Set SLA targets and business hours

An SLA policy answers two questions: how fast should we reply, and when does the clock run. The first is a set of targets per ticket priority. The second is a work schedule: Rulebase measures targets in business hours, so until you tell it which hours those are, a four-hour first-response target set at 5pm on Friday is breached by 9pm on Friday. Policies, schedules, and the holiday calendars those schedules skip all sit on one page.

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Before you start

• The page is Settings > SLA policies, under Configuration in the settings sidebar. No feature toggle gates it.
• You need an admin role.
• Connect a help desk first. SLA outcomes are calculated from synced tickets, so a policy built before any integration exists has nothing to measure.
• Decide which channels the policy covers and what you promise at each ticket priority before you start clicking. Both are editable later, but saving a policy rewrites its conditions and targets wholesale, so it is a page you want to fill in deliberately rather than incrementally.

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Create the policy

1. Click Create policy.
2. Give it a Name your team will recognise in a chart legend; policy names appear as a filter on SLA dashboard charts.
3. Add a Description if the name needs qualifying.
4. Click Create policy, then open the policy from the list.

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Say which tickets it covers

Conditions are what make a policy apply, and there is one field to key on: Channel.

1. On the policy, click Add condition.
2. Leave Type as Channel.
3. Choose the Operator. Use includes whenever you want more than one channel; is and equals compare against a single value and match nothing when two are selected.
4. Under Value, pick from Call, Email, and Chat.

Several policies can apply to the same ticket if their conditions all match, which is how a stricter chat policy and a general email policy coexist. It is also how you accidentally double-count breaches, so keep the channel sets disjoint unless you mean to overlap them.

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Set a target for each priority

A target is one metric measured across the four ticket priorities. Three metrics are available and each can be used once per policy:

• First response time — from the ticket arriving to the first agent reply.
• Next response time — the gap on each subsequent customer message.
• Resolution time — from arrival to the ticket being resolved.

1. Click Add target.
2. Pick the Target metric. Metrics already on this policy are not offered again, and Add target greys out once all three are in use.
3. For each of Urgent, High, Normal, and Low, enter a number and choose Minutes, Hours, or Seconds.
4. Click Add target, and repeat for the next metric.

Leave a priority at 0 and no target is created for it, the right move when you have no commitment at that priority. Filling all four is usually easier to explain to the team than a policy with gaps.

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Stop the clock while you are waiting on the customer

Pause Statuses takes the status names from your help desk. While a ticket sits in one of them, the timer stops and the deadline shifts by however long the pause lasted, so a customer who takes three days to reply does not cost you the breach. Type the status exactly as your help desk spells it (for example pending, on-hold, waiting for customer) and click Add. Matching ignores case but not spelling, and a status name that does not exist in your help desk simply never pauses anything.

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Teach Rulebase your working week

Targets created here are measured in business hours. With no schedule to consult, Rulebase falls back to continuous elapsed time, so an untouched account looks like it is breaching overnight and at weekends. Fix that once, at the bottom of the same page. Start with the holidays, because a schedule can link a calendar the moment you create it.

1. Next to Holiday calendars, click Add calendar.
2. Name it, choose the Country, and narrow it with Subdivision if a region observes different days. Leave the subdivision on National holidays for the country-wide set.
3. Check the year preview on the right, then click Create calendar.

Then the schedule:

1. Next to Schedules, click Add schedule.
2. Name it and set the Timezone. Every start and end time you enter is read in this timezone, so pick the one your team actually works in rather than the organization’s reporting timezone.
3. Switch on the days you work and set the hours. Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM is the starting point.
4. Choose the Holiday calendar you just created.
5. Click Create schedule.

Finally, connect the schedule to your timers: open the row’s ⋯ menu and choose Make default. A Default badge appears next to the name. Schedules that are not the default, and carry no conditions, are never consulted.

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Choose the week your reports start on

The calendar icon beside Create policy opens SLA reporting window, where Week starts on sets the week boundary for SLA reports and the weekly SLA dashboard charts. It defaults to Sunday. Set it to whatever your operations week uses; otherwise a Monday-to-Sunday team reads every weekly chart off by a day.

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Confirm it before you rely on it

Check these in order:

• The policy list shows your policy, and opening it still shows the conditions and targets you saved.
• The Schedules table shows a Default badge, with the hours and timezone you expect.
• The holiday calendar’s count looks right for the country you chose, and the schedule row lists it under Holidays.
• A ticket that arrived outside working hours has a deadline that starts at the next working morning rather than an hour after it landed.

Outcomes surface on dashboard charts built from the SLA breaches, SLA adherence, and SLA weekly outcomes data sources, filterable by policy. Manage dashboard charts covers building those.

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Related

• Manage dashboard charts
• Set score bands and the contest window
• Glossary