Contract Coverage Times

Overview

For companies that sell Service Level Agreements, the ability to set proper due dates when service is requested is imperative to avoid violation of a contract. The ability to calculate warning, due, and follow-up dates has been expanded to consider hours specific to a customer contract. You can easily configure and monitor Service Level Agreements with hour-based response times.

General Contract Coverage Setup

Create a priority code for each type of SLA that can be sold. The priority code defines the response time and hours basis for each service level.

Customer Contract Setup

Create a contract for the customer to set up the SLA. Use the Coverage tab to establish the coverage terms. Set the Priority Code on the General tab to establish escalation periods that will be used on incidents entered for units covered by that contract.

A priority code must be associated to the contract.

If the hours basis of the service agreement differs from that of normal business hours, the days and times can be explicitly stated on the customer contract.

Note: Service Agreements can be set up more generically at the customer or item level without requiring a contract, however, the ability to specify unique coverage hours is not supported.

Service Agreement Management

When a call is received from a customer, the priority of the incident is set based on several factors.

See About Incident Escalation.

After the proper priority code is determined, the warning, due, and follow-up dates are set using a combination of the Days Until values and the Coverage hours. The Coverage hours can be All Hours (including holidays), Business Hours, or Contract Coverage Hours.

Incident escalation monitors the dates of the incident, so that after the dates are set up based on the proper priority code, no change is needed for the escalation process.