Monitoring the Service Level Agreement in Smart IT

Using the SLA Progress bar, you can monitor the progress of tickets against the applicable Service Level Agreements (SLAs), as defined in the BMC Service Level Management system (see How does it work when BMC Service Level Management is not installed? if your environment does not integrate with that application). The SLA Progress bar appears at the top of the ticket, below the summary description.

The following information is provided:

What am I looking at?

In most cases, when a ticket is moved to the In Progress state, the clock begins ticking against the SLA. As time against the SLA begins to accrue, the SLA Progress bar fills from left to right and, as it progresses, can change color from green to red. When the bar is green, the ticket is tracking well against the SLA; red tells you that an SLA threshold is approaching or that a threshold was breached.

The message to the left of the SLA Progress bar shows the ticket's status: In Progress, Pending, Resolved, and so on. The message to the right of the progress bar tells you how much time is remaining until the next SLA is due.

If there are multiple service level agreements that apply to this ticket, the system displays dots in the progress bar to represent the various SLA deadlines. If you hover over the dots, the system displays information about the related SLA deadline. When you meet an SLA, the system places a check-mark on the dot; if you miss an SLA, the system places an x in the dot.

How the Pending state affects the SLA Progress bar

Depending on the needs of your system, some SLAs can be configured to pause the clock if the ticket is placed in the Pending state. Other pending tickets might keep the clock running. 

When you move a ticket to the Pending state, the system performs the following actions on the SLA Progress bar:

• Changes the status message to Pending.
• If the SLA pauses the clock when it's put into a Pending state, it marks the SLA target with a pause icon.
• If multiple SLAs are associated with the ticket, some of which pause the clock while other keep the clock running, it shows you which SLAs are paused while continuing to count time against the SLAs that keep the clock running. 

What happens when you resolve or cancel a ticket?

When you move a ticket to the Resolved or Cancelled state, the system performs the following actions on the SLA Progress bar:

• Changes the status message to Resolved or Cancelled.
• Updates the time remaining message to show how much time was left against the SLA when you resolved or cancelled it. For example, if you needed to resolve the ticket by 2:00 p.m. and you resolved it at 1:40 p.m., the SLA Progress bar shows that you resolved the ticket 20 minutes early.
•  If you resolve or cancel a ticket after the SLA expires, the system changes the time remaining message to show by how much time the SLA was missed. For example, if you needed to resolve the ticket by 1:40 p.m. and you resolved it at 2:00 p.m., the SLA Progress bar shows that you resolved the ticket 20 minutes late.

How does it work when BMC Service Level Management is not installed?

If BMC Service Level Management is not installed on your system, the SLA Progress bar calculates the amount of time until the ticket is due based on the ticket's due date or target date.