What an SLA is

A service level agreement promises how fast a request gets a reaction and how fast it gets solved.

• In Reporting the times hang on the issue priority: Normal, High, Urgent, each with its own hours
• Activated per project, for the trackers you choose
• Every new issue then carries its own countdown for reaction and solution

Setting it up

Project settings, tab SLA

• Use business time: count only service hours and skip non working days
• Wiki page: where the agreement is written down for the team
• SLA tracker: which trackers take part
• SLA priorities: hours to respond and hours to solve per priority

Changes apply to new issues only. Existing issues keep their values unless their priority changes.

The life of an SLA issue

What counts

• A reaction is a status change, a comment alone is not
• Only a status change by a user with the permission Execute SLA counts as a reaction
• Solved means closed, any status that counts as closed, no matter who closes
• The end times are calculated at creation and cannot be paused, only a priority change recalculates them

Three states, three icons

• Clock: the deadline is still running
• Smiley: the commitment was met
• Warning triangle: the deadline was exceeded

Same icons in the issue, the issue list and on the board cards. The SLA report and its dashboard block flag exceeded counts with the triangle.

Keeping an eye on it

Monitoring SLA issues

• Issue list: filters and columns such as SLA expiration reaction and solution, hours to respond and solve, SLA fulfilled as a column
• Counter boxes with thresholds for exceeded response or solution times
• Dashboard block SLA Information: overview and agreements in the project, the three key lists on the home page
• Automation plugin: escalate to the responsible people when a deadline is close

Example

• Tracker Task, priority Normal: 1 hour to respond, 2 hours to solve
• 09:00 issue created, 09:40 status changes to In progress: reaction met
• 11:30 issue closed: solution violated by 30 minutes, the triangle shows it

Permissions and requirements

• View SLA, Manage SLA and Execute SLA as role permissions, module SLA per project
• Business time and non working days come from the plugin and Redmine settings, public holidays need the HRM plugin
• Reporting plugin, part of the Enterprise+ bundle