IT Department Ticket SLA Info

Effective 1/1/2022, the attached Incident Management Priority/Severity Matrix sets the target response and resolution times for all of IT's Problem and Incident tickets sent to the Service Desk.  Through 2021, the SLA (Service Level Agreement) for ticket resolution was "best effort."  Tickets are now measured against these target times outlined in the attached document.

While this policy is set for all Freshdesk tickets, it is currently only enforced for Problem and Incident tickets assigned to the IT Department (IT Service Desk and IT Engineering).  Request and Question tickets are not subject to this policy.

Freshdesk will keep track of these target times and place relevant alerts (like "First response due") on open tickets, when necessary.

Action Items for all IT (Service Desk & Engineering) agents in Freshdesk:

• Regarding the top part of the matrix, we may need to change a ticket’s priority when it is submitted and when the situation changes.  Once a workaround is put in place, the original priority can be lowered.
  • Example 1: A ticket marked “Urgent” is submitted, but is an issue only impacting one user.  While it may be urgent to the end user, according to the matrix, “Medium” is the highest priority that can be set for an issue only impacting one user.
  • Example 2: A user’s laptop is broken and unusable.  This would be “Medium” priority upon submission.  After the user is set up with a spare laptop as a workaround, the ticket can be set to “Low” priority until their permanent laptop is issued.
• Regarding the bottom part of the matrix, we should change the ticket status if a ticket is in our queue and in progress.
  • Setting the ticket status to “Pending,” “Waiting on Customer,” or “Waiting on Third Party” will turn off the SLA Timer, meaning that the clock stops ticking on target resolution time to help us avoid SLA violations.  The SLA Timer is only active during business hours and when a ticket is set to "Open" status.