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Configure service-level agreements

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With service-level agreements (SLAs) configured in Customer Service Hub, you can:

  • Use out-of-the-box actions in Microsoft Power Automate.
  • Define work hours, and pause and resume SLAs at the SLA KPI level and SLA item level, which help track SLA items for different work hours based on priority and criteria. The pause settings at SLA KPI level or SLA item level give you added flexibility to define pause conditions at a more granular level.
  • In a case lifecycle, multiple SLA KPIs can be triggered at different start points. The following illustration depicts how you can define an overall resolution time, and also specify SLA KPIs at different start points.

SLA pause and resume.

To configure SLAs in Customer Service Hub:

  1. Review prerequisites.
  2. Create SLA KPIs.
  3. Create SLAs.
  4. Apply SLAs

Note

You can create SLAs only in environments that have customer engagement apps such as Customer Service, as SLAs are available by default in these apps.

Prerequisites

Review the following requirements before configuring SLAs for your organization:

  • The System Administrator, System Customizer, or Customer Service Manager role is assigned to you. Additionally, make sure that the following permissions have been granted in Security > Security Roles > Custom Entities:

    • CSR Manager
      • Connector: All permissions at the business unit level.
      • SLAKPI: Create permission at the business unit level, delete permission at the parent-child level, and other permissions at the organization level.
      • ProcessStageParameter: All permissions at the business unit level.
    • Customer Service Representative: Read permission at the organization level for the SLA KPI entity.

  • Power Automate License is available for the user creating actions on SLA KPI instance statuses.

  • Identify target entities and add customizations. To add customizations in target entities to track SLAs, follow these steps:

    1. Create a lookup field on the entity for which an SLA has to be configured, and relate it to an SLA KPI instance. Lookup fields are created so that you can view the SLA in the timer on the entity form and track your SLAs. To learn more, see Create and edit fields. For example, to track an SLA on a case for "escalated by KPI", you need to create a field as EscalatedByKPI on the Case entity, and provide the Data Type as Lookup and Target Record Type as SLA KPI Instance.

    2. Use the lookup field to configure a timer to help users estimate the amount of time they have to complete a task—typically as specified in an SLA.
      To configure a timer, add the timer control to an entity form. The timer control initially displays a countdown timer to show the time remaining to complete the task. To learn more, see Add a timer control to the Case form to track time against an SLA.

Note

  • In Unified Interface, the Elapsed Time and Paused On attributes of an SLA KPI Instance contain values equivalent to the Onhold Time and Last Onhold Time attributes respectively, of the target record, such as, case and account in the web client.
  • Once the SLA KPI Instance reaches the terminal state (Succeeded or Noncompliant), the Paused on and Elapsed Time will no longer be calculated.

Create SLA KPIs

SLA KPIs are performance indicators, such as First Response or Resolve by, that you'd like to track.

You can create SLA KPIs from the Customer Service admin center or Customer Service Hub app.

  1. Go to one of the apps, and perform the following steps.

    1. In the site map, select Service Terms in Operations. The Service Terms page appears.
    2. In the SLA KPIs section, select Manage.

    The Active SLAKPIs view is displayed. Select the SLA for which you want to add an SLA item.

  2. Select New. The New SLA KPI page appears.

  3. Enter the following details on the General tab:

    • Name: The name of the SLA KPI.

    • Owner: The user creating the SLA is populated by default. You can specify a different owner.

    • Entity Name: Select the entity for which the KPI must be measured.

    • KPI Field: Select the respective KPI field. For example, if you're creating an SLA KPI to define the time within which a first response should be sent to the customer, select FirstResponseByKPI in the list.

    • Applicable From: Select a value based on which the warning and failure time will be measured. For example, if you select Created On, the warning and failure start time for an SLA will be calculated from the date and time when the entity was created.

  4. Select Save.

  5. To define the pause criteria at the KPI level, in the Pause Conditions section that appears, do the following:

    1. Set the toggle to Yes for Override Criteria. If any pause settings are applied at the entity level for your org, they'll be overridden by the criteria define at the KPI level. For the other KPIs, the entity level pause settings will continue to function if no pause criteria is defined at the KPI level.
    2. Select Add to define the conditions in which the SLA KPI can be paused.

    Note

    At runtime, when you pause an SLA KPI instance and resume it, the SLA KPI instance is canceled and a new SLA KPI instance is created.

  6. Select Activate. The SLA KPI is saved and activated.

Create SLAs

Create SLAs to define conditions and actions that are applicable when an SLA is applied to an entity. The following steps are involved in creating the SLA:

  1. Create an SLA.
  2. Create an SLA item.
  3. Configure actions for the SLA item.
  4. Activate the SLA.

Create an SLA

You can create an SLA from the Customer Service admin center or Customer Service Hub app.

  1. Go to one of the apps, and perform the following steps.

    1. In the site map, select Service Terms in Operations. The Service Terms page appears.
    2. In the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) section, select Manage.

    The All Service Level Agreements view is displayed. You can switch between various system views using the drop-down list.

  2. Select New. The New SLA page appears.

  3. On the General tab, do the following:

    • Name: Enter a name for the SLA.
    • Primary Entity: Select a value in the box.
    • Description: Enter a description for the SLA.

  4. Select Save. The SLA Items section appears on the page, and the SLA is saved. You can perform the steps to create SLA items as described in the following section.

Create an SLA item

You can create an SLA item from the Customer Service admin center or Customer Service Hub app.

  1. Go to one of the apps, and perform the following steps.

    1. In the site map, select Service Terms in Operations. The Service Terms page appears

    2. In the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) section, select Manage.

      The All Service Level Agreements view is displayed. Select the SLA for which you want to add an SLA item.

  2. On the page that appears, select New SLA Item. The New SLA Item dialog box appears.

  3. On the General tab, enter the following details.

    • Name: Enter a name.
    • KPI: Select an SLA KPI.
    • Allow Pause and Resume: (Optional.) Enable this option if you want the SLA to be paused during the time the record is on hold. For each entity that's enabled for the SLA, you can set each status that will be considered "on hold" in the Service Management > Service Configuration Settings page.
    • Business Hours: (Optional.) Select a value to assign business hours. The SLA is calculated based on the business hours and business closure that you define. More information: Create customer service schedule and define the work hours.

  4. In the Applicable When section, define the conditions for the entity when the SLA can be applied. We recommend that you don't use case fields that are updated too frequently, because any change to the field value might lead to the SLA item being canceled.

  5. In the Success Conditions section, define the conditions that specify the success criteria of the SLA.

Important

If you specify the success condition on the same entity on which applicable when is defined, a recommendation message will be displayed with the suggestion that you don't use the same entity. You can choose to select OK if your organization needs the conditions to be configured on the same entity.

  1. In the Pause Configurations section that appears only when Allow Pause and Resume is enabled, do the following:

    1. Set the toggle to Yes for Override Criteria to pause the SLA item. This setting overrides the pause settings defined at the entity level, if any, in Service Configuration or at the SLA KPI level.
    2. Select Add to define the conditions for pausing the SLA item.

    Pause settings at SLA item level.

  2. In the Warn and Fail Duration section, specify the values to trigger notifications when an SLA is missed.

Note

The failure and warning time is calculated after considering the business hours selected in the SLA record. If you don't set the business hours record (customer service schedule), the work hours are considered to be all day, every day.

  1. Select Save.

Configure actions for the SLA item

  1. On the SLA page, select the SLA item, and then select Edit SLA Item. The SLA item page appears.

  2. In the Actions area, select Configure Actions. The Power Automate application opens on a new tab where you can configure the actions and reminders for agents to keep track of their SLAs.

  3. Perform the following steps in Power Automate:

    a. Accept the default settings or select the ellipsis to configure a connection.

    b. Select Continue. The predefined flow that's specific to the SLA appears.

    Note

    We recommend that you don't edit the predefined flow, which can cause breaks in the flow, and the SLA might not work as defined.

    c. Select Switch. The following condition steps are displayed for each of which you can configure a required action:

    • Is Nearing Non-Compliance: Will run when the warning time is reached for the SLA.
    • Is Succeeded: Will run when the SLA succeeds.
    • Is Non-compliant: Will run when the SLA fails.

    d. Select [Do not delete or update] Is Nearing Non-Compliance > Add an action. The Choose an action area appears, in which you can configure the action that must be performed when the warning time has been reached for the SLA.

    e. In Choose an operation, search for an action, such as Perform an unbound action, and select it.

    f. In Action Name, select msdyn_SendEmailFromTemplate, and configure the following options that are displayed for the action:

    • From
    • To Item
    • Cc Item
    • Regarding
    • Template

    Note

    To obtain the value for the Template field, see Open Data Protocol.

    g. Repeat the steps to configure the actions for Is Succeeded and Is Non-compliant.

    A sample screenshot of the configured action is as follows.

    Configured action in Power Automate.

    h. Save and exit Power Automate.

    Note

    More information: Configure connectors in Power Automate

  4. Select Save & Close on the SLA item dialog box.

  5. Define as many SLA items as you need.

  6. Select Activate. The SLA is activated.

Apply SLAs

To understand how you can apply SLAs, see Apply service-level agreements

See also

Enable entities for service-level agreements
Troubleshoot issues in SLAs