Service level agreements are used to identify the time available to close a ticket. Different levels of escalations and the threshold which will trigger SLA violation can be defined. System comes pre-configured with a default SLA which cannot be deleted and is used in case no SLA is getting mapped. SLAs are always calculated with respect to the working hours and working days defined at the Customer level.

- Create new SLA using 'Add New SLA' button
- Edit an existing SLA using the 'Edit' button
- Delete an SLA using the 'Delete' action. If the SLA is in use it cannot be deleted

Creating / Editing an SLA

- Provide the SLA name and description
- Create the SLA business rule
- Map the resolution times

SLA business rule is defined through a formula builder. This rule is used to applied the SLA to a ticket when the ticket is created and submitted. If more than one SLA business rule is applicable on a ticket then the one with lower Normal resolution time is applied. SLA business rule can be modified after submission but only new tickets will be impacted by the modified rule.

Parameters available to be used in a SLA business rule are
1. Category (and Sub Category)
2. Creation Time
3. Ticket Day
4. Ticket Priority
5. Ticket Type

Resolution Times

This table is used to define the times for various stages.

- Normal resolution time is the time within which if the ticket is resolved it has not got escalated at all
- L1 to L4 escalations times are sequential escalation levels. Ticket goes through the various stages as the duration for which it is open increases. Time given in each level of escalation is in parallel so for example if Normal resolution is in 12 hours then Level 1 escalation cannot be less than 12 hours and if it is given as 16 hours then ticket will be in Level 1 escalation from 12 to 16 hours
- SLA violation – when the time which is given in the escalation level which is mapped to SLA violation is crossed then the ticket is classified as being “SLA violated”. You can get reports of number of tickets for which SLA has been violated
- Resolution times can be specified in Hours and Minutes – these are calculated on the ticket based on the working hours of the customer against which the ticket is mapped. See the example below for more details.
- Resolution times which are entered are taken as absolute from the time of submission of the ticket and since the escalations go from top to bottom the times are also to be entered in increasing manner. Times entered in L2 cannot be less than the time entered in L1 – system will not allow it.

SLA resolution example

Suppose a ticket is created for a customer who is based out of Singapore. The support rep who is working on the ticket is based out of Delhi.

Ticket creation date : 02-Sep-2016 (Friday)
Ticket creation time : 10:30 (Singapore time)
Shift definition for customer is 09:00 to 18:00
Working days for customer are Monday to Friday

Suppose Resolution times are as given below -

Support reps have 6 hours to solve the ticket in normal resolution. This maps to 16:30 Singapore or 19:00 India time. If the ticket is not resolved in this time then the ticket will go into L1 escalation at 16:30 Singapore time.

L1 escalation has 12 hour window which will be broken down in
- 01:30 hour on Friday (02-Sep)
- 09:00 hours on Monday (05-Sep)
- 01:30 hours on Tuesday (06-Sep)

If the ticket is not resolved till 10:29 on Tuesday then it will go in L2 escalation.

L2 escalation has 36 hours mapped to it so team will get 36 hours which will be over by 10:29 on Monday (12-Sep). Since SLA violation is tagged to L2 the SLA will be violated at 10:30 on Tuesday – at the beginning of the L2 escalation time window.

Note – All times are stored at GMT / UTC and are displayed based on the viewer’s time zone.