We just wrapped a SLAs for every team: Configure and monitor service commitments live learning session! We covered how to set up service level agreements (SLAs) in Jira Service Management so your team can set realistic expectations, protect its focus, and measure how well your service process is working. We also looked at how AI features help at every stage, from before the SLA clock starts to helping agents beat it.
Here’s a recap of the key takeaways, plus resources to help you put them into practice. Bookmark this page, try a few changes in your service space, and join the discussion to share what worked for your team!
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Step 1: Translate your team’s promises into SLAs
A service level agreement (SLA) is a documented agreement between a service provider and a customer. It defines what the customer will receive (the goal) and when (the time). An SLA isn’t a surveillance tool; it’s a two-way agreement that sets clear expectations for customers, helps agents know what to tackle next, and gives teams objective data about their workload.
Jira Service Management comes with default SLAs, like Time to first response and Time to resolution, that are tracked automatically based on their start, pause, and stop conditions.
How can AI help? A Rovo self-service agent works before the clock starts. It answers customer questions in your portal using your connected knowledge sources. If it resolves the question, no ticket is created, so no SLA clock ever starts. If it can’t, it creates a ticket with the information it has already collected. That way, your SLAs measure only the work that truly needs human help.
Tips for starting out
- Start with your team’s promises. Before configuring anything, ask your team: “What do we promise our customers, and by when?”
- Map SLAs to outcomes, not priority levels. “Time to first response” is one SLA that can contain several goals, such as a shorter target for high-priority requests and a longer one for low-priority requests. You don’t need a separate SLA for each priority.
- Turn on a Rovo self-service agent for repetitive questions (like policy or how-to questions) so they’re answered before they ever become tickets.
Step 2: Create an SLA calendar
By default, SLAs are measured against 24/7 working hours. SLA calendars define your team’s time zone and working hours, so SLA timers only count down while your agents are working. Calendars can also exclude non-working time, like weekends, holidays, and lunch breaks.
You assign calendars per goal, not per SLA. So a single SLA can use a 24/7 calendar for urgent requests and a business-hours calendar for everything else.
Tips for starting out
- Create your calendar before your SLAs so your timers count correctly from the start.
- Check the calendar’s time zone. It may differ from individual user settings, depending on who created the space.
- Import public holidays. Upload a regional holiday file instead of adding each holiday by hand.
- Keep track of where calendars are used. SLA calendars belong to individual spaces. You can clone a calendar into another space, but each copy needs to be updated separately.
Step 3: Configure SLAs
Space admins can modify the default SLAs to fit their team’s work, or create new ones. For example, a “Time between updates” SLA can hold your team accountable for regular communication with customers. Each SLA is made up of:
- Conditions that start, pause, and stop the SLA clock. For example, you can pause the clock while waiting for the customer, so agents aren’t penalized for time outside their control.
- Goals that use JQL to decide which work items they apply to, each with its own time target and calendar.
Space admins can also use Rovo Chat to view, create, and update SLAs using natural language. Just describe your business process, and Rovo handles the conditions, JQL, and time targets for you.
How can AI help? AI triage helps make sure the right SLA clock is set from the start. Requests from email or chat often arrive with key information, like request type or priority, missing or incorrect. AI analyzes the ticket content and suggests the right values. Once agents review and confirm, the ticket is routed to the right queue and the correct SLA clock starts. Because SLA goals often depend on fields like request type and priority, accurate triage keeps your SLAs measuring the right thing.
Tips for starting out
- Order your goals intentionally. Work items are checked against goals from top to bottom and get the time target of the first match. Put higher-priority or more specific goals at the top and end with a default goal.
- Group goals by priority. Use priority groups to bundle several priority targets under one goal. This keeps your SLAs much easier to read and maintain.
- Confirm your team sets priority consistently. Priority-based goals are only as reliable as your team’s habit of setting priority correctly.
- Be specific when using Rovo Chat. Open Rovo Chat, enter /manage-sla, and include your space key or name, the start, pause, and stop conditions, the calendar, and your goals. Then review the details before you confirm.
Step 4: Track and monitor SLAs
SLA timers on each request change color as the deadline gets closer: yellow when a goal is approaching and red when it’s breached. A gray timer means the clock is paused or the goal was met. For a bigger picture, Jira Service Management displays SLAs in interactive reports and dashboards, so you can visualize performance and spot bottlenecks. You can also use SLA-specific JQL functions (like breached() or remaining()) to build custom reports, queue filters, and dashboards.
How can AI help? Once a request is in the queue, Rovo helps agents beat the clock. With Suggestions turned on, agents see a brief AI summary of the request and recommended next steps based on your knowledge base and similar tickets. With customer sentiment analysis, Rovo shows whether the customer seems positive, neutral, or negative, so agents can respond with the right tone.
Tips for starting out
- Review the SLA met vs. breached report regularly as your first line of defense before small problems become patterns.
- Let Rovo write the JQL. Describe what you want to see in plain language and ask Rovo Chat to write the SLA query for you.
- Pair SLAs with automation. For example, notify a team lead when an SLA breaches, or escalate a request when an SLA is about to breach and the customer’s sentiment is negative.
Try it: Pick one promise your team makes to customers and create or update an SLA to measure it. Then create a test request that matches one of its goals and check the SLA panel to see the timer in action.
NOTE: You must be a space admin of a company-managed Jira Service Management space to configure SLAs, and Rovo must be enabled on your site to use AI features.
👉️ Check out these resources when you’re ready to get started!
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Try something new this week
Pick one SLA your team relies on and give it a quick checkup:
- Promise: Does it reflect a promise your team actually makes to customers?
- Calendar: Does it use the right working hours, time zone, and holidays?
- Conditions and goals: Does the clock pause while you’re waiting on the customer? Are your goals in the right order, with a default at the end?
- AI features: Could a Rovo self-service agent answer some of these requests before the clock starts? Could AI triage help make sure the right clock starts? Could Suggestions or customer sentiment analysis help your agents respond better or more quickly?
Then try asking Rovo Chat to show you the SLAs in your space and suggest one improvement.
🌟 Share your experience below: Which SLA did you check first, and what did you change? Which Jira Service Management AI feature are you keen to try out?
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