Defining group SLA policies for internal teams

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Quick Look: Admin Center > Objects and rules > Business rules > Service level agreements

Group SLAs are separate policies between your internal teams that define a target ownership time for a group. They are also commonly known as Operational Level Agreements (OLAs) and are used in workflows that involve multiple teams solving tickets.

Group SLAs create transparency amongst teams by providing a clear understanding of how long tickets are assigned to certain teams. You can view reporting about your group SLAs on the Group SLAs dashboard tab in Zendesk Explore.

This article contains the following sections:

• Setting up group SLA policies
• Understanding what group SLA metrics you can measure

Related articles:

• About SLA policies and how they work

Setting up group SLA policies

Each group SLA policy has a set structure that measures the ownership time that a specified group is assigned a ticket (see Structure of SLA policies).

You must have created at least one group before you can create a group SLA policy (see Creating groups).

Tickets must have a priority set in the system default Priority field (custom ticket fields don't count). If you don't set a priority, none of your rules will be met. You can use a trigger to set a priority when a ticket is created. See Creating triggers.

To set up a group SLA policy

1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Service level agreements.
2. Select Group SLAs.
3. Click Create policy.
4. Enter a Policy Name.
5. Optionally, enter a Description, then click Next.
6. In the Group condtion, select the group or groups for this policy. If you don’t select a group, then your group SLA policy will apply to all tickets and will begin measuring when a ticket is assigned to a group.
   Note: If you want multiple groups to have the same target, you can include them in the same policy. This can help you avoid creating a policy for each group individually.

   

7. Select additional Conditions for the policy.

   Start typing the condition to autocomplete or select an option from the drop-down menu.

8. Click Next.
9. In the Group SLA metrics section, click Add target then select the Ownership time target from the menu.

   

10. Enter a time target for each ticket priority. You can enter hours, minutes, or seconds.

    

    Optionally, select either calendar hours or business hours for Hours of operation.

11. Click Add, then Save policy.

Understanding what group SLA metrics you can measure

You can measure the Ownership time metric for group SLAs. Ownership time measures the length of time the ticket is assigned to a group. It starts when a group is assigned to a ticket and ends when the ticket is reassigned or solved. If the ticket is reopened, a new group ownership time is started for the group.