Domain separation and Service Level Management

  • Release version: Washingtondc
  • Updated February 1, 2024
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Domain Separation and Service Level Management

    Domain separation in Service Level Management allows for the organization of data, processes, and administrative tasks into distinct domains, enhancing control over user access to information. This feature is crucial for managing service level agreements (SLAs) effectively across multiple tenants using a single instance of the application.

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    Key Features

    • Data and Process Separation: Domains enable the segregation of information, allowing different users to access only relevant data.
    • Domain-Aware Application Properties: Applications are configured to recognize and operate within their designated domains.
    • Customizable Business Logic: Service providers can tailor processes for individual customers, ensuring the application meets specific needs.
    • SLA Management: SLAs can be defined and monitored within the context of their respective domains, ensuring accountability and alignment with service expectations.

    Key Outcomes

    With domain separation, customers can:

    • Ensure that users only view content pertinent to their roles, enhancing security and compliance.
    • Effectively manage SLAs with clear visibility and control over how they are defined and monitored within different domains.
    • Quickly address any SLA definition issues through delegated administration, allowing SLA Administrators to make necessary adjustments without extensive delays.

    This structured approach to service level management aids in maintaining high service standards and meeting customer expectations efficiently.

    Domain separation is supported in Service Level Management. Domain separation enables you to separate data, processes, and administrative tasks into logical groupings called domains. You can control several aspects of this separation, including which users can see and access data.

    Support level: Standard

    • Includes all aspects of Basic level support.
    • Application properties are domain-aware as needed.
    • Business logic: The service provider (SP) creates or modifies processes per customer. The use cases reflect proper use of the application by multiple SP customers in a single instance.
    • The instance owner must configure the minimum viable product (MVP) business logic and data parameters per tenant as expected for the specific application.

    Sample use case: An admin must be able to make comments required when a record closes for one tenant, but not for another.

    For more information on support levels, see Application support for domain separation.

    Service Level Management overview

    • Service Level Management helps customers monitor, measure, and report on agreed service level agreements (SLAs); SLA definitions encapsulate these agreements.
    • Users can see only content in the domain to which they have access.

    How domain separation works in Service Level Management

    The intention of SLM is to provide customers with an expectation of service within a known timescale and the ability to monitor when service levels are not being met. To learn specific terms and definitions see Service Level Management concepts.

    • SLA definitions and task SLAs have domain fields. However, task SLAs are created only in the domain of its attached task record.
    • SLA definitions must be defined in a tenant domain (or global) in order for task SLAs to be created and attached to a given task (or extensions).
    • Task SLAs attach to a task if an SLA definition exists in the task records domain or in an ancestor domain.
    • Task SLAs always inherit the domain of its attached task record, which includes the workflow running on the task SLA record. If a task record ever flips, the task SLA also slips.
    • If an SLA definition exists in an ancestor’s domain, the definition can be overridden in a sub-domain (delegated administration).

    Service Level Management domain-separated tables

    • SLA definition [contract_sla]
    • Task SLA [task_sla]

    Service Level Management use cases

    • An ESS user in the ACME domain logs in and creates an incident, at which point an SLA is attached. The SLA is created in the domain of the associated task record (incident), which is the ACME domain. The ESS user is not able to read SLA records. These are restricted to the following roles:
      • Administrator
      • ITIL
      • SLA Administrator
      • SLA Manager
    • An ITIL user in the Acme domain logs in and creates an incident. The process above is the same except that the ITIL user can read the SLA record attached to the incident.
    • If an SLA definition exists in the Acme domain and doesn’t meet the needs of an Acme sub-domain (Acme child) an SLA Administrator can remediate. SLA Administrators can navigate to the ACME SLA definition when their session domain is ACME child, make the relevant changes, and save them. The SLA Administrator is alerted that an override has been created.
    • An ITIL user sets the session domain to Acme child and creates an incident. The task SLA is created using the SLA definition from Acme child.