BMC Service Level Management overview

The level of service that an IT department provides to a company must be aligned with the company's business needs. TheBMC Service Level Management (Service Level Management) application provides a combined solution to bridge operations and services.

Overview of BMC Service Level Management

Service Level Management provides a way to review, enforce, and report on the level of service provided to ensure that adequate levels of service are delivered in alignment with business needs at an acceptable cost. It streamlines the most important task of all, which is the communication between a service provider and its customers. Service Level Management enables a service provider, such as an IT organization, a customer support group, or an external service provider, to formally document the needs of its customers or lines of business using service level agreements, and provide the correct level of service to meet those needs. Service Level Management is a continual and proactive process of:

Defining IT services
Agreeing on IT services
Monitoring IT services
Reporting IT services
Reviewing the performance of IT services

The entities used in monitoring service levels are service targets, agreements, and contracts. The following figure shows the relationship among these three entities:

BMC Service Level Management components

Service Level Management has the following components:

Component	Description
SLM Console	The SLM console manages agreements and service targets.
Dashboards	Dashboards provide a summarized view of agreement and service target information. Use dashboards to see the general health of your agreements and quickly find potential or existing problems with agreements and service targets.
Contracts	A contract is a documented relationship between two parties that specifies details about each contract party and expiration dates, and ties one or more SLAs (Service Level Agreements), OLAs (Operational Level Agreements), or UCs (Underpinning Contracts) to the interested parties. Use this section to manage contracts.
Reporting	BMC Service Level Management contains a set of predefined reports that business relationship managers and service level managers can use to monitor activities related to the service organization. Use this section to work with reports.
Administration	Use this section to configure BMC Service Level Management application settings that best meet your service level management needs.
Agreements	An agreement defines the compliance targets, review periods, penalties and rewards, and milestones, as well as the associated service targets. Use this section to manage agreements.
Service targets	A service target measures specific service goals. Use this section to manage service targets.

Service Level Management roles

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Important

Starting with the version 9.1.04, BMC does not provide support for the SLM Collector and any BMC provided integrations that make use of the SLM Collector.

Service Level Management documentation provides conceptual, reference, task, and troubleshooting information for the following roles.

User role	Goals	Topics
Application administrators	Installing Service Level Management Configuring Service Level Management Managing Service Level Management access control by assigning permissions for the application and its components Maintaining Service Level Management by adding and deleting users, groups, and roles, and backing up Action Request System servers. Integrating Service Level Management with other applications	Installing in the BMC Helix ITSM Deployment online documentation Setting-up-and-going-live Integrating Administering Troubleshooting
Service level administrator	Defining agreements, service targets, and contracts Configuring templates to help service level managers set up service targets and agreements	Managing-service-goals-by-using-Service-targets Defining-the-service-offerings-by-using-agreements Administering
Reporting administrator	Designing, developing, and scheduling service level reports	Using-reports-and-dashboards
SLM manager	Viewing reports and dashboards to gather information about status of services	Using-dashboards
Customer (end user)	Viewing the SLM Customer Dashboard.	SLM Customer Dashboard
Developers	Customizing Service Level Management	Developing

Product documentation

Use the links in the following tables to quickly find information that will help you get started working with the BMC Service Level Management.

Administrator links

These links are helpful for people who fulfill different types of administrative roles in different situations.

Administrator type	Links
System administrators working with installations	Installing Deployment use cases Setting-up-and-going-live Administering

User links

These helpful links for people who use theService Level Management product are organized by experience level and user type.

User type	Links
New users	Navigating-the-interface
Experienced users	Managing-service-goals-by-using-Service-targets Defining-the-service-offerings-by-using-agreements

Developer and architect links

Developers and architects can use these links to quickly find topics of interest to them.

Developer or Architect	Links
Developer	Developing
Architect	Architecture