This documentation page provides how to get started with the Horizon Accelerator SaaS offering.
Brief Introduction
Horizon Accelerator is an add-on SKU to the Horizon Universal License subscriptions.
Horizon Accelerator provides you with ongoing day-0 to day-2 support to your Horizon Cloud Service - next-gen environment and the ability to gain insights into your environment.
With Horizon Accelerator, you gain a faster time to value and eliminate complexity and the learning curve around your VDI environment. The dedicated VDI expertise augments your IT staff and eases the burden of day-0 through day-2 operations.
You access the Horizon Accelerator features within the Horizon Universal Console.
Requirements
When the licensing associated with your next-gen environment entitles you to use Horizon Accelerator, the Horizon Universal Console automatically displays the relevant features.
As features are released to the cloud control plane, they become automatically available for your use.
To verify the licenses associated with your environment, use the console's Subscriptions page. See Use the Horizon Universal Console to Track Your Horizon Licenses. To use Horizon Accelerator, your environment requires:
- A Horizon subscription that provides for add-on SKUs. Horizon subscriptions are described in VMware Horizon Subscription Comparison Matrix.
- Horizon Accelerator license.
- You have onboarded to Horizon Cloud Service - next-gen using the standard onboarding process.
Dedicated VDI Expertise
Horizon Accelerator is staffed by a team, the Horizon Pros, of dedicated Horizon delivery experts. The Horizon Pros provide:
- 24x7 support
- Full life cycle support, including day-0 through day-2 optimization, and guidance such as standard architectures, best practices, and so on.
- Expert guidance across Horizon deployment types
You can refer to VMware Production Support for Cloud Products PDF at the vmware.com site for a description of VMware's 24-hour support for cloud deployments.
Horizon Accelerator - Horizon Pros - Dedicated Support
The Horizon Accelerator support team provides dedicated, ongoing day-0 to day-2 support in your Horizon Cloud Service - next-gen environment.
How It Works
Access to the Horizon Pros is directly within the Horizon Universal Console. With the Horizon Accelerator license, the console displays a Support choice in the left-navigation menu.
To request assistance from the dedicated team, you click Support.
After you complete the wizard, one of the Horizon Accelerator support agents is alerted and will contact you about your request.
Request Support
When you click , the console starts the Request Support wizard.
The following screenshot illustrates the appearance of the wizard after clicking Support.
Within this wizard, you make the selections appropriate for the type of support you are requesting. The following sections describe each step.
Step 1 - Support Type
Decide first whether the request type is technical or non-technical in nature. Technical requests will have an issue category and severity tag associated with them.
| Technical type | Non-technical type |
|---|---|
 |
 |
After you choose the type, follow the UI to further associate the request with a topic area that you think it best fits into. (There is no right or wrong answer for the topic area.)
You select the topic area from a system-defined list. The system-defined list includes an Other topic area in case your request does not readily align with the remaining ones in the list.
Because the console is dynamic and will list the choices that are available in the system at the up-to-the minute time, this documentation here does not enumerate the topic or sub-topic lists. If an attempt was made to enumerate in this documentation here, the documentation here would quickly grow out of date quickly. Instead of an enumerated list, here are some examples:
- For a technical request, topic areas include technical function related areas such as Connectivity, Edge deployment, Maintenance, and similar technical, function related concepts.
- For a non-technical request, topic areas include such business-oriented and license-related areas such as Entitlement account, Users & Permissions, and similar business-oriented concepts. For a non-technical request, you can include a sub-topic area for a selected topic.
For Technical type, you select an issue category:
- Incident
-
When faced with a problem, such as a working service is broken, latency or performance issues, and things along those lines.
Incidents get tagged with a severity tag, in order of decreasing severity Critical, Major, Minor, Cosmetic. Each severity has an associated SLA. You can refer to VMware Production Support for Cloud Products PDF.
- Service Request
- When requesting information or a request for the dedicated support team to perform a task.
Continue making the UI selections you want until you see the UI makes the Next button available. You click Next to save your choices and continue to the next step.
Step 2 - Details
This step starts as:
Use the Subject field to provide a short description of the problem or the reason for this assistance request.
Use the larger field to provide a longer description for what you want assistance on.
When the console makes Next available, click Next to proceed to the next step.
Screenshot example:
Step 3 - Watchlist
This step starts as:
Use the Add button to provide email addresses of people who you want to be cc'd about this request. To add the next name, click Add again.
When the console makes Next available and you've added the people you want to the watchlist, click Next to proceed to the next step.
Step 4 - Contact Preferences
This step starts as:
Specify the method you prefer for the assigned Horizon Pro agent to use for contacting you about this request. When selecting Phone, provide a contact phone number.
| Email Contact Method | Phone Contact Method |
|---|---|
 |
 |
One of the support team's goal is that you receive support during your business hours. To meet this goal, the support agent infers the typical business hours in your selected time zone. This time zone selection helps facilitate more efficient communication between the support team and your team.
When the console makes Send available, click Send to submit the support request.
Send Request
When the steps are completed in the UI and you are ready to submit the request, click Send.
When you click Send, the support request is routed to the Horizon Pros team of support agents.
The console displays a confirmation message to inform you that the request is created and has entered the support pipeline.
What Happens Next
The system notifies the VMware Horizon Accelerator Support team of your support request.
At that same time, the system sends an email to the VMware Horizon Accelerator Support team address and cc'ing your email address and the addresses you entered in the Watchlist step.
As soon as the team receives the system notification of your submitted support request, the team will reach out to you and starts working on your request.
The notification that you'll first see is a confirmation email with the VMware Horizon Accelerator Support team's address in the To line and your email address and the emails you entered in the Watchlist step in the CC line.
The team's email address will contain the string VHA Support at vmware.com.
The email's subject line will include the string Support ticket created, and the body will include the information you selected and input in the wizard.
If you reply to that first email, a mail is sent to the VMware Horizon Accelerator Support team.
