Creating SLAs

Create service level agreements (SLAs) so that you can analyze the performance of your business processes over time.

About this task

When you run instances of your processes, SLA consequences do not trigger until the associated activity starts or completes. With SLAs you can report violations and, over time, understand the trend in violations. Use other methods, such as timer events, to enable Process Portal users to immediately react to time-based conditions.

The My SLA Overview dashboard is not exposed by default for Process Portal users. If you want process participants to see the My SLA Overview dashboard in their tabs list, you must expose it manually, as described in step 10 of the following procedure.

Procedure

  1. Start IBM® Process Designer and open the appropriate process application or toolkit in the Designer view.
  2. Expand the Decisions category in the library and select Service Level Agreement from the list.
  3. In the New Service Level Agreement window, type a descriptive name for the new SLA and click Finish.
  4. Optionally, describe the SLA in the Documentation field.
  5. In the Trigger section of the window, the default trigger statement is displayed: Whenever the condition is violated. Complete the following steps:
    1. Click Whenever (displayed in blue font and underlined) to change the trigger for the SLA. For example, if you select Violated % of the time over period, the trigger statement changes to When the condition was violated 10% of the time over the last day.
    2. Click 10% of the time and set the percentage. Then click last day and set the time frame.
  6. In the Condition section of the window, the default condition statement is displayed: TheTotal Time (Clock) KP I for <select activities> is greater than 1 day. Complete the following steps:
    1. Click Single value and choose Single value, Sum of values over time, or Average value over time.
    2. Click Total Time (Clock) and choose the key performance indicator (KPI) that you want to use.
    3. Click <select activities> and choose the activities that you want to apply this SLA to. All activities are displayed under the BPD that they are in.
    4. Click Greater than and choose greater than, less than, or equal to.
    5. Click 1 day and choose Threshold, % above threshold, % below threshold, Value above threshold, Value below threshold, or Value. Then, set more parameters as necessary.
  7. In the Consequence section of the window, select the check box next to the action that you want to take when the specified condition is violated.
    1. To choose the Send email option, click <enter email address> and provide the address or addresses of the recipients of the notification. Separate addresses with a comma.
    2. To choose the Initiate process option, click <select process> and select a BPD.IBM Business Process Manager displays the BPDs in the current process application and any BPDs that are referred to in toolkits. The process that you run as a consequence of the violation must have the following input variables:
      Input variable Type Description
      violationRecord SLAViolationRecord Indicates which SLA was violated, to what degree, and when
      parameters XMLElement Reserved for future use
  8. Click Select next to the Expose to view label andchoose the team whose members can view data for this SLA in the My SLA Overview dashboard in Process Portal.
  9. Click the Save icon in the toolbar.
  10. Expose the My SLA Overview dashboard so that it is available in Process Portal:
    1. In Process Designer, open the Process Portal application.
    2. Click Performance and then open PM SLA Overview.
    3. In the Exposing section, click Select next to the Exposed to field to choose the team whose members can view and use the My SLA Overview dashboard.

      To create a team, click New. To remove an assigned team, click the X icon next to the Exposed to field.

    4. Save your changes.
  11. Test the SLA in the My SLA Overview dashboard in Process Portal. If the dashboard does not display any data, complete one of the following steps:
    • In the Process Portal application, select Implementation > Periodic SLA Update, and click Run now.
    • Include the Update All SLA Statuses service from the system toolkit in a process application, and run the process application in Process Portal before you test your SLA.