7.3 Service Level Agreements Flashcards
What is an SLA?
A Service Level Agreement (SLA) typically is a written agreement that outlines the commitment between a service provider and its customers.
What is a commitment?
A commitment is a service level that all parties have agreed to, such as:
- asset reliability
- availability
What does the SLA describe?
- one or more commitments
- the escalation actions or notifications associated with each commitment
Why might escalation actions or notifications be associated with an SLA?
to ensure that commitments are met
How does the escalation process within SLA serve its purpose?
To ensure that commitments are met, can do the following:
- can monitor all activities
- send notifications or perform other activities
What level do SLAs exist at?
SLAs exist at the system level.
However, the organization or site can be specified to restrict the SLA to that organization or site.
What can SLAs be applied to?
Any main object
What can an SLA be associated to?
- Contracts
- Related SLAs
- Assets
- Locations
List the 3 SLA types
- Customer
- Internal
- Vendor
SLA Types
Customer SLA
Describe this
Agreement between user & external customer
SLA Types
Internal SLA
Describe
Agreement between user & internal customer
SLA Types
Vendor SLA
Describe
Agreement between user & vendor
What are commitments and how can they be measured?
Commitments are a level of service that is agreed upon by the service provider and the customer
They can be measured in a qualitative or quantitative way
List predefined commitment types
- Contract
- Response
- Resolution
- Other
Commitment Types
Contract
What does this apply to?
Ticket applications
Commitment Types
Response
What does this apply to?
Ticket and Work Order applications
Commitment Types
Resolution
What does this apply to?
Ticket and Work Orders
Commitment Types
Other
What does this apply to?
All objects
Commitment Types
Contact
Describe
- Set the target contact date for a ticket when a service desk agent applies a service level agreement
- A measure of time
Commitment Types
Response
Describe
- Set the target start date for a ticket or work order when a service desk agent applies a service level agreement
- A measure of time
Commitment Types
Resolution
Describe
- Set the target finish date for a ticket or work order when a service desk agent applies a service level agreement
- A measure of time
Commitment Types
Other
Describe
- Apply to any business object
- Possible synonyms for other include: availability, reliability, and downtime
- No business rules are associated with this type
- A value + a unit of measure + a time period
List commitment types that are classified with an internal value of OTHER
- AVAILABILITY
- CAPACITY
- DELIVERY
- DOWNTIME
- RELIABILITY
- OTHER
Rules pertaining to adding commitment types to an SLA
Except for the commitment type OTHER, only one of each commitment type can be added to an SLA
List the attributes used to define the commitment types
- value
- unit of measure
- time period (in days)
Editability of attributes upon choosing commitment type
editable or read-only as needed
How can an SLA be associated with a record?
- An SLA might automatically be applied to a record from within a workflow or escalation process, or from another SLA
- The action to apply an SLA can be selected, which applies the best match automatically
- SLAs can be viewed and use an action to select or clear the SLAs to manually apply to the record
List events that occur when an SLA is applied to a record
- The SLA Applied check box is checked off to document the action
- Any escalations associated with the SLA are activated
- The Target Start, Target Finish, and Contact values might be calculated automatically as follows:
- If SLA includes a response commitment, the response commitment date populates the Target Start date field of the record
- If SLA includes a resolution commitment, the resolution commitment date populates the Target Finish date field of the record
- If SLA includes a contact commitment, the contact commitment date populates the Target Contact date field of the record
List organizational settings that can be set in the Organizations application, pertaining to SLAs
- Allow application of one or multiple SLAs?
- Apply multiple SLAs based on ranking or commitment stringency?
- Use or disable calendar for calculating escalation point condition?
How can an escalation be set pertaining to an SLA? Why would this be done?
From the Service Level Agreements application, an escalation can be created to ensure that SLAs are compliant.
Rules on creating escalations for SLAs
One escalation can be created per SLA
How does escalation setup relate to commitments within an SLA?
individual escalation points can be added for each commitment within an SLA
Escalations for SLAs
What do values for escalation points default to?
values specified in the associated commitment
Escalations associated to SLAs
Where can the escalation then be viewed/modified?
Escalations tab
What can SLAs be ranked by, and why?
According to precedence, which determines which SLAs to apply
How can an SLA be used to drive a workflow process?
Can set:
- effective start date
- end date
- review date
for an SLA
What can be created to support commitments in an SLA?
Escalations
How can SLA performance be tracked?
Can create key performance indicators or metrics for an SLA
