SLA Time Zones

[jjarka]

We are just starting to utilize SLA's in our organization.   Our first SLA that I set up didn't work.   After some digging around I found a conflict with the SLA Admin properties that were originally configured and the SLA properties that I set up for my SLA definition.   Our system settings are set to run off the tasks location time zone and   mine was set up using business hours for the CI which is based on Central time.   So in my SLA definition I set the timezone field to none thinking that it would use the business hours I had configured per the customers request where the task was located. The problem arose when a user in India opened an issue and the SLA hadn't run for a couple of hours as it was created in IST time which just happend to be outside of the business hours in Inida, but not outside of the business hours in the US, so the SLA didn't kick off for 2 hours until it the business hours time zone in IST.  

My question is how have other companies configured these settings for a global company?   What other items should I be considering when setting these SLA's up?   I haven't made any changes yet but my business customer is getting antsy because they want their SLA to work, but I want to make sure that if we change the SLA admin property that it will work for our purposes.      

[Michael Fry1]

When I worked for the global company, we use the Callers timezone for SLA. We set each callers time zone on the User record. Using callers timezone in the properties. overrides what you have set on the SLA definition. For those SLA's that aren't 24x7, we use schedules that had Floating timezone. So 8x5 Monday thru Friday.

[jjarka]

Yes, I have thought about that too.   I am curious how you approached different working times throughout the world?   In my situation, India (IST time zone) works 9:30 AM to 6 PM, but in the US we work from 6:30 AM CT to 6 PM CT.   I sure don't want to have to create a different SLA for each timezone.   The other option is that we look at tying this to a CI's Service availability but then that would require us to go through every CI and update them.   Which would be a huge project.  

[Michael Fry1]

In most cases we standardized the schedule and expanded the US hours to meet the requirements. In rare cases, we did create a handful of SLA's (for example) that would meet India's requirements. That would was tied to some services only they delivered. In a global instance, all regions had to partake in discussions about system setup. If you want to get equalities of scale, you need to have some standards.

[sgrison]

If I'm understanding correctly you want to set different SLA schedules based on different criteria (SLA customer facing vs SLA for a CI)   You can modify the system to set custom properties in which the schedule is used.

Read the following thread..

SLA schedule and timezone depending on Service