A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is an agreement that dictates the response and issue resolution times your support team is expected to deliver to your user(s). Providing support based on an SLA guarantees that you're providing measured and predictable service, and provides greater visibility when problems arise.

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is an agreement that dictates the response and issue resolution times your support team is expected to deliver to your customer(s). Providing support based on an SLA guarantees that you're providing measured and predictable service, and provides greater visibility when problems arise.

You can define SLA service targets so that you and your technicians can monitor your service level performance and meet your service level goals. Atera highlights tickets that fail to meet these targets so that you can promptly identify and address problems.

Before adding a new SLA, ensure you have first created the associated Business hours schedule. Then, after following the steps below to add a new SLA, assign the SLA to your site(s) to ensure their tickets are logged according to the SLA you've created. For a complete guide to setting up an SLA, see Set up a Service Level Agreement (SLA)

Before adding a new SLA, ensure you have first created the associated Business hours schedule. Then, after following the steps below to add a new SLA, create contracts for your customer(s) to ensure their tickets are logged according to the SLA you've created. For a complete guide to setting up an SLA, see Set up a Service Level Agreement (SLA)

Add a new SLA

1.  Go to Admin > Support and ticketing > Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

1.  Go to Admin > Business administration > Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

The Service Level Agreements (SLAs) page appears.

2. Click Add New SLA. 

The Add SLA page appears.

3. Enter the details to create a new SLA:

• SLA Plan Name (required field): The name of the new SLA.
• Business Hours Calendar (required field): The calendar for which the SLA is applicable. Learn more about creating business hours calendars
• Description: Optional description of the SLA.
• Notes: Any notes you'd like to add about the SLA.
• Custom Fields: SLA custom fields added from the Custom fields page will appear here. Learn more
• Impact (required field): Define the terms of the SLA from the targets. There are two types of impact targets:
  • First Response: The time it takes for the first technician response on a ticket.
  • Closed Ticket: The time it takes to close / resolve the ticket.

For each target, there are various types of service impacts (No impact, Minor, Major, Site down, Server issue, Crisis). Define how much time the SLA provides for resolving each impact for the relevant target. Enter a the value and select the interval (minutes, hours, days) from the dropdown for each service impact.

Note: At least one service impact must be entered. 

6.  Click Save.

The new SLA is created and appears on the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) page. Now, assign the SLA to your site(s)

The new SLA is created and appears on the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) page. Now, create a contract for your customers and assign the SLA plan.

Edit an SLA

1.  Go to Admin > Support and ticketing > Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

1.  Go to Admin > Business administration > Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

The Service Level Agreements (SLAs) page appears.

2. Click on the SLA to open it.

3. Make any desired changes. Then click Save.

Understanding SLA response calculations

Tickets are divided into the following categories based on whether they exceed SLA targets. A breakdown of tickets by SLA category can be viewed in the Ticketing Summary preset advanced report.

• Open: Tickets open and pending that have not exceeded the closure target.
• Exceeded SLA: Tickets open and pending that have exceeded the closure target.
• Closed within SLA: Tickets closed within the closure target.
• Closed outside SLA: Tickets that were closed after the closure target.
• No SLA date: Tickets that don't have a closure target.

To determine a Ticket SLA category:

When a ticket is created, and a contract, business hours schedule, and SLA targets are updated, Atera updates a First Response Final Due Date and Closed Ticket Final Due Date given the SLA targets that the user defined. The system takes into account the time a ticket spends in a pending-like status during business hours (Total Active Time in Minutes). When a ticket status is changed from pending-like status, the system adds the Total Active Time in Minutes to the Closed Ticket Final Due Date and compares this calculation to the actual date that the ticket was resolved/closed. If the 'total active time + final due date' is before the closure date, the ticket is categorized as Closed outside SLA.

For example, if a ticket is created on Monday at 16:30, with business hours ending at 17:30 and resuming at 8:00 the next day, and the SLA target for the first response is 2 hours, then the first response due date is set to Tuesday at 9:00. If the ticket spends 30 minutes in pending status on Tuesday, this time is added back to the due date calculation when the ticket is reopened. The system then checks if the adjusted due date (due date + total active time in minutes) is before the actual response or resolution time to determine if the ticket met the SLA requirements to determine the appropriate category.