We need to talk about Ticket Severity Levels

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A few weeks ago I created the following post, where was addressed the topic: How to better address my issue on Atlassian Support Portal

Now, as you already know which specific option you should use to address your issue or question, we need to review another important topic: 

Ticket Severity Levels

Many must think that this classification is made according to the "feeling" of who is opening the ticket. Luckily it's not like that. The severity level takes into account what exactly is happening with the service in question and how much it affects the customer's business.

When a user opens a support ticket, they can select between 4 (four) levels: 

• Level 1: Production application down or major malfunction affecting business and high number of staff

Note that the classification level is not subjective. Production down means that your site is down, or no user can access it, or it is possible to access it, but it is impossible to execute your job.

A production down usually affects all the users in the company, affecting directly the customer's business.

Regardless of your feeling when opening the ticket, if it does not fit these specific rules, the priority will be adjusted accordingly by the support engineer.

Opening a ticket at Leve 1 priority will not get your issue resolved any faster. Unless it REALLY is classified correctly.

• Level 2: Serious degradation of application performance or functionality

Serious degradation refers to a significant decline in the performance, functionality, or availability of your system. This degradation can be caused by various factors and can be faced with different system functionalities.

In this case, the system is up and running, but your job is seriously affected by the system's performance. Note that this degradation can be faced on specific site options. E.g. The site is very fast to create projects and issues but takes too long or shows errors on reports.

A single functionality affecting all users can be also classified as Level 2.

• Level 3: Application issue that has a moderate impact to the business
  

A moderate impact on the business refers to a problem or malfunction in the application that affects the business operations but does not cause significant disruptions or financial losses.

This type of issue may cause inconvenience or delays in certain tasks or processes, but it does not prevent the business from functioning altogether.

• Level 4: Issue or question with limited business impact

It refers to a problem or inquiry that has little or no effect on the overall operations, performance, or profitability of an organization.

How-to questions, consulting, etc are also addressed on this specific level.

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The Severity Levels are directly connected to the support level and the SLAs, for each contract level.

Below you going to find a short information table about this.

The table shows us the IRT time for each level, on each contract level.

Standard	Premium	Enterprise
L1: 2 business hours L2: 6 business hours L3: 1 business day L4: 2 business days	L1: 1 hour L2: 2 hours L3: 1 business day L4: 2 business days	L1: 30 minutes L2: 2 hours L3: 8 hours L4: 24 hours

To know more about it, please check the Atlassian Support Offerings

There you going to find complete information about the products, Support offerings, and response times.