Service Level Management Details

Search for	Example	Results
A single word	`cat`	Topics that contain the word "cat". You will also find its grammatical variations, such as "cats".
A phrase. You can specify that the search results contain a specific phrase.	`"cat food"` (quotation marks)	Topics that contain the literal phrase "cat food" and all its grammatical variations. Without the quotation marks, the query is equivalent to specifying an OR operator, which finds topics with one of the individual words instead of the phrase.

Search for	Operator	Example
Two or more words in the same topic	`AND` `and` `+` (plus symbol) `&` (ampersand)	`cat AND dog` `"cat food"+milk` `"cat food"&"dog food"`
Either word in a topic	`OR` `or` `\|` (pipe)	`cat OR dog` `cat \| dog`
Topics that do not contain a specific word or phrase	`NOT` `not` `!` (exclamation point)	`NOT cat` `! dog`
Topics that contain one string and do not contain another	`^` (caret)	`cat ^ mouse`
A combination of search types	`( )` parentheses	`cat + (dog \| mouse)` `cat \| dog + (! mouse)`

Service Manager uses the Service Level Management module to enable the Service Level Management process. The main function of Service Level Management is to improve the quality of services that you provide to customers. Service Level Managers, Supplier Managers and customers work together to ensure the various agreements are correctly documented and monitored.

This section describes selected Service Level Management details in the out-of-box Service Manager system.

An SLA is:

A service-level agreement (SLA) is an agreement between two or more parties, where one is the customer (business) and the others are service providers. This can be a legally binding formal or an informal "contract".

Service level agreements are also defined at different levels:

Customer-based SLA:

An agreement with an individual customer group, covering all the services they use.
Service-based SLA:

An agreement for all customers using the services being delivered by the service provider.

An OLA is:

An operational-level agreement (OLA) defines the interdependent relationships among the internal support groups of an IT organization working to support a service-level agreement (SLA). The agreement describes the responsibilities of each internal support group toward other support groups, including the process and timeframe for delivery of their services. The objective of the OLA is to present a clear, concise and measurable description of the service provider's internal support relationships.

A UC is:

An Underpinning Contract (UC) is a legally binding contract between IT service provider and supplier or third party to deliver agreed level of service quality or goods at specified time.

The relation between these three elements is defined in the graphic below.