When your organization selected Power Factors, you gained a partner with the right tools and support services to meet your needs, along with a strong commitment to providing a world-class customer experience. We understand that technology alone isn't enough to meet your increasingly complex, dynamic business and information system needs. The PF team’s deep technical knowledge of the PF product and passion for our customers will help you maximize the value of your PF investment.
We appreciate your business and look forward to providing the world-class service and support that is PF's hallmark.
Before accessing PF Customer Support, we recommend you follow each of the steps below to optimize your PF Customer Support experience. You may repeat some of these steps as you purchase new products and services.
Note
We recommend that you review this guide in its entirety so you will be ready to utilize all aspects of your support programs and options. It will help you locate resources, tools, and information that will aid in resolving your issues. It will also help you to understand key PF Customer Support processes and policies.
This policy applies to all PF customers who have purchased PF hardware and SaaS products and have a valid support contract from Power Factors directly. Customers who purchased support from a Power Factors reseller or partner must contact that partner for support assistance. Customers who do not have valid support contracts may be denied assistance until an active support contract subscription is implemented.
Both the PF Support Portal (Preferred) and Product Support widgets are primary interfaces to PF Customer Support for opening a ticket.
By default, platform users have access to each product portal and the in-app Support widget.
Customers who only have on-prem products (such as PPC devices) may not have access to the Product Portal. In these instances, use the Customer Support Portal: https://support.powerfactors.com/en/support/home
If you need access to the Portal, please email PF Customer Support at support@powerfactors.com with your full name, company email address and time zone or location in your request. Once your account is created, you will receive an email requesting verification of the new account. (We will dive deeper into the Support Portal later in the document.)
You may contact Customer Support for the following reasons:
You have “how-to” questions on a PF product feature or functionality (including the platform, core application, or connectors).
You would like to report a software anomaly in the product or product documentation.
You would like to report an incident/issue proactively or reactively related to your environment.
You are unsure who to contact or are looking for directions. In this situation, Customer Support will redirect a query, if necessary, to the organization that can assist with the request.
To adhere to our SLAs and provide you with the best support possible, PF Customer Support engineers may need to have access to on-prem devices such as data loggers and data collectors. In such cases, you must provide access for further troubleshooting. This includes access to all products in order to troubleshoot and view all PF logs.
Without access to the Power Factor products, their configuration, their logs, etc., we will not be able to provide support. In this case, the support tickets raised will only be acknowledged with responses requesting access.
Incidents are defined as issues attributed to functionalities that were previously working. This includes bugs, errors, downtime, or unexpected behavior. Our SLAs apply on your production instance/site issues only.
As far as dev environments are concerned, we ensure they are up and running as functional for basic admin usage by customers. However, data issues in development environment not covered under support if the production environment is operational.
Requests involve user-initiated actions seeking assistance or service unrelated to production issues or problems. These are non-disruptive changes to any services related to our platforms. They can range from account management, hardware replacements, data sync / reprocess, manual time-series data backfill, decommissioning, or any questions regarding our custom features and their usage.
We encourage you to open a ticket with the complete details of your request on our Customer Support portal.
Note
Please note that our service requests do not have SLAs as Incidents but are still responded to.
There is often confusion with requests, and specifically development requests, to understand what is covered within a support contract versus when our customer success packages, or professional services are engaged.
When the PF Professional Services team finishes the implementation and your in scope sites/assets are live in production, our Support contract is activated. This allows us to continue supporting any issues and maintain engagement for any request or follow-up related to production technical problems.
While using the PF Application, customers are free to utilize our available connectors to start building and integrating data from additional tools and consolidating to your existing data per their requirements and use cases to accomplish using the tool.
PF Support coverage is limited to our product’s out-of-the-box (OOTB) functionality and the implementation deployed by the PF Professional Services team
Any assistance needed further than OOB would require someone from our deployment team to engage with you to guide and/or perform the task.
For Custom Solutions, our out-of-the-box support applies to the extent of making sure we can sync and fetch the raw data into PF.
Your PF Support engineers will assist you in case of any issues encountered during this workflow.
Additional customization and data consolidation and manipulation assistance are subject to a complexity review and may require a professional services engagement for further support accordingly.
Please note that deployments that have been completely customer developed will always require a CS package to be included. It is often difficult to assess whether an issue is a product bug without a configuration review of the implementation to assess if it is up to PF product standards and best practices.
For customers with only on-prem solutions, there are certain cases where our connector setup/deployment needs a special configuration to be customized for the customer network and security requirements. This will require a professional services engagement as it falls under customized solutions.
A "feature request" pertains to suggestions or requests for new functionalities or enhancements to existing features within the software.
Note
Please note that our feature requests do not have SLAs as incidents. However, feature requests are still responded to and engaged to triage with our respective internal teams, ensuring that they get the proper evaluation and consideration with the Product roadmap. The support team will acknowledge the request and submit it to product management for future consideration and the support ticket will be closed.
The following online resources are available for researching product questions and interacting with PF Customer Support. Please note that access to these PF Customer Support online resources is restricted to registered authorized technical contacts only.
You can find these resources at https://support.powerfactors.com/en/support/solutions
You may create support ticket(s) to report any technical issues with production and commissioned sites through our product widget or using the Power Factors Customer Support portal: https://support.powerfactors.com/en/support/home
Opening a support request through the PF Platform widget or the Customer Support Portal are the only method for contacting PF Customer Support.
For the Customer Support portal, simply log in to the Support Portal at https://support.powerfactors.com/en/support/home to create and manage your tickets.
As a default, for privacy and data security reasons, you can only follow and view tickets that you created. If you require access to tickets created by other members within your organization, your company admin must provide approval before we can enable access.
Access to the PF portal will be provided to you and your team right after your onboarding is completed and you are live with our product for immediate support thereafter. Your customer success manager or customer service team member at PF will review the support policy, portal usage and provisioning access and engage various other resources at PF as needed.
There are 3 primary means by which to contact PF Customer Support:
Platform Widget | In-app widget within each platform. |
Customer Support Portal | |
Phone | Reserved for P0 (critical issue) incidents |
Note
PF Support will no longer accept new technical problem tickets via email starting May 1st, 2025. This is to ensure we have all the appropriate information to start attending to customer needs and acting on the resolution. System-generated emails will be provided to inform you of changes and updates to existing tickets.
Power Factors support phone number for P0 problem reporting:
Location | Phone number |
North America | +1 888 484 61 22 |
Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) | +30 210 680 23 91 |
Asia Pacific (APAC) | TBD |
Resolving technical problems and questions requires a partnership between the customer and the PF Customer Support team.
This section will guide you through the PF ticket management and resolution process, providing helpful hints to optimize your support experience.
Utilizing the right resources allows for successful PF engagement and customer satisfaction and success. Once your plants are onboarded and in production (site/plant is fully commissioned per agreed scope), your one-stop shop for any issues/questions is our PF Customer Support team.
Please refer to the guidelines below:
Check self-service resources on the PF Support Portal – The fastest way to answer a question or resolve a problem is to access the PF knowledge base (https://powerfactors.freshdesk.com/en/support/solutions) which is available to all customers with a valid support contract, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
We strongly encourage customers to make use of these resources and provide feedback in areas where we can expand and improve their value. If this step does not resolve your issue or answer your question, then open a support request to engage PF Customer Support.
Define the question/problem – Clearly state the question/problem, providing specific PF product information, problem symptoms, frequency of occurrence, the number of sites affected and site/plant names as well as reporting (or business) impact.
Note: Please include only one issue per ticket to ensure the issue is routed to most appropriate resource for the quickest possible resolution. Create multiple tickets if there is more than one issue, or they pertain to different environments.
Identify possible sources of the problem – Examples: system (hardware, software and network) changes and upgrades; introduction of new applications or processes into the system environment and recent configuration changes.
Note any known steps that led to the failure, and whether the problem can be recreated.
Gather environmental and product information – Identify and provide all PF product information and relevant environment information such as the specific platform, devices / assets involved, that were functioning when the problem occurred as applicable to the issue reported.
Gather diagnostic information – If you’re an on-prem customer, gather diagnostic information such as error messages, crash dumps, stack traces or other symptoms to aid problem isolation.
When you contact PF Customer Support using one of the modes described above, you will begin communicating with a PF Customer Support engineer through the PF Platform widget or Customer Support portal(preferred).
When opening a ticket, the following information is necessary to ensure we can provide prompt assistance:
Specific problem definition (e.g. error message, data issue, etc.)
When did the issue begin?
What was the behavior prior?
Specific site(s) or asset(s) affected.
Supporting screenshots or video.
References (i.e. URL for specific web page).
Product version, environmental and other background information (if on-prem).
Diagnostic information.
Once the ticket is opened, PF Customer Support may request additional information that should be provided through the ticket.
A ticket priority is assigned based on the technical and business impact as outlined in Section 6 below:
You will be asked to state the number of sites affected as well as the reporting (or business) impact of the problem, which will aid in ticket priority determination.
Ticket priority definitions consider both the number of sites affected as well as the business impact of your problem. Proper priority assignment ensures priority allocation of PF technical resources where necessary.
If the ticket is not responded to in a timely fashion from your side, PF will consider the issue to be non-critical and therefore reduce the priority automatically.
To promptly resolve your ticket, PF follows the flow process below based on the priority of your ticket.
When you create an issue directly in the PF Platform widget or Customer Support portal, you may expect an email response from the ticketing system with the ticket number that was auto generated for you. A PF customer support engineer will acknowledge your ticket per the response time SLA established for the severity level.
When opening a P0 (critical) issue via phone call, you will be asked to state the business impact of your technical issue. Critical ticket priority is typically reserved for catastrophic product failures such as outages in production environments. P0 (critical) ticket priority designation will result in appropriate technical resource allocation from PF who will work continuously until the issue is resolved.
If you are reporting a non-critical issue during normal business hours, customer support engineer will respond and start working on your issue. Outside of these hours, issues with non-critical designation will be responded to per the response time provided in this document.
The assigned customer support engineer will evaluate the information you provide in your initial request, investigate potential solutions or answers, and may request additional details to help the investigation and work towards a resolution.
Based on the information collected above, the customer support engineer's next task is to provide a temporary solution or a workaround to your problem. In the event that a temporary solution or workaround cannot be found, the customer support engineer will continue to collaborate with product engineers to find a resolution.
Once a temporary solution or workaround is provided, PF Customer Support will downgrade the severity of your ticket. If the temporary solution or workaround provided to your problem is the permanent solution and you confirm that it resolves your issue, your ticket will be closed. See 5.4 Criteria for Closing Tickets for more details.
If the temporary solution or workaround is delivered and it has not resolved your problem, the customer support Engineer will continue research until a ticket resolution is found. An interim solution may be available as a platform or connector hotfix for P0 issues. PF, at its sole discretion, may provide a more permanent solution in a future release. Any custom fixes or bespoke solutions developed in this context may or may not be included in future releases.
Hotfix builds do not receive extensive quality assurance (QA) testing. QA testing is limited to verifying that the reported issue is fixed.
It is PF’s policy not to backport bug fixes to previous releases of software.
Your ticket will remain open until one of the following events occurs:
We have provided you with a workaround or other solution that you have confirmed resolved the problem.
If a software anomaly is identified, your ticket will remain open until a software update containing the fix or a reasonable workaround is available. We will deliver the workaround or software to you and confirm with you that the problem is resolved.
With the workaround in place, your ticket will be tagged appropriately, so it is open to track to completion and communication exchanges.
Once the fixes are part of a release, the release version is communicated, and the support ticket will be closed.
Regressions or questions against the closed ticket are strongly encouraged in a separate new ticket so we can appropriately adhere to our SLAs.
PF Customer Support has not received a response from you regarding the ticket for fifteen (15) calendar days, despite multiple reminders sent.
The issue is outside of the scope of PF Support and support has provided guidance on next steps.
PF Support is unable to reproduce the problem, and you are no longer experiencing the problem.
PF Support has answered the question raised in the ticket to your satisfaction.
You or your authorized technical contact has asked us to close the ticket.
Ticket priority levels are assigned during ticket creation. Priority assignment will be validated with you by the PF Customer Support Engineer and is based on the technical and business impact of your technical issue as outlined below. PF Customer Support, in coordination with the customer ticket contact, may upgrade or downgrade the priority of your ticket depending on developments during the ticket flow process. For example, if available, a temporary resolution may be provided to mitigate the material impact of a given technical problem resulting in the reduction of the priority of a ticket. Priority levels will also be adjusted downward as your technical issue is mitigated or if you, the customer, do not engage in the effort.
Our support team is committed to ensuring we provide a prompt response to our customers based on the incident’s business impact. Ticket response time guidelines are provided as per below.
Ticket Priority | Response Time |
CRITICAL (P0) | 30 minutes |
URGENT (P1) | 4 business hours |
HIGH (P2) | 1 business day |
MEDIUM (P3) | 3 business days |
LOW (P4) | 7 Business days |
The customer will provide PF with the necessary remote access and materials (e.g. necessary servers, equipment and services as well as PF application UI login access, VPN access, log files, etc.). Where access cannot be provided or issues cannot be replicated in a timely manner, it will impact our ability to provide a resolution. Support team members may request that you provide an on-site technician for assistance.
Below are some examples of issues by priority. The customer is requested to pursue this ticket priority classification with great care.
The production use of the software/hardware is stopped or so severely impacted that the user of the software cannot reasonably continue work. The user of the software is experiencing a complete loss of service. The operation is mission critical to the business and the situation is an emergency. In this case, the customer must open a ticket, provide required information and then contact PF Support via phone call.
Examples of P0 incident
Power Factors Solution | Technical Problem Example |
SCADA | Any compliance issue that may result in immediate disconnection from the grid. (Regulatory non-compliance with Grid Codes) |
PPC | The solar plant is not producing at all due to PPC failure. |
The BESS Site cannot provide any service due to S-PPC failure. | |
Any compliance issue that may result in immediate disconnection from the grid. (Regulatory non-compliance with Grid Codes) | |
SaaS Platform (except Unity Asset Oversight and Invoice Management) | The Web Application is unreachable. |
All Global user base is unable to log in. | |
Unity Asset Oversight and Invoice Management | The Web Application is unavailable. |
The production use of the software/hardware is in a degraded state. The user of the software is experiencing a partial loss of service. In this case, the customer must open a ticket, provide the required information and then contact PF Support via phone call.
Examples of P1 incident :
Power Factors Solution | Technical Problem Example |
SCADA | All users are unable to access the local SCADA server, AND there is no alternative means to access the site information (through the UNITY Central SCADA). |
The data ingestion engine of the local SCADA server is inoperable, resulting in live data not being updated, AND there is no alternative means to access the site information (through the UNITY Central SCADA). | |
PPC | The BESS site fails to perform at least one market/ancillary service (e.g frequency response) due to S-PPC failure. |
The solar plant is producing significantly less than its potential due to PPC failure under ideal conditions. For example, on a typical solar day with an expected output of 100MW, considering all conditions (Irradiance, Inverters being online etc.), is producing less than 60MW | |
SaaS Platform (except Unity Asset Oversight and Invoice Management) | The Platform degraded performance. Calculated data delays, associated KPI’s for >2 hours. |
Partial application module unavailability. (Home, Events, etc.). | |
Unity Asset Oversight and Invoice Management | Unable to generate multiple reports. Reports inaccurate. |
Examples of P2 incidents
Power Factors Solution | Technical Problem Example |
SCADA | All users are unable to access UNITY through the local SCADA server, BUT users can still access UNITY Central SCADA normally. |
The data ingestion engine of the local SCADA server is inoperable, resulting in live data not being updated locally, BUT users can still access UNITY Central SCADA normally. | |
PPC | The S-PPC does not operate as designed but without affecting any market/ancillary service. |
The solar plant is producing less than its potential due to PPC failure under ideal conditions. For example, on a typical solar day, a plant with an expected output of 100MW, considering all conditions (Irradiance, Inverters being online etc.), is producing between 60 -80MW. | |
SaaS Platform (except Unity Asset Oversight and Invoice Management) | Incorrect calculation parameters are impacting production values, invoicing, and public reports. |
Raw and calculated data quality concerns affecting multiple sites. | |
A single module within the SaaS Application is unavailable or not working. | |
API | Power Factors API is inoperable for multiple sites. |
Custom Solutions / Reports | Custom Reports Unavailable. |
Unity Asset Oversight and Invoice Management | Unable to generate a specific report. |
Examples of P3 Incidents
Power Factors Solution | Technical Problem Example |
SaaS Platform (except Unity Asset Oversight and Invoice Management) | An issue that impacts dispatch of personnel (Work Order related) (DRIVE O&M). |
Asset configuration issues as being shown in the Platform. | |
Partial data ingestion interruption for a single site that's affecting daily operations. | |
Data availability for non-energy / production-associated assets. (e.g. Combiner box, string, etc.) | |
PPC | PPC functionality concerns that are not affecting actual production. e.g. PPC backup availability, Uneven Inverter setpoint distribution but the site level output complies/follows the Utility setpoint. |
The solar plant is producing less than its potential due to PPC failure under ideal conditions. For example, on a typical solar day a plant with expected output of 100MW, considering all conditions (Irradiance, Inverters being online etc.), is producing between 80 – 100MW. | |
API | Power Factors API inoperable for a specific site |
MMSU/PSSU | The CPU of the MSSU/PSSU is completely out of operation. |
Custom Solutions / Reports | Custom Reports Data Accuracy or Configuration Issues |
Examples of P4 Tickets
Power Factors Solution | Technical Problem Example |
SCADA | General inquiries and incidents related to hardware that is not directly impacting the site-level production. |
SaaS Platform (except Unity Asset Oversight and Invoice Management) | General information request |
Asset Metadata accuracy and related concerns (e.g. Incorrect coordinates, Nominal Power etc.) | |
Feature Request | |
User management and access requests/modifications. | |
Project modification | |
API | Power Factors API User management and access request/modifications. |
Custom Solutions / Reports | New Custom Reports requests |
As part of the Critical (P0) ticket management process, PF will establish regular communication with the customer contacts actively working on the issue, via the support ticket at a mutually established frequency.
If regular communication is not sufficient, customers may request to escalate the ticket at any time by notifying PF of your request for escalation within your support ticket. Additionally, you will be asked to provide your ticket number to allow your request to be directed to the appropriate resources for prompt attention.
Once you make a ticket escalation request, the appropriate operations manager will evaluate your ticket and situation to determine the appropriate escalation path. In some cases, the operations manager will re-assign the ticket to another customer support engineer with specific experience in the type of customer support issue you have on hand, in the event that the original assignment is not deemed suitable. The assigned customer support engineer will coordinate actions with you and all parties involved for prompt action. Regardless, in response to your request for escalation, the operations manager will set up an appropriate communication plan, such as e-mail, phone call, frequency of communication, required attendees, etc., and share the plan with you.
Customers can reach out to Customer Support leadership for ticket escalation or with any feedback/requests based on the ticket experience. There is a general leadership email setup for customers to request assistance from support leadership on 24-7 basis.
Name | Position / Role | Availability | Phone (WhatsApp enabled) | |
Customer Support Leadership | Leadership Mailbox | 24 x 7 | N/A | |
Danica Pedraja | Manager | 8 AM to 5 PM EST. | 8024488635 | |
Mary Rose Saliaya | Manager | 4 AM to 1 PM EST. | 8024488731 | |
R-Jay Mendoza | Director – Level 1 Support | 24 x 7 | 8024488737 | |
Christos Patsiouras | Director – Level 2 Support | 24 x 7 | +302111988337 | |
Keyur A. Patel | Vice President – Global Support | 24 x 7 | +1-978-987-6990 |
During the term of your support contract, PF Customer Support will exercise commercially reasonable efforts to track your issues through the use of the ticket tracking system and correct any problem reported by you or your authorized technical contact(s) in the current unmodified release of PF software products, according to the priority level.
PF Customer Support is committed to providing customer support for a wide range of issues involving PF products and services. However, there are some situations that are outside the scope of what PF Customer Support can reasonably support. Such situations are noted below:
Performing development or testing in a production environment is referred to as a PF Professional Services engagement.
Custom code: Development, complex configurations, integrations, customization of scripts and/or code, etc. Such situations are referred to PF Customer Success and Professional Services.
Support may identify the reason for a performance problem or other product behavior to be insufficient CPU, RAM, disk I/O, etc.
In such cases, PF Support may refer the customer to engage with PF Professional Services for follow-up and possible update/upgrade to the environment.
Third-party product support: Support of any software other than the specified line of PF products is outside the scope of PF Support.
Support by screen-share: PF is unable to support on-prem customers that require screen-sharing as the only way of receiving customer support.
Other: Any errors or issues caused by customer's misuse, neglect or misapplication; use of PF products other than as is specified in the product documentation or other causes beyond the control of PF. Any other problem that is excluded under PF’s standard maintenance terms or problems caused by any hardware/software not supported by PF.
To ensure that your problem or question is resolved promptly, please be sure you have met these responsibilities before you contact PF Customer Support:
PF Customer Support is available for products covered by an active support contract. If you do not have a support contract, please get in touch with your PF account executive or customer success manager.
The customer is responsible for thoroughly reviewing all product documentation before contacting PF Customer Support for assistance. Documentation for products is available at https://support.powerfactors.com/en/support/solutions
The customer shall make reasonable efforts to isolate, document and report errors to PF Customer Support.
When you open a ticket, please provide specific pertinent and descriptive information as required.
The customer is expected to refrain from installing any third-party, non-certified software or modify the existing software without notification to and authorization by PF Customer Support on equipment dedicated to operating PF services.
PF's commitment is to provide support that is seen as best-in-class by meeting or exceeding our customers’ expectations. Our unwavering focus on customers and their success is a differentiator that we closely guard. We stay connected to the voice of the customer and successful customer outcomes through surveys and frequent contact.
We thank you in advance for helping answer survey questions at the resolution of every support ticket and for staying engaged in the relationship.
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