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Workplace Services / Service Desk / Service Desk Manager
Space / Space Inventory / Service Desk Manager

Understanding Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

What is a Service Level Agreement?

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a document that identifies the agreed-upon services that will be provided to the organization or department from a service provider. An SLA identifies customer expectations and defines the boundaries of the service, stating agreed-upon service level goals, operating practices, and reporting policies.

The purpose of a Service Level Agreement is to define the following:

• the time period that the SLA covers

• the services that are being made available to what customers.

• the levels of service and the quality of service that the customer should expect. Analysis of the response time and completion of request indicates the quality of service.

• the service window and expected time to complete.

• the costs to provide the defined levels of service.

• the method of delivering the service

• the method of monitoring and reporting on performance. (For example, if you are using surveys to gauge performance, the surveys are tied into the elements of the SLA,)

• a schedule for reviewing the SLA and making necessary changes.

The commitment is usually focused on the amount of time allowed to respond to or to complete a standard service request.  For example, the time to respond to a broken toilet is one hour, whereas the time to respond to broken light bulb may be eight hours.

The SLA also helps to automate and define the workflow, such as how to assign a vendor or employee to complete the task. The SLA determines the flow of handling of a service desk or maintenance request.

Note: Service Level Agreements created with the Manage Service Providers and Notifications task (Archibus Foundations) do not define all of the parameters listed above.

Note:There are a set of default schema SLAs that are assigned to user AFM. Customers, business partners, or Archibus Professional Services team can assign them to customer-specified users as needed.

Service Level Agreements: Two Levels of Definition

Service Level Agreement documents are translated into rule sets that define all SLA parameters. The system is then able to route and direct service requests according to the rule mechanisms of the corresponding SLA.

This involves two levels of definition:

• The Service Desk Manager configures the SLA conditions and defines parameter settings for the process workflow. The view you use depends on your application:
  • SLA Console (Maintenance module, Preventive Maintenance, Corrective Maintenance)
  • Manage Service Level Agreements (Service Desk)
  • Manage Service Providers and Notifications task (Archibus Foundations) -- for simple workflows that do not have all the steps available with the above tasks.
• The System Integrator implements the flexible workflows using workflow steps. See System Integrator Help / Service Desk Steps Concept.

Note: A service contract with a service provider (internal or third-party) can consist of several SLAs.

Service Level Agreements and VPA

Service Desk Managers can create Service Level Agreements that include steps such as Edit and Approve, Estimation, Scheduling, and so on. These steps should not be assigned to specific employees who do not have VPA access to the work requests that follow that SLA. For example, if an SLA is for the MARKET site, and it includes an Edit and Approve step to employee ABERNATHY, that user will never see the request in Web Central if she has VPA access only to the BOSSTE site.

When you create SLAs, the views do not check for this; therefore, Service Desk Managers will need to be aware of any VPA restrictions when creating SLAs.