General Support for all SAS Software

General Support

SAS Technical Support offers the following types of support for SAS software:

• Online support (web interface): Access to support resources on the SAS Customer Support website
• Telephone support
• Email support
• Chat

To help customers successfully use SAS software, SAS Technical Support can provide the following for SAS software that is covered under Standard Support*:

*Here are the definitions of Standard Support for the SAS® Viya® Platform, Standard Support for SAS® Viya® 3.x and Standard Support for SAS® 9.4 and earlier releases.

• Suggestions for the appropriate SAS procedures, language features, or products for the particular type of analysis or functionality that is requested
• Answers to questions about specific details of procedures (for example, discussing available features, options, and limitations)
• References for formulas and statistical techniques that SAS algorithms use, where possible
• Limited guidance and references to help customers interpret the output that is produced by statistical procedures
• Isolation of, documentation about, and circumventions for reported SAS software defects
• Hot fixes for SAS software, as deemed appropriate, that result from collaboration with SAS software development staff
• Limited and general statistical advice on a case-by-case basis
• Improvements to printed or online documentation such as additional examples, if necessary, or explanation for concepts that require clarification
• Responses to specific questions and concerns that are related to the installation and maintenance of SAS software
• Limited assistance with SAS programming logic
• A broad overview of Kubernetes tuning and modifications as they relate to SAS, performance enhancements, and methods of efficient programming for achieving optimal performance
• Support for the interaction between SAS software and any third-party software that is shipped with SAS software
• Answers to specific product security related questions and concerns about SAS software

SAS Technical Support cannot provide customized consulting services. Nor can SAS Technical Support provide customized SAS code (for example, CONTRAST, ESTIMATE, or TABLES statements; macros, JSL, DATA step, DataFlux EEL, or SAS/IML® code). To learn more about the consulting services that SAS offers, see the SAS Consulting website. The SAS Account Representative can also assist with engaging the appropriate Consulting Services team.

SAS Technical Support applies only to SAS software and not to any work product delivered as part of a SAS Consulting Services engagement. Customers can purchase additional support under a Consulting Services contract from SAS Consulting. Visit the SAS Consulting website to learn more about the consulting services that are offered by SAS. The SAS Account Representative can also assist with engaging the appropriate consulting services.

Some SAS software is designed to be configured by following instructions in the published SAS documentation. However, modifying SAS software in a manner that is not authorized by the applicable documentation might limit or preclude SAS from providing technical support. Contact SAS Technical Support if unsure about whether planned modifications will result in a supported SAS software configuration. Attempting to access source code, reverse engineer, reverse assemble, or decompile SAS software in violation of your agreement will preclude SAS from providing technical support.

Outside the Scope of General Support

The following is outside the scope of general support provided by SAS Technical Support:

• For third-party applications, SAS Technical Support will convey any knowledge that it has, but cannot provide support for another vendor's software.
• It is the customer's responsibility to determine which type of statistical analysis is appropriate for their needs.
• SAS Technical Support does not provide Kubernetes administration services and does not provide benchmarking for container orchestration tools. Customers might need to tune their Kubernetes and the underlying operating system or cloud provider on which it runs.
• SAS does not provide technical support for SAS internal (non publicly-documented) APIs. Although SAS internal APIs might function, only publicly-documented APIs (also called external APIs) are supported. SAS internal APIs do not follow the same deprecation or breaking changes agreements that are in place for public APIs. Therefore, customers who use SAS internal APIs despite their unsupported nature do so without the support of SAS and at their own risk.  
• Extensive tasks such as the following examples are beyond the scope of SAS Technical Support, but can be addressed by SAS Consulting Services. Contact your SAS Account Executive to purchase these services:
  • Installing and integrating SAS software beyond responding to routine, short-duration questions related to the online documentation made available by SAS
  • Providing comprehensive installation and maintenance guidance
  • Answering extensive configuration questions
  • Reviewing architecture
  • Implementing SAS software
  • Analyzing performance of installed SAS software
  • Writing, troubleshooting, reviewing, or customizing code
  • Debugging a complex application
  • Recovering a database or performing data recovery
  • Interpreting or triaging customer or third-party generated defect scanning reports
  • Designing a SAS application and/or experiments
  • Selecting an appropriate statistical methodology
• Providing any other activities outside the scope of this SAS Technical Support policy.