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:

Priority 1 (P1: Highest) – Where Customer's operations are significantly affected. The Licensed Software or major components of the Licensed Software are inoperable or not working correctly and no workaround exists.
Priority 2 (P2: High) – Where a minor component or function of the Licensed Software is inoperable or not working correctly, or a Problem exists in a major component, but a temporary work-around is available.
Priority 3 (P3: Medium) – Where a problem in the Licensed Software is detected which has minimal impact on the daily operations, or for which a permanent work-around or fix is available.
Priority 4 (P4: Low) – Where the issue is an inconvenience or annoying but there are clear workarounds or alternatives. A cosmetic change is proposed or a new feature is requested.
Priority 5 (P5: Lowest) – Where the issue is a background or planned task and will be addressed when time permits or on the planned date.

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.