Service Level Agreements
Our standard Service Level Agreements (SLAs) define how we respond to your issues and requests. They reflect our reliability, efficiency and confidence in the support that we provide.
ICT Support, Managed Support & Managed Support+
SLAs
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) essentially represent our promise to deal with your ICT issues and requests within a given time frame.
They show that we have an efficient and mature process for providing IT support and that you can have confidence in us.
SLAs also allow us to manage expectations.
To contact support – GO HERE
Standard Hours of Cover
While some of you may have extended and out-of-hours of Support, our standard cover runs from:
Remote Support – 8:00 am to 5:00 pm (GMT/BST), from Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays for England.
Onsite Support – 9:00 am to 4:00 pm (GMT/BST), from Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays for England.
For managed service+ customers, our monitoring service runs 24x7x365 and significant issues are dealt with proactively by our helpdesk team.
Our SLA timers run only during your agreed hours of cover.
How we work out priorities
Our SLA timers also depend on the priority of your issue or request. When you raise a ticket with us, we assess based on the information you have given us.
We let you know the priority we have assigned but are happy to take extenuating circumstances into account if you think we’ve got it wrong.
Priorities are based on two factors: urgency and impact.
Urgency
Roughly, this is how many people are affected by the incident, e.g.
- LOW – one person or small group of people affected
- MEDIUM – department or a large group of people affected
- HIGH – whole organisation is affected
Impact
Again, roughly speaking, this relates to how disruptive the incident is, e.g.
- LOW – there’s an easy and effective workaround, so this is more an irritation than a stoppage
- MEDIUM – operational efficiency is degraded, but there is either a reasonable workaround or other members of the team are unimpeded
- HIGH – the issue is critical and one or more major business processes are stopped
We then apply our priority matrix
| High Urgency | Medium Urgency | Low Urgency | |
| High Impact | Priority 1 | Priority 1 | Priority 2 |
| Medium Impact | Priority 1 | Priority 2 | Priority 3 |
| Low Impact | Priority 2 | Priority 3 | Priority 4 |
In our experience most issues fall into priority 3, so that tends to be a default. The priority assigned dictates the amount of time we give ourselves to deal with your incident or request.
Overriding our priorities
We aim to be flexible and recognise that sometimes there are extenuating circumstances. Perhaps the issue affects your customers, or key staff have problems with a critical project with an impending deadline.
Our account managers can override our standard priority assessment with a good reason if you have made us aware of it. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with your account manager if you require a higher priority.
The clock is ticking
We have various clocks (timers) running on every ticket you raise, though most of our clients are only interested in two of them (“respond within” and “resolve within”).
These timers represent maximums – we generally come well within these time limits.
In certain circumstances, we will put a clock on hold – for example, when we are awaiting a response from you with further information or approval for work that may have a temporary impact on you or your school.
“Respond within…”
- This is the maximum amount of time (within your hours of cover) that it should take us to get back to you, and confirm who is dealing with your ticket – you get to speak to a trained technical expert straight away, rather than a recorded menu system or a call-logger.
“Resolve within…”
- This is the one that everyone is really interested in: the maximum time it should take to get everything up and running.
Some examples of priorities
| Respond Within | Resolve Within | |
| Priority 1 | 1 working hour | 4 working hours |
| Priority 2 | 1 working hour | 8 working hours |
| Priority 3 | 2 working hours | 16 working hours |
| Priority 4 | 2 working hours | 24 working hours |
| Priority 5 | 8 working hours | 40 working hours |
- Priority 1 – Full network outage and nobody can operate (everyone is affected, and a major business process is stopped)
- Priority 2 – Internet or IT access for the whole school seems slower than usual (everyone is affected, and efficiency is degraded)
- Priority 3 – One application is not working (everyone is affected but there is an easy workaround)
- Priority 4 – Your computer is slow starting up in the morning, but everybody else is fine (your efficiency is lower but you’re the only person affected)
- Priority 5 – A shortcut everyone has to a shared folder is missing, though they can save files to it by manually navigating to the folder (there’s a straightforward workaround, and only one person is affected)
Other exceptions to our priorities
The following are exceptions to our priorities and timers in the above matrix:
- Paid workshop repairs – very often, we’re dependent on the supply of parts or arrangements with you for collections and returns, so we usually allocate a priority of 5 for these jobs as well as these not forming part of your SLA.
- Quotes – we have no timers on these requests, but we do our best to be prompt and keep you entirely up to date.
- Low priority admin requests – These do not form part of your SLA, and we will again do our best to be prompt.
- Projects – When a request involves multiple tasks or sequences, the request may be converted into a project. Timescales for projects are set on a case by case basis as opposed to the standard SLA timers.