Multiple SLA's attached to a contract - how does it calculate

[shonamac]

Hi,

I'm tasked with setting up SLAs in our environment of servicenow.   We are a MSP so have a number of different clients who span globally and with varying SLAs

The plan is to associate SLAs with service contracts.   The Service contract will be selectable on the incident form and may auto populate depending on a related list (we are not utilising the CMDB as yet otherwise I would have linked to CI's)

The problem that I'm trying to overcome is that in any given service contract we could have multiple SLAs.

For example we will have SLAs defined for P1 which are 24/7, SLAs defined for P2-P4 which are business hours but those business hours could cover GMT & PST.

The attached screenshot is only showing one set of SLA's spanning P1-P4, but imagine this set was only for the GMT timezone, and we had an additional set defined for the PST timezone

The P1 SLAs will be fine as they are 24/7 and there only ever be one definition but for P2-P4 we could have 2 definitions for each (or more)

My question is - How would the system know which set of SLAs to use from the list? (I may be overcomplicating things here, but don't see how it would work)

I was planning on using the SLA definitions timezone in the SLA properties "Use the following time zone for SLA" field as we will not have every single Callers timezone defined.   I also thought about using the Callers location timezone but I believe this is calculated based on their browser location so may cause issues if they happen to be outwith the timezone the SLAs cover as part of the service contract.

The only other option I can think of is for those clients where we provide business hours support over multiple timezones I create one definition using a 24x5 schedule.   This again would have it's flaws but may be easier to implement.

Hopefully I've explained things well enough that someone can provide guidance or let me know if this is not possible

Many thanks in advance

Shona

[Chuck Tomasi]

Hi Shona,

It sounds like you have a few options. I recommend picking one method and ensuring the data backs it up (e.g. your idea about the user's location timezone.) Keep in mind that almost every plan has a flaw with it. The decision is how much margin of error are you willing to accept.

[shonamac]

Hi Chuck,

Do you have any thoughts on my question - if a service contract has multiple sla's defined against it, how would the system know which one to use?   Would this be based on the callers location if we had that defined in the system properties.   That's really the bit I'm struggling to get my head round

Many thanks

Shona

[Chuck Tomasi]

Hi Shona,

The system is designed to handle multiple SLAs (OLAs, and underpinning contracts) per record. You can design it any way you like. For example, some people have a 8 hour SLA on the team assigned, but the service impacted is 12 hours. If the task gets reassigned, the SLA starts over for the new team, but the impacted service continues to tick away. There's no need to limit yourself to one and only one SLA running at a time. It's a one (task) to many (SLA) relationship.

[Vladi]

Hi Shona,

I assume, you had activated Contract SLA add-on.

if I understood your question correctly, you want to use a different SLA set (e.g. P1-P4) for a different Time zones. In this case you need to define separate (child) contracts with defined locations, and add SLA sets only applicable for the location set. I do not think you can use Time zones for this, but definitely you can pick locations from your Locations table.

HTH

Please mark if helpful.