enhanced support handbook structure

---

title: Assigned Support Engineer (ASE) Guide

description: A guide to assist ASEs and their managers in delivering the ASE service

---

---

title: Support Team Handbook - Enhanced Support Offerings

description: Everything about Support's Enhanced Support Offerings

---

## GitLab Support's Enhanced Support Offerings Handbook Pages

Enhanced Support Offerings are paid support services sold as add-ons to Priority

Support. Right now we have only one such offering, `Assigned Support Engineer

(ASE)`. We expect that as we discover more of what our customers need we will

develop more Enhanced Support Offerings to meet those needs.

For the most up-to-date information, see the [Enhanced Support Offerings page]

(https://about.gitlab.com/support/enhanced-support-offerings/) of our Support

website.

In this section of the Support Handbook, we devote a separate sub-section to

each unique offering. In each of those, we intend to capture all the information

that Team Members in Support, Sales, Professional Services and Customer Success

might need in order to be part of, or work with, the Enhanced Support Offerings

Team.

## Offering: Assigned Support Engineer

Customers with Priority Support (GitLab Premium and Ultimate subscriptions)

may choose to add an Assigned Support Engineer (ASE) to their contract. See our

[Assigned Support Engineer page](./offering-assigned-support-engineer) for

details of this offering as well as information about becoming and being an

Assigned Support Engineer.

## Placeholder for Future Offerings

---

title: Enhanced Support Offering - Assigned Support Engineer (ASE)

description: Information about the ASE offering, being an ASE, and working with ASEs

---

## The Assigned Support Engineer offering

An Assigned Support Engineer (ASE) is a senior level support engineer who leads

our support delivery for one to four accounts. The ASE strives to:

- develop excellent relationships with their main contacts at each account

- understand each account's GitLab environment, architecture and use cases

- be a trusted advisor to each account in order to guide them through tickets,

  upgrades and other situations efficiently and smoothly

- be available to work with their customers through tickets, issues and video

  calls during business hours

- be aware of all tickets submitted by each of their accounts, and lead as many

  of those as they can within the amount of time allotted in the contracts

By taking a personalized, customized approach to serving each account, the ASE

has the opportunity to ensure that these important customers are happy and

successful with GitLab.

For the official description of this offering, see the

[Assigned Support Engineer Delivery Data Sheet](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I-GDQV9wZkTvTTMqIPw1mSLaeVUru4zU/view).

### ASE Leadership Team

Val Parsons, Director of Customer Support in EMEA, has led the effort to bring

this first Enhanced Support Offering into existence. She holds overall

responsibility for this part of GitLab Support, which includes things like

working with Sales as necessary to bring in new ASE contracts and driving the

definitions of what the service is and how we deliver it.

Lee Matos, Director of Customer Support in AMER, has partnered with Val as the

AMER DRI for the ASE Program, in large part due to the critical importance of

the AMER region as the source of a high percentage of likely and actual ASE

accounts. He has put a particular focus on determining how to find and develop

internal talent for the ASE role and how to hire external talent for it, too.

Mike Dunninger, Support Engineering Manager in AMER, manages all Global Support

ASEs in AMER. As the only current manager globally with specific ASE Program

responsibilities, he works to:

1. enable and encourage teamwork among all of the ASEs (not just those in AMER)

1. guide the team in identifying, developing and documenting best practices

1. define and document standard processes and reports for the program

Ilia Kosenko, Support Engineering Manager in EMEA, manages the EMEA ASEs.

Wei-Meng Lee, Support Engineering Manager in APAC, manages the APAC ASEs.

## The Assigned Support Engineer guide

The guide to all things ASE, whether you are an ASE, want to know about possibly

being an ASE or need to know how to work with ASEs. It's all here.

### ASE Communications

#### Slack

- ASE Program Slack channel:  [#support_assigned-support-eng](https://gitlab.enterprise.slack.com/archives/C06E61D9Z7E)

- ASE accounts' Slack channels:  many of the accounts make use of an external

  Slack channel, one per account, for informal communications with Sales,

  Customer Success, Professional Services and their ASE

#### Meetings

There are two recurring meetings in place to bring the ASEs and management

together for the purposes of supporting each other, sharing ASE practices, and

discussing needed process and program improvements. The meetings occur on

alternating weeks, one week being scheduled favorably for EMEA and AMER, and

the next for AMER and APAC. Both meetings can be found in the

[GitLab Support calendar](/handbook/support/#google-calendar).

- `ASE Sync - AMER/EMEA`: Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m. UTC

- `ASE Sync - APAC/AMER`: Thursdays at 1:00 a.m. UTC

To keep the meetings short and productive, much of the agenda is async. ASEs

and managers have agenda topics to update before each meeting.

#### GitLab Project

See the [Assigned Support Engineers project](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/support/assigned-support-engineers)

for issues and a wiki that are used by the ASE community. There is a lot of

organizational and logistical information there, as well as issues describing

out-of-office coverage plans and containing discussions about ASE processes.

### Working with ASEs

ASEs tend to work with GitLab Team Members from all around Support and all

around the company in order to meet the needs of their accounts. We want

each collaboration to be positive, mutually-beneficial and successful. So

we've created the following sections to provide information to you, our

partners, about working with us.

#### Global Support working with ASEs

If you're in Global Support, please familiarize yourself with our

[Global Support working with ASEs](working-with-ases/global-support-and-ases.html)

page. It should tell you everything you want to know about how these two parts

of Support can help each other to be more successful.

#### Account Teams working with ASEs

If you're part of a Sales, Customer Success or Professional Services team that

works with an account that has contracted for or is considering contracting for

one or more Assigned Support Engineers, please read our

[Account Teams working with ASEs](working-with-ases/account-teams-working-with-ases.html)

page.

### ASE workflows and other standard practices

- [ASE workflows and other standard practices](ase-workflows-and-standards)

### Becoming and Being an ASE

Please see our [Becoming and Being an ASE page](becoming-and-being-an-ase.html) if:

- you are considering whether to become an ASE

- you are about to become and ASE

- you are a new ASE

### Zendesk for ASEs

**<<<< COMING SOON >>>>**

Link to a page that includes:

- ticket routing and assignment

- views

- special fields

- special tags

---

title: ASE Workflows and Other Standard Practices

description: Agreed upon methods for performing tasks that are common among ASEs

---

---

title: QBRs for ASE accounts

description: Information for ASEs about understanding, preparing for and delivering QBRs

---

- What is a QBR?

- Who organizes and schedules them?

- What does an ASE do to prepare for a QBR?

  - Standard reports and dashboards

  - Practice

- What is the role of the ASE in a QBR?

- What defines a successful QBR for an ASE