About Service Level Management

Updated: May 13, 2016

Applies To: System Center 2012 SP1 - Service Manager, System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager, System Center 2012 - Service Manager

Service level management is the process that you use to measure incident and service request timeliness. In System Center 2012 – Service Manager, you create a service level item that consist of queues that correspond to each service level, plus time metrics to measure and warn for. Separately, you can also send notifications to users that occur before and after service level breach. In the Service Manager console, you manage this process in the Administration workspace using the following nodes:

• Calendar

• Metric

• Service Level Objectives

The Calendar node is used to define work days, work hours, and holidays as a calendar item in the Service Manager console. Each calendar item is a distinct work schedule that represents time available for analysts to resolve incidents and fulfill service requests. Calendar items correspond to at least one service level objective where it is measured by a time metric, such as resolution time.

The Metric node is used to define time metrics against a calendar item, corresponding to a service level objective. A time metric is the measurement between start and end dates. There are two predefined metrics in Service Manager:

• Resolution Time

• Completion Time

The Resolution Time metric is used to measure the maximum length of time that incidents should take before they are resolved. By default, the two points in time that define Resolution Time are the start date as the date and time that each incident is created and the end date as the date and time that each incident is resolved.

The Completion Time metric is used to measure the maximum length of time that service requests should take before they are completed. By default, the two points in time that define Completion Time are the start date as the date and time that each service request is created and the end date as the date and time that each service request is completed.

The Service Level Objectives node is used to create relationships between a queue and a service level. It is also used to define the relationship between a calendar item and a time metric. Separately, you can also send notifications to users that occur before and after service level breach. For more information about sending notifications, see How to Send SLA Notification Information to the Assigned-To User.

How to Send SLA Notification Information to the Assigned-To User