SLA (Service Level Agreement)
An SLA is a committed target — such as resolve a P1 within four hours — enforced in ServiceNow by an SLA Definition that attaches a timer to a task and tracks elapsed, remaining and breached time.
Also searched as: service level agreement, SLA definition, task SLA.
In practice
An SLA Definition has a start condition, optional pause conditions, and a stop condition, and it counts time against a Schedule so out-of-hours time is excluded. Each attachment creates a Task SLA record; that is where the percentage and breach flag live.
Example
'Priority 1 resolution' starts when priority = 1 and state != Resolved, pauses while state = Awaiting Caller, stops on Resolved, and runs against the 24x7 schedule.
What interviewers check
The usual probe is pause conditions and schedules — candidates who ignore both give SLA answers that overstate breaches.
Practise this topic
Related ITSM terms
- IncidentAn Incident is an unplanned interruption or reduction in quality of an IT service, tracked on the incident table so service can be restored as fast as possible.
- ProblemA Problem is the record that tracks the underlying cause of one or more incidents, so the fault can be removed permanently instead of repeatedly worked around.
- Change RequestA Change Request is a controlled record for adding, modifying or removing anything that could affect a live IT service, carrying risk assessment, approvals and an implementation window.