org and we can reset the password for you.

How do I know how many support hours I have and how many are left? What happens if I run out of the hours?

The number of Remote Support hours included in your package is outlined in the “Delivery” document and your invoice. The time our support engineers spent on your ticket will be deducted from the total number of support hours you have. Depending on the complexity of your question the time spend on the ticket will be different -- quick questions may take 15 minutes or less, while a complicated task like creating a custom component may take hours. When there is a limited number of hours remaining in your package, we will send you a notification e-mail. You can then purchase more hours if you find our support service helpful. Newly purchased hours will be effective for a one-year period.

Tips on Requesting Support

When submitting a request, it is important to provide us with sufficient information such as the ZK Product you are using, the version & edition, the issue with reproducing sample & steps and related error message, and the expected behavior. With complete information we can provide fast and accurate answer to your question. Learn more here.

Can I use ZK Forum?

We welcome everyone to ask questions and discuss ZK related topics on ZK Forum. However please note that ZK Forum is a place where community members help each other voluntarily. There is no guarantee that a question will be answered. If your question is urgent or important, please leverage your support hours and email to <support@potix.com> instead.

Reporting a ZK Bug

If you think you have identified a ZK bug, no matter you have support hours or not, you can contact us through the same support window <support@potix.com> mentioned above. If you have already posted an issue in ZK Tracker (tracker.zkoss.org), please still contact support and specify the tracker number you created so that we can handle the issue in high priority. Many issues are being reported from time to time and as we do not want to miss your ticket, so please do drop an email to support and let us know.

If an issue has been confirmed as a ZK bug, we will try to fix it in the coming version based on the Release Cycle. If you need to address the issue immediately, please inform the support engineer so that we can try to provide you with a workaround or a patch, before the next official version is available.

During the process, we may inform you of a Freshly Build which is used for testing & developing only. It can help us both to verify the fix earlier and avoid future surprises in the official release. Freshly Builds have not been tested and are not licensed.

In general, bug fixes for ZK products are free of charge for Professional and Enterprise licensed customers. However, if you are asking a patch/fix specifically for a non-active branch or for a custom package, such patch/fix will be considered billable.

Release Cycle

Major branch which is the latest branch (ex. ZK 9.x) is released on a 4-month cycle. As an official release, the code has been tested and licensed. If it is not the major active branch but a maintained version, please consult with us about the release schedule of the desired version. In general, the code is frozen for testing two weeks before the release date. If you intend to do a major release, please share with us your plan as early as possible so that we can try to adjust our schedule as much as possible to best fit your plan.

Freshly Build vs Official Releases

Freshly files (such as zk-8.0.1-FL-2015-12-09) are nightly builds that contain fresh fixes and are built automatically through our system. However freshly files have not been officially tested yet and are not meant for production use. For production use, please use official releases such as 8.0.0 or 7.0.6.1.

Updates, Upgrades and Compatibility

It is recommended that you always use the latest version of a branch. For example, if you are with ZK 8, the latest version is normally the last version available in the format of 8.x.y or 8.x.y.z in the premium download page or PE/EE maven repository. Note that maintenance releases are normally provided to PE/EE customers and ZOL users only. We always try to maintain the best compatibility within the same branch so upgrading within the same branch should require minimum effort.

ZK is a very innovative framework where we try to include new technologies, simpler solutions, better codes in new versions. This means some older technologies would be deprecated or removed in order to produce a lighter and more concise product. Upgrading to another major version would sometimes require more effort. In case of any doubt in upgrading to a major version, we recommend that you reference Upgrade Note or consult with support@potix.com.