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.

Assigning Service Level Targets to an application record

When you create a new interaction, change request, request, incident, or problem record, you can choose a Customer SLA for the contact or a Customer SLA for the contact and one or more applicable Service SLAs for the contact's subscriptions to a service. Service SLAs only apply if the application record references a Business Service, the contact has a subscription to the service, and the subscription references an SLA. The following describes the system's process for adding SLAs to an application record.

• If one SLA is associated with the application record based on the contact, the Customer SLA is added to the record.
• If the contact has an Individual Subscription for the CI, the Service SLA from that subscription is added to the application record.
• If the contact has a Department Subscription for the CI, the Service SLA from that subscription is added to the application record.
• If the contact has neither, then no Service SLA is added to the application record.

The SLAs should contain all Service Level Targets (SLTs) that define the business rules for all process and service metrics. You can choose as many SLTs as necessary to describe your process and service commitment. If necessary, you can add more SLTs that meet your criteria.

When you view the new record, the SLA section lists the SLTs that apply to the application record.

See the related topics to view the definitions for Customer SLA and Service SLA.

Service Level Target selection process

An administrator assigns one or more Service Level Targets (SLTs) to a new Service Level Agreement (SLA). When Service Level Management evaluates whether the process or service targets objectives are met, it uses the following logical processes.

Process Targets

Service Level Management examines the condition specified in the SLT filter criteria. This value is a Boolean expression that can include any valid field values from the record. For example, you can create a condition that includes these values:

• Affected Configuration Item
• Category
• Priority
• Risk level
• Company
• Department
• Location

If there is more than one Process Target, Service Level Management uses the strictest SLT as the measurement for responsiveness.

Service Targets

Service Level Management examines the schedule and the required uptime or maximum outage duration specified in the SLT. If there is more than one Service Target, Service Level Management uses the strictest SLT as the criteria.