I was recently on a project that included setting up Service Level Agreements in Dynamics and found that they are a versatile tool for tracking the amount of time users take to perform tasks on a case. Here is an overview of what you can do with them.
To manage an SLA, select Service Level Agreements in the Service Management section of Settings.
When you create an SLA, you need to specify some fields before you perform the initial save. You need to specify which date field the SLA is applicable from, whether the SLA’s type is standard or enhanced, and for enhanced SLAs, whether you can pause and resume the SLA timer.
You can configure the SLA incorporate business hours and holidays by setting the business hours field. You first need to create a Customer Service Calendar in the Service Management Settings. You can schedule each day’s work hours and whether to observe holidays. You define holidays by settings a holiday schedule and creating each observed holiday in it.
You configure the actual SLA time frames by creating SLA Items. When you create the item, you need to specify which date field will be set to the SLA expiration time. You also specify the conditions when the SLA applies and when the SLA is should be consider successful.
You specify the time until the SLA Failure. You also specify the actions to take when the SLA failure time is reached. You can send an email, create a record, or update, assign or set the status of a related record. You can also specify a warning period with similar actions.
To apply the SLA to all cases, you need to activate it and set it as the default. An organization can only have one default SLA.
You can use a timer object to display the time remaining on an SLA on the form. Select the date field that contains the SLA failure time for the Failure Time Field and the condition that indicates that the SLA is successful in the Success Condition. You can also set other conditions that will be indicated by the timer.
Service Level Agreements are a versatile tool and I will definitely be using them in future projects.