Defining an SLA Calculation Scope

This page is about Time to SLA for Jira On-Prem. Using Jira Cloud? Click the Cloud button above.

The Time to SLA add-on listens to all issue events and recalculates SLAs at each issue event, providing consistency across all issues for all SLAs. However, some projects or issue types may never require SLAs, so it may be a good idea to completely exclude these from the SLA calculation rather than eliminate them with JQL in each SLA definition.

Time to SLA allows you to define a Whitelist (a list of projects and issue types to include in SLA calculations) and a Blacklist (a list of projects and issue types to exclude from SLA calculations). By defining these filters, you can narrow down your SLA calculation scope.

For example, examine the screenshot below:

In this case, only the projects (Appfire Service Desk) and issues in the given scope (Task and Sub-task) will trigger the SLA calculation. You won’t see the SLA Panel on other projects or issue types. This means that once you define Whitelist rules, any issue that does not fit into those rules will be excluded from the SLA calculation.

Now check out the example below to understand the difference between Blacklist and Whitelist.

In this case, the SLAs will appear on all projects except for the one we’ve defined here (Enterprise Applications). You could also define Issue Types, which would mean your SLAs will appear on every issue except those you've defined in the project, Enterprise Applications. Once you define Blacklist rules, any issue matching those rules will be excluded from the SLA calculation.

If you use Whitelist and Blacklist rules together, blacklist rules will precede whitelist rules.

Here is a brief how-to:

  1. Go to Jira > Time to SLA in the header menu.

  2. From the dropdown menu, open Settings > SLA Calculation Scope tab.

  3. Select Projects and/or Issue Types for Whitelist and/or Blacklist.

  4. Click Save.