Service Level Agreement (SLA)

An Introduction To Service Level Agreements

Most maintenance agreements have an SLA or Service Level Agreement component. SLAs establish customer expectations with regard to the service provider’s performance and quality in a number of ways. In the case of service agreements, SLAs usually revolve around response times and how long it will take a service provider to respond when you raise an issue. Issues have to be raised in a specific way – for example an online system or via a help desk.

So You Guarantee To Respond But Not Fix It?

Yes – Most support agreements will not guarantee resolution times. This is because the most severe, disruptive problems (like hardware failures) can take longest to fix and are often outside the immediate control of a service provider.

For example; a server crash can sometimes be resolved by simply restarting the server. That might only take five minutes. However, a server may also go offline because its hard disk has failed. If this happens, it may take a day or two to replace the disk, reinstall software and restore data from backups. Yet both these problems might be classed as 'severe', thus falling under the same resolution time.

Having a clear understanding of the SLAs associated with your maintenance agreement helps understand priorities, how work is allocated and sets expectations.

Vetting.com's Standard SLA Definitions

Vetting.com defines our ticket Priority levels as follows:

Who Determines The Priority Level Of The Issue?

The priority level will initially be determined by the VETTING.com Product Team. However, the situation may escalate, or we might get this wrong, so please let us know if you think any issue warrants a different priority level and why.

How Do We Determine The Priority Level?

The priority level for a particular job is determined based on the Impact of the problem and the perceived Urgency as conveyed by the client.

Our Commitment

For VETTING.com support we undertake the following commitments:

Priority Level Anticipated Target Response Anticipated Target Fix
1 1 business hour Emergency Service Pack
2 1 business day Next Planned Release
3 2 business days Next Planned Major Release
4 5 business days Next User Group Review

So What Does 'Respond' Mean?

In the context of the VETTING.com SLA, "respond" means that we will receive and acknowledge your issue, create a ticket and that we have allocated a technical resource to your need. All response times quoted in the above tables are timed within business hours Sydney Time.