The SLA’s red headed step child

When it comes to Service Level Agreements (SLAs) there is one important configuration that’s overlooked or forgotten.

SLAs red headed step child – Independent ITSM Podcast covering Ivanti Service Manager ISM HEAT Latest Solutions & Best Practices

When it comes to Service Level Agreements (SLAs) there is one important configuration that's overlooked or forgotten. Holidays and Exceptions You've likely seen me post Holiday message on Instagram for the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Europe, Singapore, etc.  Make no mistake about it, Holidays are important.   Your SLA clock is likely ticking away when Incident, Service Request, and Task SLAs should be paused! It's somewhat of a straight forward process to configure SLA Holidays & Exceptions. There are two types of "Exception" configurations for your Hours of Operation (HOP) Calendar, aka Business Hours: Recurrent Manual Dates Continue reading at blog.a19consulting.com

Holidays and Exceptions

You’ve likely seen me post Holiday message on Instagram for the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Europe, Singapore, etc.. Make no mistake about it, Holidays are important. Your SLA clock is likely ticking away when Incident, Service Request, and Task SLAs should be paused!

It’s somewhat of a straight forward process to configure SLA Holidays & Exceptions.

There are two types of “Exception” configurations for your Hours of Operation (HOP) Calendar, aka Business Hours:

• Recurrent
• Manual Dates

Recurrent are pretty straight forward, for example every New Year’s Day, which is the 1st non-working day of January. That’s right, not the 1st of January, because that could fall on a weekend and then get pushed forward to Monday.

Manual Dates can be further grouped into two categories.

Recurrent Exceptions

For example, Fourth of July in America, Canada Day on July 1st, and all sorts of other country/state holidays have a set date that we can set up as recurring BUT there are exceptions for when these holidays either a) fall on a weekend or b) your company observes additional / substitute days.

Yearly Set Exceptions

Then there exceptions that occur yearly that do not have a set schedule or date. For example Easter Friday, Easter Monday, and in Australia the Queens Birthday is even observed in different months and days per region all together.

Manual Dates you will want to set for the next 5 or 10 years and then create a reminder or task to update these again!

Clear as mud right? Well wait, there is more. Some states/provinces/territories or even countries may observe holidays of their own. In which case you have to either come up with a “blended” calendar, use your company’s official HR calendar, or create custom hours of operation calendars for the states/provinces/territories or countries and use the customer’s location to drive the HOP used for SLAs. But that’s a topic for another day!

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Waiting for Resolution Incident Status

A very frequently asked question when implementing Ivanti Service Manager (HEAT) evolves around the “Waiting for Resolution” Incident Status. What is its significance, should it be used, and how does it effect SLAs?

The “Waiting for Resolution” Status is typically used when a break/fix (Incident) has been completed but the ticket hasn’t been updated yet.

For example if there is a P1 Incident that has been resolved, setting the Status to “Waiting for Resolution” may prove to be rather useful to stop the SLA clock while gathering all incident resolution details from the SDAs and Task Owners, without getting penalized.

Remember that the SLA Clock is driven by the Incident Status and Waiting for Resolution pauses the SLA clock.