Service agreement selection process

Service Level Management assigns a service agreement to a new service desk interaction, change, incident, request or problem by using the following selection process:

  • The value in the slamodulecontrol record Customer Field is the search argument used to match a contact specified in an SLA candidate.
  • The first candidate SLA is the one assigned to the contact’s department. The departmental SLA sets expectations for the response time and service entitlements when department personnel request a service.
  • If no department SLA exists, the next candidate SLA is the one assigned to the contact’s company.
  • If no company SLA exists, the next candidate is the default SLA specified by the SLA Control record.
  • At any point in the selection process, if the current date and time does not fall within the limits of an SLA candidate, the next SLA candidate is considered. It is a good idea to ensure that the default SLA does not contain highly restrictive date and time limitations and describes general support for all services.

When Service Level Management selects the appropriate SLA, it also populates the new service desk interaction, change, incident, or problem record with the name of any service contract linked to the SLA.

Note: You can override the automatic selection process if you click the list in the SLA field and select a different one.

Example

A new manager (the contact) who requests email setup could expect a response within four business hours, based on whether a response SLA requires that services for managers have a higher priority than services for an intern. If there is no departmental policy that prioritizes this service, the next SLA selection level might be a company-wide response policy that does not prioritize by job description but instead by key services.

The final selection level would be the default SLA that describes general support for all services.