# Business Schedule & SLA

The **Business Schedule & SLA** settings help you define how and when your team is expected to respond to and resolve customer requests.

* **SLA (Service Level Agreement)** defines the target response and resolution times for incoming requests, based on conditions like request type, assignee, priority, or customer segment.
* **Business Schedule** defines your team’s working hours and holidays, ensuring SLA timers are only active during those periods.

Together, these settings allow ClearFeed to track performance against SLAs accurately, send timely reminders, and highlight any breaches—helping your team stay responsive and accountable to customer expectations.

You can customize SLA policies and business hours for each [Collection](https://docs.clearfeed.ai/clearfeed-help-center/clearfeed-helpdesk/collections), and monitor your team's performance through curated metrics available in the [Insights](https://docs.clearfeed.ai/clearfeed-help-center/clearfeed-helpdesk/insights) section.

To access and customize Business Schedule & SLA, go to the ClearFeed web app, click on *More* in the left navigation bar, and select [**Business Schedule & SLA**](https://docs.clearfeed.ai/clearfeed-help-center/clearfeed-helpdesk/sla-management)

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## **Business Schedules**

A **Business Schedule** defines your team’s working hours and holidays. SLA targets like First Response Time and Resolution Time are calculated only during these hours. You can create multiple schedules (e.g., for different regions or weekend support) and assign them to specific Collections for precise SLA tracking.

### Key Capabilities

#### **Create a Business Schedule**

* Click on Create Schedule
* Set the Time Zone
* Set Working Days and Working Hours which should be considered for calculation of Support Metrics.
* Add Holidays (While calculating the support metrics, ClearFeed would skip the holidays you have configured)
  * Click Add Holiday inside a schedule
  * Enter the Holiday Name
  * Select the Start and End Dates
  * Both dates are considered as Holiday(s)

<figure><img src="https://3455705434-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2FE2O2wTaNovd6fXpEuLKz%2Fuploads%2Fgit-blob-5b5de768f1ee1efd082d899898744724fb25d2db%2FScreenRecording2025-02-05172708-ezgif.com-optimize.gif?alt=media" alt="" width="563"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

#### **Manage Existing Schedules**

* Click **Edit** to update schedule settings
* Use the **3-dot menu** to **Delete** or **Clone** a schedule

{% hint style="warning" %}
Business Schedules that are linked to a Collection cannot be deleted. Please unlink the schedule from the Collection first if you wish to delete it.
{% endhint %}

#### Assign Business Schedule to Collections

To ensure your response time are calculated correctly, you need to link each Collection with the appropriate Business Schedule. This helps determine working hours and holidays used for tracking and reporting.

You can follow the below steps to Assign Business Schedule to Collections:

1. Navigate to More → Business Schedule & SLA from the left navigation bar in the ClearFeed Web App.
2. Click on the ‘Assign Collection’ button
3. Define the Business Schedule for the Collection(s). A Collection can be linked to only one Business Schedule at a time.
4. Click Save to link the Collection with their corresponding Business Schedule as shown.

## **SLA Policies**

SLA (Service Level Agreement) Policies establish target timeframes for your team's response and resolution of support requests. These targets—**First Response Time**, **Resolution Time** and **One Touch Resolution**—are calculated based on the Business Schedule associated with each Collection.

### Core Metrics

* **First Response Time** - The time gap between when the requestor raised a request and when the **responder** sends their first response.
  * A **responder** is someone identified as a **Responder** in your Collection (for internal helpdesk, or for customer support with agent based billing model, this typically means users with the **Agent** role; for usage-based/channel-based setups, this can include all users from configured domains). Replies from users who are **not** configured as responders/agents **do not** stop or reset First Response SLA timers.
  * As a result, if an internal team member who is not an Agent/Responder replies in the thread, the ticket will remain in the **Open** state and SLA timers (including breach notifications) will continue to run until a responder/agent replies.
* **Resolution Time** - Resolution time refers to the total time required to Solve a request.
* **One Touch Resolution** - This metric allows you to add the total number of responder responses within which the responder can resolve or close the query.

{% hint style="success" %}

* One Touch Resolution can only be configured based on priority.
* First Response Time and Resolution Time targets can be defined using various Ticket Properties.
  {% endhint %}

{% hint style="warning" %}
**For Internal Helpdesk Only**

* Metrics such as **Number of Requests**, **Response Time**, and **Resolution Time** are calculated **only for tickets**. Messages that are **not converted into tickets** are **not included** in these metrics.
* Clearfeed **by default** calculates the key metrics like **First Response Time, Response Time, Resolution Time and First Resolution Time** from the moment a **request is initially created**, even if a ticket is created later. If your team prefers to calculate these metrics **starting from when a ticket is created** (rather than from request creation), this is supported as an optional configuration. To enable this, please **contact the Clearfeed Support team**. **⚠️ Important Notes About This Configuratio**
  * ✅ **Only affects future tickets**: Switching this setting **does not retroactively update** metrics for existing tickets. Metrics for past tickets will remain based on request creation time.
  * 🚫 **Non-Open Tickets**: If a ticket is created in a **non-open state**, **First Response Time** will **not apply**, and the ticket **won’t be included** in First Response metrics.
  * 🌐 **Account-wide setting**: This change applies at the **account level** — affecting **all collections** and all related metrics (**Response Time**, **Resolution Time**, etc.).
    {% endhint %}

### **Create SLA Policies**

* Click **Create SLA Policy**
* Enter a **Policy Name**
* Configure One Touch Resolution (optional):
  * Toggle the feature on
  * Specify response limits for each priority level
* Set up First Response Time and Resolution Time targets (optional):
  * Toggle the feature on
  * A Default SLA Target will automatically be added as a fallback
  * Click **Add SLA Target** to create condition-based rules
  * Add multiple rules as needed.

    <div data-gb-custom-block data-tag="hint" data-style="info" class="hint hint-info"><p>SLA targets cannot be set directly based on keywords in the request title or content. To achieve keyword-based SLA assignment, use <a href="../automations#auto-fill-fields">automations (Auto Fill Fields Action)</a> to extract relevant information (such as category or urgency) into a custom field, and then use that custom field as a condition in your SLA policy. For example, you can configure an automation to detect keywords and auto-populate a 'Category' or 'Urgency' custom field, which can then drive different SLA targets.</p></div>
* Click **Save**

{% hint style="info" %}

* Rules are evaluated sequentially in the order displayed in the Ul, and the SLA Target is assigned based on the first rule that matches.
* SLA will be recalculated whenever a field used in the conditions is modified, and the SLA Target changes as a result.
* SLA settings only apply during business days and hours.
* Read more about how the metrics are calculated [here](https://docs.clearfeed.ai/clearfeed-help-center/insights#sla-metrics).
* The SLA can be configured at minutes or hours granularity.
  {% endhint %}

{% hint style="success" %}
**Pro Tip:** If you set up a service level target for the first response at 60 minutes, then you should set up a [workflow](https://docs.clearfeed.ai/clearfeed-help-center/clearfeed-helpdesk/workflows) driving an alert of no response to a request at 45 minutes to the triage channel or a shared Slack channel so that the team can be alerted and respond to the same in time.
{% endhint %}

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#### **Manage Existing SLA Policies**

* Click **Edit** to update an SLA policy
* Use the **3-dot menu** to **Delete** or **Clone** an SLA policy

{% hint style="warning" %}
SLA Policy that is linked to a Collection cannot be deleted. Please unlink the SLA Policy from the Collection first if you wish to delete it.
{% endhint %}

#### **Link SLA Policies to Collections**

To enforce the right SLA targets, the Collection needs to be linked with a set of SLA Policies. This ensures request-specific targets are applied during tracking and reporting.

Steps to Assign SLA Policies to Collections:

* Navigate to **More → Business Schedule & SLA** from the left navigation bar in the ClearFeed Web App
* Click on the **Assign Collection** button under the SLA tab
* Select the Collection(s) you want to link with these SLA policies
* Click **Save** to confirm the association

#### Pausing Resolution Time

ClearFeed gives you the option to pause the timer when a ticket is moved to the **Pending** state. This is useful when the team is waiting on a customer or external dependency, and the resolution timeline should be adjusted accordingly.

When this setting is enabled, the time a ticket spends in the **Pending** state is **excluded** from the Resolution Time SLA calculation. This ensures a more accurate measure of your team’s active resolution efforts.

**How to Enable**

1. Go to **Settings** from the left navigation bar on the ClearFeed Web App.
2. Click on the **Additional Settings** tab.
3. Enable the checkbox for **Pause Resolution Time in Pending State**.

<figure><img src="https://3455705434-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2FE2O2wTaNovd6fXpEuLKz%2Fuploads%2Fgit-blob-fc32a7d0a21f3debfd03a40cf802c9ebe7472087%2FScreenshot%202025-04-07%20125228.png?alt=media" alt="" width="563"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

{% hint style="info" %}
**Notes**

* This only affects the **Resolution Time** SLA. First Response Time remains unaffected.
* This setting applies across all Collections in the Account.
  {% endhint %}