Service Management

SLAs

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are 'contracts' of service defined between a service provider and a clients, which define a negotiated agreement on how long different jobs may take to be completed. For example, it might be defined in an SLA that a service provider can take no longer than 24 hours to repair a pump after the client has reported it broken, or no longer than 2 days on a less important item, such as a fridge.

Purpose

The Service Management functionality provides the ability to measure, monitor, and manage Service Level Agreements to ensure that work is completed within the expected timeframe.

The progress of SLAs are measured by tracking the elapsed time between SLA-significant work order statuses. When a call centre receives a request, it is logged as a work order, and when the work order is placed in the status that is configured as the starting status of the SLA, then that date and time signifies the start of the process. Based on the associated SLA (response time required) and the work order details (Asset Importance, Asset Type, Type of Work, Work Order Importance, Site, etc.), the Required By date of the work order will be automatically generated (the difference between the starting time of the SLA and the Required By value indicates the Response Time). The progress of the work can then be measured based on the necessary response time for the SLA, and in turn, notifications can be sent to users in order for them to manage the process and complete it within the available time.

For example, If the elapsed time since the start of a job has reached 80% of the allocated response time prescribed by the SLA, an employee needs to be informed. This employee can then check on the contractor doing the job to determine whether or not the job is still on track. Similarly, If the elapsed time reaches 110%, a supervisor needs to be informed as the job is running over the allotted time.

Notes

When calculating the Required By date and time for the completion of a work order, the days and times for which a site operates needs to be considered. For example, if a work order is logged on a Friday and is assigned 2 working days for completion, the fact that a weekend falls within this time frame is important. Working hours and days can be configured via the Calendars section in On Key. Calendars specify the days and hours that a site functions, as well as the time zone in which the site operates.
Because the SLA will automatically determine these factors for a work order, the Required By Date for the main measure and the Complete By Date for the secondary measure are read-only values and cannot be manually changed, as long as the SLA applies. This is to ensure that the dates set by the SLA cannot be modified thus breaking the service agreement set out by the SLA

If the details of a work order are changed after an SLA has been assigned, the SLA might be removed or a new SLA assigned if the changes made result in the work order no longer aligning with the SLA that was initially assigned.

Triggers

Triggers are used to determine when a notification needs to be sent.

Triggers can be set to activate:

When an SLA percentage level (indicating elapsed time) is reached. For example, if an SLA has been set up in which a certain task must be completed within 2 days, a trigger can be set to activate after 1 day (50% of elapsed time for completion of the SLA)
When the status of work order changes. For example, when the status of a work order is changed from 'Awaiting Approval' to 'Approved'
On a set schedule. For example, every week at a set time, contractors can be notified of their work and progress in the report of a report

Business Rules

It is possible to exclude certain work orders from an SLA calculator
Same Day functionality is applicable, whereby work needs to be done on the same day it is logged, if it is logged before a certain cut-off time.