SLA goals

Each SLA has contracts regarding the agreed-upon aspects of the service to be provided. Each contract includes a set of goals to determine whether the SLA has been met or not. Each goal can be a specific timeframe (days, hours, minutes) or a fixed deadline, such as a due date or custom field in Jira work items. They are tracked according to your working hours.

You can add goals by using the + Add goal button and arrange them by dragging and dropping as you please:

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Each SLA goal must have all or specific goal work items, a goal calendar, and a goal target type. Here’s a breakdown of each section:

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Goal Name

Start by giving your SLA goal a meaningful name, for example, Low priority work.

Goal Calendar

For the goal to be calculated according to your holidays and working hours, you need to pick a calendar for it. The default calendar is 7x24; however, you can select one of the calendars you've created from the Goal calendar list, or easily create a new one by clicking + Add New Calendar on the list.

Select calendar via Jira issue

Alternatively, you can select the Select calendar via Jira Issue option, enabling you to select your calendar dynamically. This empowers team members across different time zones to customize adjustments on a per-work-item basis, eliminating the need to generate multiple goals for various time zones.

To use this feature, you need to add the TTS - Dynamic Calendar field to your instance and make sure it’s available on all screens you need. To do that, follow these steps:

1. Open Jira Settings > Work items.

2. Click Fields in the side menu.

3. Search for TTS - Dynamic Calendar. When it appears, click the three-dot icon next to it to reveal the options.

4. Cick Add field to screen.

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5. Select all the screens you want to see the field on.

6. Click Update. This will add the custom field to the screens you’ve selected.

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Goal Target Type

There are five goal target types you can choose from.

Duration

Use this if the SLA has a fixed timeframe. Just type a duration (for example, 2d 5h), which will be your SLA’s goal. Keep in mind that when the letter “d” is used in the duration, it is interpreted as a “calendar day,” which could be 8 hours, for example. The deadline is calculated as Deadline Date = SLA Start Date + SLA Duration + Valid Paused Time (if any, before breach).

Negotiation date

The Negotiation date is the date that the SLA timer counts down to.

• How does it work? An SLA ends on the work item’s exact resolved date, and the SLA goal is the work item’s due date that a user sets in SLA configurations. When the work item is resolved, TTS checks whether the due date has passed or not to determine if the SLA has been breached or violated. If you select the Negotiation date as the SLA Goal, TTS will compare the SLA's actual end date and the date given in the field chosen as the Negotiation date.

• If you select Negotiation date as the goal type, pause conditions will not affect the SLA deadline. Even if a pause condition is triggered, the SLA will continue toward the fixed target date. The deadline will not be adjusted, even if the SLA enters a paused state.

Dynamic duration

Dynamic duration is a Jira custom field. When you enter a time string here, Time to SLA will set the SLA duration as the input entered in this field. This allows users to enter different SLA goals for each work item!

To set an SLA goal as a Dynamic duration, you need to create a custom field that will store the SLA duration beforehand. This custom field will appear only in the screens you select while creating the custom field, regardless of whether you designate the SLA goal as Dynamic duration or not.

First, you need to create the custom field. If you don’t know how, refer to this page. Then, you can set the SLA Goal as a dynamic duration.

Next business day

Next business day refers to the next working day according to the company's regular business hours. For example, let’s say a company operates from Monday to Friday, from 8 AM to 6 PM. For an SLA that started counting at 9 AM, selecting this will give you time to work on the work item until 6 PM. You can pick as many business days as you'd like and not worry about break times, as the calculation will be done accordingly.

For example, if a customer creates a ticket outside of the company's working hours, such as at 8 PM on a Friday, the SLA will start counting from 9 AM on the following Monday and end at 6 PM on that same Monday. This is the standard practice for most companies when using this calculation.

No target

Use this option if you don’t have a target date. You can use this if you only want to see the elapsed duration in the SLA panel or see how long you worked on the work item. When you pick No target, the SLA panel will look like this:

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Goal Issues

Use this section to define the scope and conditions under which the SLA goal is applied. Initially, two options are available:

• Remaining issues in selected projects – This applies the SLA goal to all work items within the broader SLA context without any additional filtering.

• Only specific issues in selected projects – Lets you filter the work items the SLA goal will be applied to. Once selected, the + More button will appear, allowing you to refine the goal’s scope further.

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  • Issue Priority – Categorizes SLA goals according to the priority level assigned to a work item.

  • Issue Type – Lists SLA goals according to the work item type assigned to a work item.

  • Request Type – Tailors the SLA goal based on the specific request type associated with a work item.

  • Assignee – Tailors the SLA goal based on the assignee of the work item.

  • JQL – Create queries to filter and retrieve specific sets of work items, allowing for precise control over which work items the SLA goals should apply to.

  • Issue Filter – You can create work item filters and then use them to filter the goal’s scope.