Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

The implementation of the SLA is through Service Level Agreement Items (SLA Items). An SLA may have multiple SLA Items. Each SLA Item encapsulates the performance metrics for an Issue Class. An SLA Item with the Issue Class Default is used if an SLA is in effect but no SLA Item has a matching Issue Class from the Ticket. An example of selection of the SLA and SLA Item is as follows:

1. Assume a Ticket is created in the billing Queue with the Issue Credit Card Expired that is part of the Credit Card Issues Issue Class.
2. Does the associated Account have an SLA? If so, use the Account's SLA. If not, does the Queue have an SLA? If so, use the Queue SLA. If not, no SLA is in effect. No performance metrics will be added to the Ticket.
3. Assuming an SLA is in effect, either Account or Queue, does the SLA have an SLA Item with Issue Class Credit Card Issues? If so, use the SLA Item's performance metrics for the Ticket. If not, does the SLA have an SLA Item with Issue Class Default? If so, use the SLA Item's performance metrics for the Ticket. If not, no performance metrics will be added to the Ticket.

The SLA Item encapsulates the performance rules for an Issue Class. An SLA Item consists of :

• The Issue Class.
• The time in minutes allotted to complete the task and close the Ticket.
• The initial Priority of the Ticket.
• The amount to increase the Priority of a Ticket every time an increase is warranted.
• The amount of time between Priority increases.
• The number of Priority increases after which the amount of time between Priority increases will be cut in half. This will happen repeatedly after every number of Priority increases.
• The minimum amount of time allowed between Priority increases.