Configuring Service Level Agreements for Incidents

You can have Service Level Agreements (SLAs) defined for intra-organization service provided by the IT help desk team. These SLAs help to evaluate the efficiency, effectiveness, and responsiveness of your help desk team. The SLAs can be defined for each individual, or departments, or workstations in a site. Also, if the request is not attended and resolved within the time specifications of the SLA, then you can set the escalation rules.

To open the SLA configurations page,

• Go to Setup>> Automation >> Service Level Agreement. The SLA list page opens. You can add, edit, or delete SLAs.

• By default, all SLA based mail escalations will be enabled. If you wish to disable the escalation click Disable Escalation button.

• By default, there are four SLAs set namely, High, Medium, Normal, Low SLAs. You can also add more SLAs to the list.

Add New Service Level Agreement

To add an SLA,

• Select the site to which you want to add the SLA from the Service Level Agreement for a combo box. By default, the 'Base Site' option is selected.

• Click New SLA.    

• In the Add New SLA form, specify the SLA Name (mandatory).

• The Site selected in Service Level Agreement for drop down box is displayed in non-editable text.

• If required, you can provide a corresponding Description for the SLA.

• In the SLA rules block, set the rules and criteria for the SLA. By default, the Match the below rules checkbox is selected.

• Select the Criteria and Condition from the respective text box, and then choose the individual values that need to be matched from the relevant list that drops down.
  
  Example: If you want to match the requester name John, then select Requester Name as the criteria, is as the condition, and select the requester name from the list.  The selected names will appear in the text field.

• Click  to add another rule and choose between AND/OR to match all/any of the configured rules respectively.

• Set the response time and resolution time in terms of days, hours and minutes. The specified response time should be less than the resolution time.
• If you want this duration to override the operational hours, select the check box beside Should be resolved irrespective of operational hours.  By selecting this, you will be overriding the operational hours of your organization and the due by time will be calculated from the creation time without taking into consideration the holidays and operational hours. If you want the duration to override holidays and/ or weekends, select the check box for the corresponding options listed alongside.

• The incident can be escalated to other technicians and organization roles when the incident is not responded or resolved within the specified time.

  There are 4 levels of escalation if the specified resolution time elapses.

1. To enable escalation, select the check box beside Enable Level 1 notification.

2. Click Add Member(s) to Escalate button to choose the organization roles and/or technicians to whom the SLA violation should be escalated.

3. You can choose to escalate before the violation or after the violation. If you wish to escalate the incident before the SLA violation then click Escalate Before option. Specify the number of days before the SLA violation is about to happen in the text box. This is to escalate to the technician about the onset of the violation. You can also specify the time of escalation.

4. Similarly, click Escalate After option to escalate after the violation. Specify the number of days after the SLA violation has occurred in the text box. You can also specify the time of escalation.    

5. You can also associate actions once you have configured the escalation option. Action based SLA escalations can be configured to change the group, technician, priority, and level automatically for each SLA. To enable this, select a specific group from the group list and choose the desired technician from the list of technicians. Then, select the priority of the request and mark the level to which it belongs. 

•  Click Save.
   

At any point, if you do not wish to add the SLA and would like to get back to the SLA list from the add SLA form, click Cancel. Clicking the View List link on the top right corner of the add SLA form will also take you to the SLA list view.

Edit Service Level Agreement

To edit an existing SLA,

1. Select the site of the SLA you wish to edit from the Service Level Agreement for a combo box. The lists of all the SLA corresponding to that site is displayed.

2. Click   beside the SLA Name.

3. In the Edit SLA form, you can modify all the fields mentioned in the add SLA form.

4. Click Save to save the changes. At any point you wish to cancel the operation that you are performing, click Cancel. Even while editing an SLA, if you wish to add another new SLA, then click Save and Add New button.

Delete Service Level Agreement

1. Select the site of the SLA you wish to delete from the Service Level Agreement from a combo box. The list of SLA corresponding to the site gets displayed.

2. Enable the checkbox beside the SLA. Click Delete. A confirmation dialog appears.

3. Click Ok to proceed with the deletion. If you do not want to delete the SLA, then click Cancel.

Organize Service Level Agreements

Organizing the SLAs decide the order in which the SLA is applied on the incoming incident. You can organize the SLA to appear in a particular order in the list view,

1. Select the site for which you wish to rearrange the order of the SLA from the Service Level Agreement for combo box.

2. Click Organize SLA link available above the list of SLAs in the SLA List view. A pop-up window is opened with the list of available SLAs in the order that is appearing the list view.

3. Select an SLA, and click Move up or Move Down button beside the list.

4. Click Save.