Service Level Agreements

Transcription

1 Service Level Agreements AN OVERVIEW Tracking Service Level Agreement (SLAs) timings is incredibly important to retaining existing business. Even if you have no SLAs in place with your end users, we recommend setting up an SLA in NetHelpDesk, to keep an eye on tracking of response and resolution. An SLA in NetHelpDesk is a group of: 1. Priority Numbers 2. Descriptions of those Priorities. 3. Timings associated with: a. Response Times b. Resolution Times Those SLAs will need to be applied to Work Days, so that your SLA timers are only counting time during your working hours, and not tracking time when you are not in the office. WORK DAYS Within each SLA, whether editing existing ones or adding new ones, you will need to specify which work days and hours the timings are applied to. There s no point having the time ticking, when the call arrives 5 minutes before you go home! To begin defining Working Day Details, go to N> Setup > Main Configuration > SLAs > Workhours. Net Help Desk Limited Page 1 of 6

2 A. Give the description for your working hours that best describes it. B. If all of the working days have the same working hours, tick here to save time. C. Alternatively, specify the Start of and End of Day Times. D. Specify whether Friday, Saturday or Sunday are workdays. E. Add General and Public Holidays too. The two examples we provide are guidelines. ID 1 is for a general working week, ID 2 is for a 24/7 team. These can be tailored to suit your organisation, add more if you like, or remove the one you don t need. By doing this, you can ensure that your SLA timings only apply to the times someone is in the office, and accurately reflect the SLAS that you have in place with your Customers. NetHelpDesk is clever enough to handle multiple working days within the same organisation, against different groups of priorities, descriptions and timings. You can assign workdays to the Technician Logins as well, and each individual Technician can have a unique selection. Edit the Technician s account to see this option. SLA SCOPE Before defining SLAs, it will be important to decide whether you need: or 1) One SLA group of timings for all Customers. 2) Alternatively, a different SLA group of timings specified at the Site Level for each Customer/Area. To choose, go to N > Setup > Main Configuration > SLA > SLA Scope. If you select Option 2, the first SLA in the SLA list will still apply to all Customers/Areas, unless overridden at the Site Level. To change, in the tree view, go to Client/Area > Site > Right Click > Edit Site & Services > General Tab. Net Help Desk Limited Page 2 of 6

3 DEFINING SLAS Whether using one SLA or multiple SLAs, response and/or resolution times will need to be specified. We offer several examples with the standard setup, which you can tailor as needed for your organisation. Add as many SLA s as are needed. If you have Suppliers with SLAs, you can also input these, and when calls are passed to them, their timings can be monitored as well. Let s edit ID 0 Our Example SLA 1 A. Rename the SLA to whatever you like. B. Apply the relevant working hours, as needed. C. Add notes to the SLA, regarding what it is used for, who it applies to, and so on. D. Specify the Priority Numbers, their Descriptions and Timings (as described further on). E. If you wish to reset the response time every time an end-user updates a request, click here. F. Allow the end user to specify when to auto release the SLA hold. Expanding on point D above, it is important to specify what the priority numbers are, what their description is, and what are the response timings, and/or resolution timings associated with them. Net Help Desk Limited Page 3 of 6

4 Whether you use 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, or 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10, or 1,2,3,4,5,6,9,13,99, it honestly doesn t matter. As long as it means something to your team, then it can be used! A. Set a Priority Number, and a relevant description of the priority. Whatever you like. B. Specify a colour for the Priority Number box in the main view. C. Specify a Response Target Time for that priority number. If not generally used, set to the Resolution Target Time. D. Specify a Resolution Target Time for the priority number. If not generally used, set to 999 days. E. If you would like your Technician users to add a reason when calls breach, request here. SLA ESCALATIONS There are three escalation notifications that can be enabled for your Technicians, to notify when timings are reaching certain criteria. The Service Level Agreements above will need to be specified in order to be used. To define escalations, go to N > Setup > Main Configuration > SLA st SLA Notification Warning Level 2. 2 nd SLA Notification Warning Level 3. SLA Breach. (100% of time used, will be sent to anyone with escalation 1 notification) Net Help Desk Limited Page 4 of 6

5 You can specify the % marker for the 1 st and 2 nd SLA levels. Our standard setup has the 2 nd SLA Notification Warning Level set to 0%, so it is not used. Some Customers activate this, setting it to 90% etc. Please see the Technician Notifications section to switch on being notified when these times are reached. New SLA Colour Usage In our latest versions of NetHelpDesk, we have changed a fundamental part of the SLA s use of colour on the main screen, in an effort to make working on calls easier. After this update, you may notice that where the text was coloured before, the text is black. Where the background was white before, it is now the colours of the text previously. If you have kept the default colours from NetHelpDesk install, this may be hard to read. To change these colours, go to N > Setup > Main configuration > SLAs, and click on the icon that looks like a pencil next to the option you wish to change. You can then Define Custom Colors and use the slider to make the colours lighter. Then ensure you click OK to save all changes until you are back to the main screen. To opt out of this new feature, simply go to N > Setup > Advanced Options > Request Settings tab > Miscellaneous and uncheck the Set Background colour for main list rows. Net Help Desk Limited Page 5 of 6

6 RESPOND BUTTON IN REQUESTS Once a request is logged, from the Time and Date occurred capture, the SLA timer begins working towards the first SLA timer, the Response timing. When an end-user submits their enquiry, they are sent an acknowledgement with the request ID, so that they can track all actions on the request. It sits in the queue, and as far as the end-user is aware, no one person is assigned to their request in order to resolve the issue. Why not set response time automatically when the request is logged in NetHelpDesk? When the request appears in the NetHelpDesk queues, it may be unassigned, and a Technician may be spending time working on another call. Why not set response time automatically when I the end-user? The Technician may work on the request for several hours without sending a physical response to the End-user, either by telephone or . They could be adding internal memos of notes. The Respond button is the Technician s way of saying, I can deal with that. I am now responsible for this request. The Respond button will change three areas; the Assigned To, the Status, and the SLA timings (if being used). When they click it will be down to your internal processes, as what constitutes an actual response. 1. It allows the Technicians to look at their workload and prioritise, as well as removing from other Technicians, so duplicate work is not carried out. 2. A response template can also be used to send to the end user, to let them know that a Technician is now working on their enquiry. 3. Alternatively, by adding any other action, the request will prompt to say that the call has yet to be responded to, and ask whether you would like to use this action as the response. - END OF DOCUMENT - Net Help Desk Limited Page 6 of 6