SLA Policies

SLA policy or service-level agreement policy is a policy that you agree to follow when responding to customer requests as a service provider. In YouTrack, SLA policies define the time goals for the replies from staff and request resolution.

Having an SLA policy in YouTrack, you ensure that customer requests get proper attention from your staff.

Business Hours Settings

As part of the SLA for each helpdesk project, you need to specify the time frame when your customers can expect replies from agents. When you create a helpdesk project, it has default settings for business hours. You can update these settings on the SLA policies tab in the project settings.

If you have several SLA policies in the project, business hours settings in this project apply to all of them.

Setting	Description
Working days	Select weekdays when your customers can expect replies from helpdesk agents. By default, all weekdays are selected.
From \| To	Select the time interval when your customers can expect replies from helpdesk agents on working days. By default, working hours are set from 9:00 to 18:00.
Time zone	Select the time zone for calculating business hours. By default, the time zone is set to the system-wide default time zone of YouTrack. Click the Guess time zone button to detect your time zone automatically.

Setting

Description

Working days

Select weekdays when your customers can expect replies from helpdesk agents. By default, all weekdays are selected.

From | To

Select the time interval when your customers can expect replies from helpdesk agents on working days. By default, working hours are set from 9:00 to 18:00.

Time zone

Select the time zone for calculating business hours. By default, the time zone is set to the system-wide default time zone of YouTrack.

Click the Guess time zone button to detect your time zone automatically.

SLA Policy in Action

In YouTrack, SLA policies help you monitor customer requests and track the response and resolution times.

Let's look at a project with an active SLA policy. We'll go over all the stages that one particular ticket goes through from the moment it's been reported until it's closed.

Here is the setup for a sample SLA policy in a helpdesk project:

Below is a detailed description of the settings in the example SLA.

SLA Example Setup Description

Setting

Value

Description

Policy name

Support

This SLA policy will be shown in the list of policies under this name.

Conditions

We leave this block empty as we want to apply this policy to all incoming tickets.

Custom field that defines service level goals

Priority

This SLA policy applies different service level goals to tickets depending on their value of the Priority custom field.

Urgent

Setting	Value
First reply	1h
Next reply	1h
Resolution time	1d
Availability	24x7

Agents will aim to handle tickets with the Priority field set to Urgent as follows:

An agent will provide an initial reply to the ticket within an hour after the ticket is reported.
An agent will provide each subsequent reply to the ticket within an hour after a comment from the customer.
An agent will resolve the ticket within one day after the ticket is reported.
The time frame for processing this ticket will be 24x7.

High

Setting	Value
First reply	1h
Next reply	2h
Resolution time	2d
Availability	Business hours

Agents will aim to handle tickets with the Priority field set to High as follows:

An agent will provide an initial reply to the ticket within an hour after the ticket is reported.
An agent will provide each subsequent reply to the ticket within 2 hours after a comment from the customer.
An agent will resolve the ticket within 2 days after the ticket is reported.
An agent will process this ticket within specified business hours. For details about business hours settings, see Business Hours Settings.

Normal

Setting	Value
First reply	2h
Next reply	12h
Resolution time	3d
Availability	Business hours

Agents will aim to handle tickets with the Priority field set to Normal as follows:

An agent will provide an initial reply to the ticket within 2 hours after the ticket is reported.
An agent will provide each subsequent reply to the ticket within 12 hours after a comment from the customer.
An agent will resolve the ticket within 3 days after the ticket is reported.
An agent will process this ticket within specified business hours. For details about business hours settings, see Business Hours Settings.

Low

Setting	Value
First reply	3h
Next reply	24h
Resolution time	7d
Availability	Business hours

Agents will aim to handle tickets with the Priority field set to Low as follows:

An agent will provide an initial reply to the ticket within 3 hours after the ticket is reported.
An agent will provide each subsequent reply to the ticket within 24 hours after a comment from the customer.
An agent will resolve the ticket within 7 days after the ticket is reported.
An agent will process this ticket within specified business hours. For details about business hours settings, see Business Hours Settings.

Field that stores ticket states

State

The ticket states are defined by the State custom field.

Values that pause the timer

Pending

When the ticket is in the Pending state, all timers are paused.

A customer submits a request to the helpdesk project and sets its Priority value to Normal.
The SLA policy for Priority Normal applies to the ticket.
The First reply timer starts. The helpdesk agent has to respond within 2 business hours.
The Resolution time timer starts. The request has to be resolved within 3 working days.
In one hour, the helpdesk agent responds to the customer and asks for more details. The agent sets the state of the ticket to Pending.
The First reply timer is cancelled.
The Resolution time timer is paused.
In 2 hours, the customer replies to the helpdesk agent and provides additional data for the request. The customer replies outside business hours, so the time goals transfer to the next working day.
The Next reply timer starts. The helpdesk agent has to respond within 12 business hours.
The Resolution time timer starts. The request has to be resolved within 2 working days and 21 hours.
The helpdesk agent only composes a reply to the customer the day after the next one.
The Next reply timer shows that the request is overdue.
The Resolution time timer still runs. The request has to be resolved within 1 working day.
The helpdesk agent responds to the customer and resolves the request.
The request is resolved, all timers are cancelled.

Last modified: 09 October 2024