Service Level Agreements (SLA) are a way for Administrators to alert Agents and other Administrators about when a ticket should be responded too or resolved within a certain amount of time set when configuring TPD's. Let's dive a little deeper into this.
The first thing you need to understand is that TPD's are based on the priority of the ticket.
You can set up a total of four different TPD's, one for each of the priorities.
Please note the following that qualifies as a response for a ticket.
Please note the following that does not qualify as a response for a ticket.
Response Times
There are three types of response times you can choose from (Minutes, Hours or Days)
Respond within is defined as the time that a ticket must have had any response made to it before the threshold is reached.
Example
Let's say you have set all Normal priority tickets to be responded to within 1 hour. So if a Normal priority ticket was created at 4:40 PM the TPD requires that a response from an agent must be made no later than 5:40 PM. If no response has been made by this time then every agent when viewing the ticket (whether assigned to them or not) will see a priority alert notification on the ticket notifying them that the response time is past due and that one should be made.
Please note the following that qualifies as a resolution for a ticket.
Please note the following that does not qualify as a resolution for a ticket.
Resolve Times
There are two types of resolve times you can choose from (Hours or Days)
Resolve within is defined as the time that a ticket must be resolved by before the threshold is reached.
Example
Let's say you have set all Normal priority tickets to be resolved within 2 days. So if a Normal priority ticket was created at 9:38 AM on Sep 10, 2017, the TPD requires that the ticket must be resolved by no later than 9:38 AM on Sep 12, 2017. If no resolution has been made by this time then every agent when viewing the ticket (whether assigned to them or not) will see a priority alert notification on the ticket notifying them that the response time is past due and that one should be made.
Operational Hours are the business hours in which your company currently functions. There are two types of operational hours.
Business Hours are the hours you have set in your Branding section in Settings.
Calendar Hours (24 Hours) is based on a 24 hour 7 days a week schedule which can be achieved simply by not adding any business hours to your Branding. By not adding any hours we will automatically assume you are a 24-hour business.
Important: To make sure you properly set up a 24-hour business do not check the following in the Branding section for Business Hours
The Escalation alert is an option you can set with your TPD that will send an activity alert to the Agents inbox when the threshold of the TPD has been reached. This will only happen after it is past due, not before.
If there is no Department assigned to the ticket then the alert will be received by all agents in all departments.
If there is no Agent assigned to the ticket but is assigned to a Department then the alert will be received by everyone in the department.
If there are any Agents assigned to the ticket and a department then the alert will be received by the Agent only.
Glad you asked...
SLA's will keep your business hours in mind when calculating the due date for your response and resolve times so as long as you have business hours set then you will have no issues. If a ticket is due after hours it will find the next available business day your organization is open and will push the due date back.
When you set up a TPD based on the priority of the ticket you can do something called an Escalation Alert. This is a feature that gives you the ability to send a notification to the Agents inbox at the time the TPD expires for a particular ticket.
To enable this feature when you set up your TPD for a particular priority type all you have to do is turn on the Escalation Alert for that definition.
Only Agents and Administrators can see SLA's. Regular Users will not be able to see them if they have an account and view their own tickets online.
SLA's work on a global scale so you do not have the ability to change the date on a per ticket basis. It will apply to all tickets.
If your Company business hours is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week then there is no configuration needed to set with your Business Hours. You can leave it alone and SeamlessDesk will function as if you were 24 hours.
If you would like to see your settings for Business Hours you can see them here under Branding.