Using Service Builder › Request SLAs and Calendars › How to Create Request SLAs

How to Create Request SLAs

As an administrator, you optionally create request SLAs to monitor whether service options in a service option group are processed within the time period that you specify. Your SLAs specify time to warning and time to violation for the selected service option. To create SLAs, follow this process:

Note: Request service level agreements (SLAs) are a feature of CA Service Catalog, while Quality of Service (QoS) SLAs are available only if CA Service Catalog is integrated with CA Business Service Insight. The terms request SLA and QoS SLA are used when needed in the documentation to distinguish between the two types of SLAs.

1. Select Service Builder, Services.
2. Expand the tree and select the service to which you want to add the SLA.
3. Click the Define icon of the service.
4. Click the plus (+) sign next to the service option group name to expand the tree and display the service options.
5. Locate the service option to which you want to add the SLA.
6. In the Actions column for that service option, click the Set SLA icon.

   The SLA Definition dialog appears.

7. Click Add to create the SLA.

   A new SLA definition appears.

8. For each SLA, specify the following:
   • Starting and ending statuses to monitor. A sample starting status is Submitted, and a sample ending status is Approved.
   • Length of time, in days, hours, and minutes, to reach warning status.
   • Length of time, in days, hours, and minutes, to reach violation status.
   • A meaningful descriptive name; for example, a name that summarizes the starting status, ending status, and duration. Examples include Submitted-to-Approval Done--Warning--4 Hours, Submitted-to-Approval Done--Violation--4 Hours, and so forth.
   • The Expectation Level, the percentage of SLAs that you expect to be completed without warnings or violations, for example, 80, 90, or 100.
9. Review the projected violation time: to update it, click Project Violation Time. After you change the length of an SLA, click Project Violation Time.

   You can associate an outage calendar and business hours to the service. Both of them (if specified) and the lengths of time that you specify for the SLAs are used calculate the projected violation time. The starting time for this calculation is the current time.

10. If you create multiple SLAs, select one of them as the key SLA by clicking the option button in the Key column. If a service option contains only one SLA, then that SLA is the key SLA.

    When a service option has multiple SLAs, the status of the key SLA determines the status of the service option as a whole, regardless of the status of the other SLAs. For example, suppose you create four SLAs for a service option. If the key SLA has not reached a warning or violation when the request containing the service option is completed, then the SLA for that service option is satisfied, even if all of the other three SLAs did reach a warning or violation.

    Conversely, if three of the four SLAs have no warning or violation, but the key SLA has a warning or violation, then the service option as a whole has a warning or violation. With this information in mind, choose the key SLA with special care.

    Both warnings and violations are reflected in SLA Reports.

Note: You can optionally set up automated email alerts to be triggered if an SLA reaches warning or violation status, as explained in How to Configure Automated Email Alerts for SLA Warnings and Violations.