Support for Next Business Day Targets

The target definitions of a service level agreement (SLA) are specified in a service offering.  This makes it possible for providers to define multiple service offerings for each of their services.  A provider may, for example, offer its Email service at three different levels, e.g. Bronze, Silver and Gold.  The availability, reliability, RTO, RPO, standard requests, etc. may be different for each of these three service offerings.  The same is true for the response and resolution targets that are defined in them.

Different response and resolution targets can be specified for each impact level, for RFCs, for RFIs, and for each standard request.  And a different support hours calendar can be associated with each set of response and resolution targets.  This gives providers the flexibility they need to be very specific about the SLA targets they commit to, while also making it easy to maintain the service offerings that their customers can choose from.

There was one target, however, that Xurrent did not yet support.  That is the ‘Next Business Day’ target, which is commonly offered by managed service providers (MSPs).  This is why it is now possible for service level managers to indicate for each target whether it is defined in ‘Hours’ or ‘Business Days’.

To understand how a target is calculated when it is defined in business days, let’s use the example of a request for a new mailbox.  The support hours for this standard service request are from Monday through Friday, from 9am until 5pm.  A response target has not been defined, so we can concentrate on the resolution target.

If a request is submitted on Friday at 10am, its resolution target will be at the end of the following business day.  That would be Monday at 5pm.  Likewise, if the request is submitted on Friday at 4pm, the target will also be Monday at 5pm.  Even when the request is submitted on Sunday at 11pm, the target will still be Monday at 5pm.

Because the next business day starts on Monday, the target will be Tuesday 5pm if the request is submitted on Monday morning at 0:01am. The target will also be Tuesday 5pm the the request is submitted on Monday night at 11:59pm.