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SLA: Response timer relationship with the Resolution Timer

  • 22 January 2015
  • 4 replies
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mrenaud
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Hello!


This is a question, not a problem:


At what point does the Resolution Time timer Starts? What triggers it? 


Question: does the Resolution Time timer start after the Response Time timer has expired? Does the SLA freeze (changing to a status that does not have SLA checked) affect both timers?


I am creating a call flow and I am getting confused as how to draw it. Could you give me an example of the sequence of events, what triggers what and what freezes or stop these timers?


Thanks a lot!


Michel

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4 replies

annapoorna.venketaraman
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Hey Michel,


Hope you've been doing well.


Please find the answers inline.


At what point does the Resolution Time timer Starts? What triggers it? 


The Resolution Time would start counting from the time of ticket creation. So, the Resolution Time (in Hrs) would just be the time difference between the time of creation and the time at which the ticket has been moved to the "Resolved" status. 


Question: does the Resolution Time timer start after the Response Time timer has expired? Does the SLA freeze (changing to a status that does not have SLA checked) affect both timers?


The Resolution Time timer would start from the time the ticket has been logged. And changing the status with SLA timer OFF wouldn't affect the "Resolution Time" or the "Response Time" taken. It would just affect the SLA status, that is the "Response Due" or "Due By" time of a ticket. 


Let me know if this is much more clearer now, Michel or you need further information.


Anna


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mrenaud
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Hello Anna,


Thank you for the explanation. I believe I was not clear on what I am fuzzy about... Where I need clarification is really about how SLAs are handled.


In the SLA, we have to define three different fields for each of the four priority levels:



  • Respond within 


  • Resolve within 


  • Operational Hrs 


  1. What happens exactly when a ticket is not responded to within the defined Respond within value?
    a) What stops that SLA timer so that there is no SLA violation? What is considered "responded" from a ticket point of view? I found the following statement searching on the site here: "The timer will be stopped upon detecting the 1st Response/Note/Reply". Does that mean that sending a reply (without changing the status or assigning an agent) or adding a Note will cancel the Respond within SLA timer?
    b) What is considered to be a first "Response"?
    c) How can we notify someone that the Respond within timer has expired if no Agent has been assigned to the ticket?
    d) If no response has been sent, no note added, no agent assigned but we change the status to another status, one that has the SLA timer OFF, will it put the Respond within timer on hold? If so, will it restart if we change the status again but to one that does have the SLA timer ON?
    e) What if the priority of the ticket is changed before the Respond within timer has expired?
     

  2. Same question but for the Resolve within timer, what happens when it expires?
    a) It seems that the assigned agent will be notified but if we want to notify someone else (e.g. the incident manager) can we use an Observer rule or Supervisor rule for that? But if the person to be notified is not an Agent nor the Requester, (e.g.: someone in our management) there does not seem to be any Action choice in the rules for sending to an external Email...
    b) If no response has been sent, no note added, no agent assigned but we change the status to another status that has the SLA timer OFF, will it put the Resolve within timer on hold? If so, will it restart where it was halted if we change the status again but to one that does have the SLA timer ON?
    c) What happens if the priority of the ticket is changed before the Resolve within timer expires?



  3. The other field is Operational Hrs... This one is causing us some difficulties because we have customers in quite a few different countries or part of countries, many with different business hours than ours. We can define multiple business hours but we cannot associate those different business hours to an SLA, we can only associate them to an agent group. We only have one support for all our customers, worldwide. How can we track their SLAs without being able to tie them to their specific business hours?
     

  4. Another question, how can we display the SLA of a customer to the agents? I realize we could create such a custom field in Companies but we would not be able to display it to the Agent, nor use it in a notification, as there are no Company placeholders available at that level. The reason why we need this is that after business hours, we need the agents to know if they should set the ticket to billable or not and in some cases, agents do not have to answer these tickets if the customer is outside its SLA boundaries. We have 80 companies in our database (and growing) and multiple SLAs and currently, the only way an agent could find out the customer's SLA would be to surf all our defined SLA policies and search for which one applies to the ticket's company. That would also only be true for Agents with Admin privileges which sorts of eliminates most agents...


Hope this clarifies where I need to be enlightened... :-)


Thanks,


Michel


mrenaud
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Hello again, Anna. I was wondering if may be the development group would have a ticket flow diagram available that they could share with us?


Thanks!


Michel

aravind.sundararajan
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Hi Michel,




We're really sorry to have left this topic unattended for a very long time. I'm pretty sure you would have mastered these terminologies by this time but I'm posting this for the benefit of other users who might bump into similar questions.





  1. What happens exactly when a ticket is not responded to within the defined Respond within value? 



a) What stops that SLA timer so that there is no SLA violation? What is considered "responded" from a ticket point of view? I found the following statement searching on the site here: "The timer will be stopped upon detecting the 1st Response/Note/Reply". Does that mean that sending a reply (without changing the status or assigning an agent) or adding a Note will cancel the Respond within SLA timer?
         

          If there is no response made on the ticket within the "Respond within" timeframe defined, it would be considered as a FR SLA violated ticket . Yes, the initial response ( reply or note by any agent ) will be sufficient enough to satisfy the Respond Within SLA setup




b) What is considered to be a first "Response"? 



         A reply or a public note by any agent on a ticket will be considered as the "First Response"




c) How can we notify someone that the Respond within timer has expired if no Agent has been assigned to the ticket? 



         You can setup SLA escalation alerts to any agent in the helpdesk in the SLA policy setup. 




image




d) If no response has been sent, no note added, no agent assigned but we change the status to another status, one that has the SLA timer OFF, will it put the Respond within timer on hold? If so, will it restart if we change the status again but to one that does have the SLA timer ON? 




Yes, if the ticket is set to SLA Timer off status, the timer would be paused for both response and resolution SLA . In case if the ticket status is switched back again to a different status ( Not on-hold ) , the SLA timer starts running from the previously paused time 




e) What if the priority of the ticket is changed before the Respond within timer has expired?




The corresponding SLA would be applied on the ticket and in case if the time spent on the ticket is more than the defined SLA time, the ticket would be considered as First response violated ticket 







2.Same question but for the Resolve within timer, what happens when it expires? 




a) It seems that the assigned agent will be notified but if we want to notify someone else (e.g. the incident manager) can we use an Observer rule or Supervisor rule for that? But if the person to be notified is not an Agent nor the Requester, (e.g.: someone in our management) there does not seem to be any Action choice in the rules for sending to an external Email... 



You can setup the escalation email in the SLA policy setup to notify any of the agents in the helpdesk . The user has to be either the requester or an agent in the helpdesk 




b) If no response has been sent, no note added, no agent assigned but we change the status to another status that has the SLA timer OFF, will it put the Resolve within timer on hold? If so, will it restart where it was halted if we change the status again but to one that does have the SLA timer ON? 



Same as the behaviour with Respond within timer



c) What happens if the priority of the ticket is changed before the Resolve within timer expires?




Same as the behaviour with Respond within timer
  1. The other field is Operational Hrs... This one is causing us some difficulties because we have customers in quite a few different countries or part of countries, many with different business hours than ours. We can define multiple business hours but we cannot associate those different business hours to an SLA, we can only associate them to an agent group. We only have one support for all our customers, worldwide. How can we track their SLAs without being able to tie them to their specific business hours?

The association of multiple business hours work with the groups defined in the helpdesk. Since you have mentioned that you have only one support for all of the customers, you can define the working hours of the team in the operational hours . In case if a customer sends a ticket outside the defined time range, it will be considered as a ticket sent during non-business hours and the SLA timer would be paused until the start of the next business hour as per the definition.




2.Another question, how can we display the SLA of a customer to the agents? I realize we could create such a custom field in Companies but we would not be able to display it to the Agent, nor use it in a notification, as there are no Company placeholders available at that level. The reason why we need this is that after business hours, we need the agents to know if they should set the ticket to billable or not and in some cases, agents do not have to answer these tickets if the customer is outside its SLA boundaries. We have 80 companies in our database (and growing) and multiple SLAs and currently, the only way an agent could find out the customer's SLA would be to surf all our defined SLA policies and search for which one applies to the ticket's company. That would also only be true for Agents with Admin privileges which sorts of eliminates most agents...



You can try installing this app from our marketplace which will help the agents to identify when the first response would be due on the ticket . 







Watch this space for more apps like this ( we're also planning to launch an app that will display the actual SLA that's applied to the ticket ) 



Cheers!












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