ServePath Blog

ServePath has released version 2.3 of the Customer Portal located at https://my.servepath.com with immediate availability to all ServePath customers. While the entire portal continues to get enhancements and fine-tuning, there are a few items that I wanted to highlight that may be of greater importance and interest to ServePath customers. Namely:

• ServePath Backup & Disaster Recovery is now fully available within the Customer Portal
• Support Case creation now allows for “self-help” and “self case closure”
• DNS requests can now be managed directly from the ServePath Portal Dashboard

New My.ServePath.com Portal

The new Customer Portal has many of the often requested services now within the main dashboard page.

Quick Links include:

• Managed Backups – **updated** access the ServePath Backup & Disaster Recovery service (see below)
• Reboot Server – request for a server within your network be rebooted
• DNS Request – request DNS services
• Knowledge Base – view tips, suggestions, hints and other documentation within the Knowledge Base
• Security Scan – initiate a Security Scan on your environment
• Create a Case – **updated** Case creation tool (see below)
• View Existing Cases – view any open Support or Billing Cases
• View Invoices – view your most recent invoices and billing history
• Pro-Services – order a variety of services from the Professional Services & Consulting Division including:
  • OS Reloads
  • Server Duplication
  • LAMP setup
  • VPN configuration
  • Control Panel upgrades
  • Server Hardening
  • MySQL Configuration tuning
  • …and more!
• ServePath Status Blog – direct link to http://www.servepathstatus.com

Within the Dashboard you can also have the ability to see Network Status Updates, to initiate a Live Support Chat, Order Services & Hardware Upgrades and see headlines from the ServePath blog, among other things.

ServePath Backup & Disaster Recovery

ServePath offers a robust managed backup and disaster recovery service which is now accessible from within the ServePath Customer Portal. More details on this offering can be viewed here. Features and benefits include:

• Volume discounts for large storage requirements
• Easy to use web interface
• Server Cloning
• Restore specific files/folders within minutes
• Bare-metal restore and disaster recovery methods
• Thin provisioning – grow your storage allotment on-the-fly
• Disk-based data protection
• Point-in-time recovery
• Windows and Linux support
• Backup busy MySQL Servers without interruptions
• Customizable backup schedule (hourly/daily)

Schedule a backup:

Browse previous backups:

View details of your server:

View history of backups:

Create a Case

When you create a System, Billing, Professional Services or Network Case within the new ServePath Customer Portal, you now have the ability to fully drill down to a much more granular level within the same page. The process is simple: select a Category and subsequent Sub-Category. Then choose the Server(s) affected and the IP addresses of the server(s) in question. Add the additional Contact information (name, email, phone and anyone you want to copy on the case). Then be sure you create a detailed Description. Once you click the “Create Case” button, your case will be submitted to the appropriate division within ServePath. However, you will now also be presented with a list of Knowledge Base articles that may be related to the case you just created. Results are presented based on matching the Category, Sub-Category and Description. If you find a solution within that list, you can opt to close the case based on that suggested article. Note that the Knowledge Base can also be accessed without having to open a case.

We hope that you find this update to be useful and helpful. As always, we encourage feedback on this update and there is a “feedback” link within the top navigation bar of the Customer Portal.

On November 13, 2008, ServePath’s new Customer Portal (v2.1), located at https://my.servepath.com,  will be live for all current and new ServePath customers. In case you missed my previous post about some of the changes, I encourage you to look here. Once the cutover is complete, you will no longer be able to access the old customer portal. All of the functionality and features that existed in the old portal will be present in the new one (but potentially in different areas) along with plenty of new or enhanced ones.

We have compiled a list of 10 FAQs in order to help you along:

FAQ: My.ServePath 2.0

1.    How can I be alerted to ServePath maintenances and outages proactively?

You can subscribe to the ServePath Network Status RSS feed by clicking on the RSS icon next to “Network Status” on the home page. This will notify you via your RSS feed reader whenever we update the status on the website. If you’re interested in subscribing to the ServePath blog, you can do that from my.servepath.com as well by clicking on the RSS link next to “News” from the home page.

2.    How can I order new products and services through my.servepath.com?

Our current lineup of products, services and upgrades can be ordered through the my.servepath.com customer portal by clicking on the “Services and Hardware Upgrades” banner on the home page. You can select new hardware upgrades for your existing server, services such as our Unified Security and Backup package or our Proactive Monitoring Suite, or choose from a wide variety of other services and tools we can provide you with.

3.    Where can I find my Account Team’s contact information?

The members of your account team are listed on every page of the new my.servepath.com customer portal. Contact information for our Billing, Support and Sales departments are all readily available so that you can contact us anytime.

4.    How can I Remote Power Cycle or run a Security Scan on my server?

Remote Power Cycle and Server Security Scan tools are now located on the “Servers” page. From there, you can power cycle your machine or run a Nessus scan to check for open ports that may pose potential security risks on your servers.

5.    When I create a case, I see some Knowledge Base articles. How does this work?

Our case creation system will search our Knowledge Base for any articles that may relate to the case description you enter. You case is created as normal, but we will provide you with any articles that may pertain to the issue to that you are submitting. You then have the option to help yourself and close your case if you choose to. Once you select an article, you can let us know whether or not the article resolved your case by clicking on the “Yes” button. If it did help, you then have the option to close your case. If not, our Support team will still investigate the case as normal. Our Knowledge Base can also be searched from the Support tool without entering a case, so you have 24×7 access to our library of thousands of support articles.

6.    Where do I go to manage my passwords?

You can manage your passwords through the “Manage Passwords” tab from the Support menu. You can easily add system or service passwords to share with our Support teams so that we can login to your systems and help you troubleshoot the issue you are experiencing. This is a tool for you to share passwords with our Support team or keep a log of passwords to share with your server administrators. Please note that changing passwords here does change the passwords on your servers.

7.    Where can I go to give feedback to ServePath?

We have a number of ways for our customers to provide us with feedback regarding our portal, website, products and anything else you wish to share. To send us a feedback message, you can click on the “Feedback” link located at the top-right of the screen. You can also provide us with feedback under the Support menu by clicking on the “Customer Survey” tab or by clicking on the “Take our Survey” link from the home page under “Quick Links”.

8.    Where can I access my Network Statistics?

Network statistics, which many of our customers utilize on a daily basis, have been moved to the main navigation for easy access. You can also click on “Network Statistics” under the “Quick Links” section of the home page. This will take you to the Network Statistics tool where you can view bandwidth and transfer utilization graphs for any time period you specify by server and by VLAN.

9.    Where can I access my billing information?

Billing and account information is located under the “My Account” page. You can also cancel your account or services from this page.

10.    How do I reach a Support Representative immediately?

We have 24×7 Support representatives available via chat for any time you need them. There is a Live Chat link on every page in the new my.servepath.com portal for you to get quick access to any of our Support Representatives.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for improvements or new features, be sure to fill out the new Feedback form within the Portal. Also, you can always create a Support ticket using the Support tool for anything that is not immediately obvious.

We hope you like it!

ServePath engineers have been working hard on providing a newly redesigned, more efficient and effective Customer Portal. The new portal was quietly released to all ServePath customers recently so I wanted to take a bit of time to point out a few of the notable changes that can be found there.

First, both portals are currently available (old here and new here), but this won’t be true forever. Once the new portal is finalized, the old one will be gone…forever! There is also a direct link to the new portal on the old login page currently.

Once you log in to the new Customer Portal, you will immediately see a redesigned interface with new sections. Note, your login information works on both portals. For posterity’s sake, I will be including screenshots of both versions.

New ServePath Customer Portal:

Old ServePath Customer Portal:

For starters, the Dashboard has been drastically redesigned to group pertinent information together, namely:

• Products/Services – Call-outs at the top of the page to critical or new product or service offerings (e.g., Services & Hardware upgrades and the ProActive Management Suite)
• Support information – who your account manager is, phone numbers for support and billing and a Live Chat button
• Quick Links – these are links that many of our customers frequent, carefully compiled to streamline the experience
• Network Status – current RSS feeds from the ServePath Status blog
• ServePath Blog feed – quickly scan recent ServePath blog entries
• Survey – answer a few questions and be entered in a monthly drawing for Amazon gift cards (HINT: it takes about 30 seconds to fill out the survey!)

Also live with the new portal is a revamped Support Section. With the new Portal, you can choose the “Create a Case” Quick Link and within one click, be able to enter a support ticket immediately:

Most notable is that you can, on the same screen, drill down to the exact server(s) or other hardware that you need help with. Once you select a particular server or set of servers, for example, you will also be able to select their associated IP addresses as well.

Also, when a Case is entered, after the form is submitted and the Case is created, the user is presented with a list of Knowledge Base (KB) articles that may be relevant to the Case. Users can potentially resolve their issues based on the suggested articles, however, if the solution is not present, the user’s Case is already in the system. If a particular KB article solved the issue, the user can attach that article to the Case and close the Case themselves.

On the old portal, the process of entering a ticket took a bit longer and did not offer the user the ability to resolve their own case. An example of the same type of ticket entry as shown in the previous image is listed below:

There are other numerous changes in the new ServePath portal. If you are a current ServePath customer, I encourage you to compare the different versions. We are currently working on the next revision to the new portal as well, so if you have suggestions, comments or, gasp, criticism, feel free to leave a comment on this post and I will share it with the Engineering team. We will also have a feedback form within the new portal as well soon.

Hope you like the changes! We certainly do.