SLA examples
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Introduction
In SolarWinds Service Desk (SWSD) you define service targets using SWSD's Service Level Management feature. By establishing service level agreements (SLAs), you can monitor, alert, and report on missed SLA targets.
Navigation
Setup > Service Desk > Service Level Management.
Create an SLA
See Service level management for instructions.
How SLA hours are calculated
The examples below can help you understand how SLA hours are calculated to meet your company goals.
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The SLA timer starts at incident creation.
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The SLA work day is measured by average business hours. Each organization sets their own business hours.
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If you provide support three days a week at 8 hours/day and two days a week at 6 hours/day, an SLA measured by business hours equals 7.2 hours/day.
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If your business hours are set to 7 am - 5 pm Sunday through Friday, the average business day is 10 hours and excludes weekends. If a ticket is created at 9:30 am on Friday, October 8, with an SLA of one business day, the ticket will not breach until 9:30 am on Monday, October 11. That's because October 9 and 10 fall on Saturday and Sunday, and they are not business days.
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The time zone for SLA compliance is set by the incident site. If there is no site, SWSD looks at the organization's default time zone. See Organization & sites for more information.
Updated and/or newly created incidents do not automatically get updated with a newly defined SLA. That is, as you define new SLAs, they will only be relevant to incidents created after the SLA is defined.
Examples
The examples below are very broad. Your organization should establish its own criticalities, priorities, and time frames.
To help you establish your organization's SLA expectations, you can use the Service Statistics Breakdown report to see what you are currently accomplishing and identify what is reasonable as a target.
You might find this video overview helpful in understanding how SLAs work and how to design them:
Ticket not assigned within specified time
See Service level management for an overview on how to create an SLA for assigning tickets to agents within a specified time.
Ticket assigned but not commented on
Need to ensure that new assignee has reviewed ticket issue and commented on it.
| Name | Not Commented |
| Define Target |
Select Target: Not commented |
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Within: 2 Hours In this instance the breach would occur if there were no comment within 2 hours of ticket creation. |
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| Use Business Hours | Select if you want the timer to pause when the business day ends and begin again with the next business day starts. |
| Suspend SLA timer for all states to which SLA does not apply |
Select when you want the SLA timer to pause based on what state the ticket is in. Deselect when you want the SLA timer to continue to run even if it would normally pause based on what state the ticket is in. |
| Set Timer Indication Threshold |
Initial Pre-Breach Indication: 30 minutes Final Pre-Breach Indication: 15 minutes |
| Define Scope | All |
Low priority ticket not resolved
A low priority ticket needs to be resolved, but usually across several business days.
| Name | Not Resolved - Low Priority |
| Define Target |
Select Target: Not resolved |
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Within: 24 Hours |
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| Use Business Hours | Select if you want the timer to pause when the business day ends and begin again with the next business day starts. |
| Suspend SLA timer for all states to which SLA does not apply |
Select when you want the SLA timer to pause based on what state the ticket is in. Deselect when you want the SLA timer to continue to run even if it would normally pause based on what state the ticket is in. |
| Set Timer Indication Threshold |
Initial Pre-Breach Indication: 8 hours Final Pre-Breach Indication: 4 hours |
| Define Scope |
Incident/Service Request: All Priority: Low Mature organizations may want to set Category and Subcategory based on the type of request and how long it should take to resolve. |
Critical priority ticket not resolved
Issue deemed to be critical to the business function needs to be resolved within a specified time frame.
| Name | Not Resolved - Critical |
| Define Target |
Select Target: Not resolved |
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Within: 4 Hours |
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| Use Business Hours | Deselect if you want the timer to continue when the business day ends because the issue has already been deemed Critical to business function. |
| Suspend SLA timer for all states to which SLA does not apply |
Select if you still need to track and monitor the ticket after all internal work is done but you are waiting on a vendor to perform work, such as restore power. However, if your organization wants the ticket resolved within the allotted time frame, you should deselect this option. |
| Set Timer Indication Threshold |
Initial Pre-Breach Indication: 2 hours Final Pre-Breach Indication: 45 minute |
| Define Scope |
Incident/Service Request: All Priority: Critical |
Ticket awaiting approval
Need to know when ticket is awaiting approval too long.
| Name | Not State Change |
| Define Target |
Select Target: No state change |
| Initial State: Awaiting Approval | |
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Within: 48 Hours |
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| Use Business Hours | Select if you want the timer to pause when the Business hours ends and begin again with the next business day starts. |
| Suspend SLA timer for all states to which SLA does not apply |
Select when you want the SLA timer to pause based on what state the ticket is in. Deselect when you want the SLA timer to continue to run even if it would normally pause based on what state the ticket is in. |
| Set Timer Indication Threshold |
Initial Pre-Breach Indication: 16 hours Final Pre-Breach Indication: 8 hours |
| Define Scope |
Incident/Service Request: All Priority: Critical |