Service-level agreement form
Completing the General tab

Field

Description

Optional. Enter a positive integer less than 99 to cause the system to increase the urgency of an assignment or a case as soon as this service-level agreement becomes associated with the assignment, or as soon as a case enters a stage.

An assignment has a default urgency of 10. The system adds the value in this field to arrive at the initial urgency. For example, if you enter 10, the initial urgency is 20. See Urgency.

Initial urgency is not supported by stages or flows.

Indicate how the system determines the starting time for assignments associated with this service-level agreement. In most cases, choose Immediately:

• Immediately — Assignments associated with service-level agreements are immediately sent to a worklist, a workbasket, or to a Directed Web Access email. This setting indicates that the assignee can work on the assignment as it is created — as soon as it arrives on the worklist or workbasket.
• Dynamically defined on a property — Instructs Pega Platform to use a DateTime property value you specify to determine when the assignee can optimally begin work on the assignment.
• Timed delay — Sets a delay period (defined in other fields) before the assignee can start work on this assignment. For example, you can compute a start time for the assignment seven days after it is created. If you select this option, complete Days, Hours, Minutes, and Seconds fields for the calculation.

In some situations it is beneficial for the application to create an assignment but not realistic to expect a user to start work on the assignment for a while. This computed field identifies a recommended but not binding "not-before" date and time for an assignment associated with a service-level agreement. It determines the value of the Assign-.pyActionTime property.

For example, if completing the assignment depends on a user accessing end-of-trading-day security prices, the start time of the assignment can be set to 4:30 p.m. New York time, when many United States security markets close.

The system derives the computed start date and time value independently from the goal and deadline date and time values.

The Assignment Ready field is not supported by cases, stages, or flows.

Select whether you want goal and deadline times to be fixed, constant intervals recorded on this form, or the value of a DateTime property:

• Interval from when assignment is ready — Enter fixed numeric values in the Days and HH:MM:SS fields to define goal and deadline intervals.
• Set to the value of a property — Goals and deadlines are defined as the value of a property rather than fixed intervals.

For example, a mortgage or bond may have a known, fixed maturity date that doesn't depend on when processing starts on it. A property in the work item, not a fixed time interval, may become the goal or deadline date.

If you entered values in the Passed Deadline fields, enter a positive integer to limit how many times the system runs post-deadline processing in that column. At runtime, this value is copied from the rule into the assignment property Assign-.pxLateMaximum.

At runtime, the integer property Assign-.pxLateExecuteCount records how many times the late event has occurred for an assignment. Your application can access this value; do not update this system-maintained value.

This field appears only when Define from a Property is selected for the Assignment Ready field. Identify a property that at runtime is the source of an absolute date and time value. The value of that property when the assignment (or work item) is created becomes the start date and time for this use of the rule.

Reference a property with a DateTime type here; you cannot use Date properties.

The system uses the value of this property to compute the deadline time (property Work-.pySLADeadline) and goal time (property Work-.pySLAGoal) for the assignment only once, when the assignment is created. Later changes to the value of this property do not automatically cause any recomputation of these times.

Define up to three time intervals in this area, corresponding to a goal, a deadline, and a post-deadline late period. When each of the three time intervals is reached (and assignment processing is not complete), an agent runs the corresponding activity.

The goal interval and deadline interval are not sequential; both time intervals start when the associated assignment (or work item) is created. The first Passed Deadline period starts at the deadline event.

For example, assume the three values are one, two, and seven calendar days:

• An assignment created at noon on March 1 using this service-level agreement will reach the goal at noon on March 2.
• If the assignment remains open, it reaches the deadline at noon on March 3.
• The first repeating interval occurs at noon on March 10. The second repeating interval occurs at noon on March 17.

The Passed Deadline values are optional.

You can use properties to define the goal time and deadline time.

Four fields define the interval. Enter a positive number into at least one of the three fields; they are additive.

Enter the number of days after the assignment is created until the start date and time value.

Enter the number of hours (0 to 23), minutes (0 to 59) and seconds (0 to 59) after the assignment is created until the start date and time value.

This row appears only when you select Set to the value of a property in the previous field. Identify two properties of type DateTime that contain the absolute goal and deadline dates times when this service rule is first applied to an assignment or work item. You cannot use properties to define the interval duration, only the goal or deadline end date and time.

Take care to design your application so that these property values are in the future at that moment, or escalation occurs as soon as the assignment is created.

If you selected Interval from when assignment is ready, check this box to interpret the interval in business days, using information from a calendar of workdays and holidays defined by a Calendar data instance (Data-Admin-Calendar class). If you leave this box cleared, the calculation is based on calendar days.

Optional. Enter a positive integer between 1 and 99 in any of these three fields to cause the urgency of an assignment to increase if the assignment remains unprocessed when the time is reached. (The system limits the urgency to a maximum value of 100.)

• Goal — If an assignment remains open when the goal time is reached, the system adds this value to urgency value of the assignment.
• Deadline — If an assignment remains open when the deadline time is reached, the system adds this value to urgency value of the assignment.
• Repeating Interval — If an assignment remains open when any repeating interval ends, the system adds this value to urgency value of the assignment, once for each repeating interval.

Click the Edit link to open the Perform Action window. In the Select Action... drop-down menu, a list of common SLA escalation actions appears. Specify those actions to execute automatically, and complete the When field to indicate when to perform the action, such as when an assignment remains unperformed, or a work item remains open, after a deadline, goal, or repeating interval time is reached. All data are optional.

To specify actions other than those that appear in the drop-down menu, select Run Activity.

Parameters for the action appear below the When field. Specify the parameter values in the displayed fields.

Click the Add icon to specify additional escalation actions and when they execute.

Take care to design the escalation actions in an order that makes sense for the application. For example, if an action terminates processing, any following actions will not execute.

To edit a configured action, click the Edit link beside the action.

To re-order the actions, drag and drop an action to a new location.

Escalation activities are performed in background by a Java thread of the Pega-ProCom agent; these activities cannot include user interaction. Two standard activities are available:

• Work-.SendEmailToManagerOnDeadlineTime
• Work-.SendEmailToManageronGoalTime

If you selected to notify an assignee or a manager as the escalation action, you can also enable push notifications for a mobile app when a goal, deadline or passed deadline interval expires. For more information, see Enabling notifications for a case type.