SLA records in the Contracts app

An SLA record in the Contracts app is a catalog entry that names a service-level commitment you offer customers: what kind of agreement it is, which priority and severity it covers, and the response and resolution times you promise. You keep these entries next to your contracts, terms and planned maintenance visits, so that the commitments you quote in agreements are written down once and read the same way by everyone.

Overview

Each SLA record holds a name, a type, a priority, a severity level, a target response time, a target resolution time and remarks. You find the records under Contracts → SLAs, and on the Terms & SLAs tab of every contract.

An SLA record is reference data. It describes a commitment; it does not run a clock. No timer starts, no case is warned or escalated, and no contract or service order reads these records. The timers that do run on support cases come from SLA policies, a separate record type described in SLA policies and milestones.

When to use it

• You offer customers a small set of standard service levels (for example a premium, a standard and a basic tier) and want one agreed wording for each.
• Sales, service and contract staff need to look up what "Critical, 4 hours to respond" means before they quote it in an agreement.
• You want a list you can filter and report on by priority, severity or response time.

If you need the platform to measure response and resolution times on cases and flag breaches, set up SLA policies instead. You can keep both: the SLA records as the commercial catalog, and SLA policies as the working timers that carry the same targets.

How xMatix handles it

• A plain register. An SLA record is saved exactly as you enter it. There is no automatic numbering, no status and no approval step, and no background job reads the record.
• Not linked to contracts. An SLA record has no Contract field, and a contract has no SLA field. The Terms & SLAs tab on a contract shows the whole SLA register, the same rows on every contract, not the SLAs of the open agreement. See Managing contract records.
• Times are choices, not numbers. Response Time and Resolution Time are picklists such as 4 Hours or 24 Hours. They are labels for people to read; xMatix does not calculate with them.
• Delete goes to the Recycle Bin. A deleted SLA record leaves lists, lookups and reports and can be restored from the Recycle Bin until its purge date. See Delete, recycle bin, archive and restore.

Prerequisites

• Access to the Contracts app. As shipped, the Standard User, Sales Executive, Sales Manager and System Administrator profiles open it.
• Permission to create SLA records (the New button). See Permissions.

Procedure

Step 1 — Open the SLA list

Open the Contracts app and select SLAs in the app's menu. The All SLAs list shows each record's Name, Severity Level, Resolution Time and Response Time. Use search, filters and column sorting to find an entry.

You can also reach the same list from any contract: open the contract and select the Terms & SLAs tab. The SLA list there shows every SLA record in your organization, not only those of that contract.

Step 2 — Create an SLA record

1. Select New on the list (or New above the SLA list on a contract's Terms & SLAs tab).
2. Enter a Name that people will recognise when they quote the commitment, for example Premium — Critical. Name is required.
3. Choose the Priority, Type and Severity Level.
4. Under Additional Information, choose the Response Time and Resolution Time, and add any Remarks, such as the hours the commitment applies or what it excludes.
5. Save.

The record opens on its own page. It has no status; it is in use as soon as it is saved.

Step 3 — Read an SLA record

The record page shows three sections:

• Key Information — Name, Type, Priority and Severity Level.
• Timeline — Response Time, Resolution Time and Remarks.
• System Information — Created By, Created Date, Modified By and Modified Date.

Step 4 — Change an SLA record

On the record page, select Edit in the header. The fields become editable in place; change them and save. From a list, use the row's Edit action instead.

A change affects only this SLA record. Contracts, terms and support cases are not updated, because nothing refers to the record. If you have SLA policies that carry the same targets, change them yourself under Support → Settings.

Step 5 — Retire or delete an SLA record

There is no Active switch on an SLA record. To stop offering a commitment, either delete it, or keep it for history and say so in Name or Remarks (for example by adding (withdrawn)).

To delete, select Delete in the record header, or the row's Delete action in a list. The record goes to the Recycle Bin.

Fields

All the picklists above can be changed by your administrator, so the values in your organization may differ from the shipped ones.

Business rules

• Name is the only required field. Every other field may be left empty.
• No numbering setting, status, validation, business rule or automation ships for SLA records.
• Saving, changing or deleting an SLA record changes nothing else: no contract, contract line, term, PM task, case or service order reads it.
• Case timers, warnings, breaches and automatic escalation come only from SLA policies, never from these records.

Example

A service company offers its maintenance customers three tiers. The service manager records them as SLA records:

1. Premium — Critical: Type Customer Based, Priority Critical, Severity Level Critical - Immediate Attn Req., Response Time 4 Hours, Resolution Time 12 Hours, Remarks "Applies around the clock, including holidays."
2. Standard — High: Type Customer Based, Priority High, Severity Level High - Immediate Attn Req., Response Time 8 Hours, Resolution Time 24 Hours, Remarks "Working days, 9:00 to 18:00."
3. Basic — Medium: Type Service Based, Priority Medium, Severity Level Medium - Respond within hours, Response Time 24 Hours, Resolution Time 48 Hours.

When a contract is drafted for a hospital that buys the premium tier, the contract owner opens the contract's Terms & SLAs tab, reads Premium — Critical, and writes "Premium — Critical" into the contract's special terms. Separately, the support administrator creates an SLA policy with a 240-minute first-response target and a 720-minute resolution target that matches the hospital's cases, so the case desk is actually measured against the same promise.

Training

Practice exercise

In a sandbox organization:

1. Open Contracts → SLAs and create an SLA record named Training — Low with Priority Low, Type Service Based, Severity Level Low - Low Priority, Response Time 24 Hours and Resolution Time 48 Hours.
2. Open any contract and select the Terms & SLAs tab.
3. Edit the record and change Resolution Time to 36 Hours.
4. Delete the record.

Expected result: after step 1 the record appears in the All SLAs list. In step 2 it appears in the SLA list of every contract you open, not just one. After step 3 the list shows 36 Hours. After step 4 it no longer appears in the list and can be found in the Recycle Bin.

Quick reference

• Contracts → SLAs holds the catalog of service-level commitments.
• Name is required; nothing is numbered automatically.
• Response Time and Resolution Time are picklist labels, not numbers.
• SLA records do not start timers on cases — SLA policies do.
• The Terms & SLAs tab on a contract shows every SLA record, not the contract's own.
• Edit is in the record header; Delete sends the record to the Recycle Bin.
• There is no Active switch: delete a withdrawn commitment or mark it in its name.

Permissions

Access is set per security profile. In the shipped profiles:

The Sales and Service profiles have full record access but do not open the Contracts app and have no New or Delete action, so in practice they reach SLA records only through a list or link an administrator adds elsewhere. A user whose profile lacks an action does not see its button. To change any of this, edit the profile under Setup → Access Control → Profiles (the Entity Permissions and Actions tabs); see Security profiles.

Clone is granted to the System Administrator, Standard User and Sales Executive profiles, but it is not on the shipped SLA record page, so no one sees it until an administrator adds it to the page header.

Configuration

SLA records need no setup to use. An administrator can tailor them:

• Picklist values. Priority, Type, Severity Level, Response Time and Resolution Time are picklists. Add, rename or switch off values under Setup → Design Studio → Entities: open the SLA entity, then the field's Manage PickList Values. See The data model. Changing a value's label does not change records already saved with the old value.
• Forms and list. The shipped forms are Create SLA Layout, View SLA Layout and SLA Preview, and the list view is All SLAs. Add fields, a Clone button, or columns in the layout designer and view settings. See Customizing xMatix.
• Linking SLAs to contracts. To tie a commitment to an agreement, add a lookup field (for example an SLA lookup on Contract, or a Contract lookup on SLA) and then filter the Terms & SLAs list on the contract page by it. Without such a field the list stays unfiltered.
• Numbering. No document numbering setting ships for SLA records. An administrator can add one if names should follow a series. See Document numbering.
• App placement. As shipped, SLAs is the fourth item in the Contracts app's menu, after Contracts, Contract Lines and Terms. See Apps, entities and records for how apps and their menus are put together.
• Mobile. The SLA entity has mobile create and detail forms, but the Contracts app is not part of any shipped field app, so field users don't see SLA records until an administrator adds them to a mobile app.

Common problems

The SLA list on a contract shows SLAs that belong to other customers

The Terms & SLAs tab lists the whole SLA register, because SLA records have no link to a contract. Read each row's Name and Remarks. To show only a contract's own SLAs, an administrator adds a lookup between the two and filters the list by it (see Configuration).

I changed an SLA's response time, but cases are still due at the old time

Case due dates come from SLA policies, not from SLA records. Change First Response (min) and Resolution (min) on the matching SLA policy under Support → Settings. Cases created before the change keep the deadlines worked out when they were created; see SLA policies and milestones.

There is no New button on the SLA list

Your security profile does not include the New action for SLA records (as shipped, the Sales Executive profile does not). Ask your administrator to add it.

I can't find a Clone button

Clone is not on the shipped SLA record page. Create a new record and copy the values, or ask your administrator to add Clone to the page header.

The value I need is not in the Response Time list

The time lists are picklists with a few shipped values. Ask your administrator to add the value to the field; until then, choose the nearest value and explain the exact promise in Remarks.

Common questions

What is the difference between an SLA record and an SLA policy?

An SLA record, in the Contracts app, is a written commitment in a catalog: a name, priority, severity and target times stored as labels. Nothing happens because it exists. An SLA policy, under Support → Settings, is the working timer: when a case is created, xMatix picks the matching policy, calculates the due times on a business-hours calendar, warns before a deadline and records breaches. If you want both the catalog and the measurement, keep the targets of each policy in line with the SLA record it implements; xMatix does not copy them for you.

Does an SLA record apply to a contract automatically?

No. SLA records and contracts are separate registers with no link between them. The Terms & SLAs tab on a contract shows all SLA records for reference. To record which commitment an agreement carries, mention it in the contract's special terms, or ask your administrator to add a lookup field that links the two. Once that field exists, the list on the contract page can be filtered to show only the linked SLAs.

Can I report on SLA records?

Yes. SLA records behave like any other list: you can filter and sort the All SLAs list, save your own views, and build reports on Priority, Type, Severity Level, Response Time and Resolution Time. For reports on how cases actually performed against their targets, use the case fields SLA Status, First Response Due and Resolution Due, which come from SLA policies.

Related topics

• Contract records in xMatix
• Managing contract records
• SLA policies and milestones
• SLA entity reference
• Security profiles
• Contract — entity reference