Using OLAs to facilitate resolution of activities

Overview

SLA handling of Matrix42 activities is a common practice. To further facilitate the timely resolution of activities, you can use Operation Level Agreements (OLAs).

An OLA is used to track the time which is spent on the activity by each specific role and launch the escalation process if the OLA reaction or solution time limit is exceeded and no progress has been made. You can configure the OLA resolution time for the following activities: ticket, incident, task, and service request.

OLAs are used concurrently with SLAs and OLA time limits usually fall within the period of SLA time limits.

Configuring an OLA with resolution times for different types of activities

To create an Operation Level Agreement:

1. Navigate to Service Level Management in the Service Desk application.
2. Click Add Service Level Agreement.
3. In a dialog that opens, provide the following data on the General tab:

• Fill in the title.
• Change status to Active.
• In the SLA Type drop-down field, select Operation Level Agreement.
• Define  the fulfillment responsible role. This value will be used for filtering OLAs in dialogs the Forward action wizard.
• If needed, define the escalation role. Emails will be sent to this role if OLA reaction and solution times are reached.

4. Go to the Service Levels tab and add as many service levels as necessary. 

• When creating service levels, pay attention to the value you select in the Ticket Type field. This value will determine if this OLA will be available to certain ticket types. For example, if you create only one service level with the incident ticket type, this OLA will be available only for incidents.
• Specify reaction and solution times so that this OLA can be used for applying these time values to corresponding activities.

5. Fill in other data if needed, and save the dialog.

Using the Forward action to assign an OLA to activities

To assign an OLA to a ticket, incident, task, or service request, run the Forward action for a selected record and proceed with the wizard.

1. Select a responsible role. The Operation Level Agreement field is displayed under the following two conditions:

• If this role is specified as the fulfillment responsible role for at least one OLA,
• This OLA contains at least one service level for the corresponding ticket type.

2. If there is only one matching OLA, it is pre-filled. Whereas if the role has more than one OLA available, it is required that a user selects the appropriate OLA.
3. In case you select a responsible role that has no matching OLAs, the Operation Level Agreement field is not displayed. If you proceed to assign such a role, previously assigned OLA will be removed.
4. Click Forward to finish the wizard.

How OLA escalation works

OLA reaction time is tracked until a responsible person is assigned to an activity. OLA solution time is tracked until the activity status is changed to Resolved or Closed.

When the reaction and/or solution time is reached, an email is sent to the OLA escalation role (if it is not defined, to the activity category role) and to the responsible person depending on which values you have set in the Forward wizard.

Recalculation of OLA resolution times

When using the Pause action for an activity, you can select if resolution times should be paused or tracked during the pause period. If after the pause, an activity is forwarded to a different role, resolution time limits are reset.

If an activity is transformed into a different type, resolution time limits are not reset, but recalculated based on the new OLA.