Service Management (services, SLAs, contracts) Module
IT Service Management (ITSM) is a process-based practice intended to align the delivery of IT services with needs of the enterprise. Part of this, is the management of the service catalog that defines services, SLA and contracts with the end users (or customers).
This module allows a service manager to define all the pieces of the service catalog:
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Service
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Service subcategories
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SLA & SLT
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Customer contracts
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Provider contracts
The service management is integrated with the ticket management system:
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When creating a ticket for a given customer, the agent can select the service amongst the list of services defined for this customer.
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Ticket deadlines are computed depending on the SLA signed with the customer.
There is two alternatives to manage the service catalog in iTop:
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Service Management (services, SLAs, contracts)
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Service Management (services, SLAs, contracts) for Service providers
The first one is used to manage service within a single company, whereas the second is desgined for service providers. Both modules provides the same elements to be managed, the differences are the relationships between those elements. In the sections below we describe those differences.
Contract Type
The contract type allows you to define a typology for the customer and provider contract in order to regroup them. For instance:
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Hardware contract
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Maintenance contract
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Outsourcing contract
Contract Type Properties
Name | Type | Mandatory? |
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Name | Alphanumeric string | Yes |
Customer Contract
A customer contract allows you to define which services have been purchased (requested) by a customer and what are the SLA corresponding to those services. By default, no coverage window is defined in iTop.
It is possible to document several contracts for a given customer. For each customer contracts you can link documents, and contacts related to it.
Customer Contract Properties
Name | Type | Mandatory? |
---|---|---|
Name | Alphanumeric string | Yes |
Customer | Foreign key to a(n) Organization | Yes |
Description | Multiline character string | No |
Start date | Date (year-month-day) | No |
End date | Date (year-month-day) | No |
Cost | Alphanumeric string | No |
Cost Currency | Possible values: Dollars, Euros | No |
Billing frequency | Alphanumeric string | No |
Cost unit | Alphanumeric string | No |
Provider | Foreign key to a(n) Organization | Yes |
Status | Possible values: implementation, obsolete, production | No |
Contract type | Foreign key to a(n) Contract Type | No |
Tabs
Tab | Description |
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Contacts | All the contacts for this customer contract |
Documents | All the documents for this customer contract |
Services | All the services purchased for this contract |
Tab | Description |
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Provider contracts | All the provider contracts to support this service |
Depends on CIs | All the configuration items that are used to provide this service |
Creating a Customer Contract
The menu “Customer contract” provides a list of already defined customer contracts. Just click on the button “New” to create a new one.
The tab “Services” display the list of services provided to the customer for this contrat. You can specify for each service which SLA is applicable.
Delivery Model
A delivery model defines which teams are providing support and services to a set of organizations (customers). It can be used also to document key people with their role: * Service Manager * Chief technology officer * Helpdesk manager
Several customers can share the same delivery model. Nevertheless, it may be useful to define several delivery models, especially if you want to limit the number of teams to which you can assign a ticket.
The delivery model of a given customer is used to identify to which team you can assign a ticket for this one.
Delivery Model Properties
Name | Type | Mandatory? |
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Name | Alphanumeric string | Yes |
Organization | Foreign key to a(n) Organization | Yes |
Description | Multiline character string | No |
Tabs
Tab | Description |
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Contacts | All the contacts (Teams and Person) for this delivery model |
Customers | All the customers having this delivering model |
Creating a Delivery Model
The menu “Delivery models” provides a list of already defined delivery models. Just click on the button “New” to create a new one.
Provider Contract
A provider contract allows you to document all the contracts you have with your providers (Support, maintenance, hardware contracts, etc.) This helps you to retrieve quickly such information and better manage the contract renewal process.
You can also link configuration items that are covered by a provider contract. For each customer contracts you can link documents, and contacts related to it.
Provider Contract Properties
Name | Type | Mandatory? |
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Name | Alphanumeric string | Yes |
Customer | Foreign key to a(n) Organization | Yes |
Description | Multiline character string | No |
Start date | Date (year-month-day) | No |
End date | Date (year-month-day) | No |
Contract type | Foreign key to a(n) Contract Type | No |
Cost | Alphanumeric string | No |
Cost Currency | Possible values: Dollars, Euros | No |
Billing frequency | Alphanumeric string | No |
Cost unit | Alphanumeric string | No |
Provider | Foreign key to a(n) Organization | Yes |
SLA | Alphanumeric string | No |
Service hours | Alphanumeric string | No |
Status | Possible values: implementation, obsolete, production | No |
Tabs
Tab | Description |
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Contacts | All the contacts for this customer contract |
Documents | All the documents for this customer contract |
CIs | All the configuration items covered by this provider contract |
Creating a Provider Contract
The menu “Provider contract” provides a list of already defined provider contracts. Just click on the button “New” to create a new one.
SLA
A service level agreement (SLA) is a group of SLT. It defines the agreement between a provider and a customer for a given set of services.
Each IT department can define its own list of SLAs.
SLA Properties
Name | Type | Mandatory? |
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Name | Alphanumeric string | Yes |
Provider | Foreign key to a(n) Organization | Yes |
description | Multiline character string | No |
Tabs
Tab | Description |
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SLTs | All the service level targets for this SLA |
Customer contracts | All the customer contracts using this SLA |
Creating a SLA
The menu “SLA” provides a list of already defined service level agreements. Just click on the button “New” to create a new one.
SLT
A service level target (SLT) allows you to define metrics for agreements that have to be respected. By default, iTop is proposed with two types of metrics:
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Time to own (TTO): This is time between the creation of a ticket and the time to take it into account (assign it to an agent)
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Time to resolve (TTR): This is the time between the creation of a ticket and the time to resolve it
A SLT is defined by:
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a name
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the type of metric
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the type of request
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the priority of the request
SLT Properties
Name | Type | Mandatory? |
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Name | Alphanumeric string | Yes |
Priority | Possible values: critical, high, medium, low | No |
Request type | Possible values: incident, service request | No |
Metric | Possible values: TTO, TTR | No |
Value | Numeric value (could be negative) | No |
Unit | Possible values: hours, minutes | No |
Creating a SLT
The menu “SLT” provides a list of already defined service level targets. Just click on the button “New” to create a new one.
Service
The services are the basis of the service catalog. They are used to document all the services that can be provided by one or several IT Departments. For example:
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Application management
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Desktop and End user management
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Network management
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System management
Each IT provider can define its own list of services. Services are used to characterize a user request or an incident.
Services can be grouped into service families.
For each service you can document:
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the configuration items required to deliver the service
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the provider contracts, on which the service is depending
Service Properties
Name | Type | Mandatory? |
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Name | Alphanumeric string | Yes |
Provider | Foreign key to a(n) Organization | Yes |
Service Family | Foreign key to a(n) Service Family | No |
Description | Multiline character string | No |
Status | Possible values: implementation, obsolete, production | No |
Tabs
Tab | Description |
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Service sub categories | All the sub categories for this service |
Documents | All the documents linked to the service |
Contacts | All the contacts for this service |
Customer contracts | All the customer contracts that have purchased this service |
Provider contracts | All the provider contracts to support this service |
Depends on CIs | All the configuration items that are used to provide this service |
Creating a Service
The menu “Service” provides a list of services. Just click on the button “New” to create a new one.
Service Family
Service Family Properties
Name | Type | Mandatory? |
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Name | Alphanumeric string | Yes |
Tabs
Tab | Description |
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Services | All the services in this category |
Service Subcategory
The service subcategories are used to define more precisely a service. For example you can define the following subcategory for the service System management:
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Troubleshooting
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Order a new server
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Configure a new virtual machine
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Repare a server
A service subcategory is related to a type of user request (Incident or Service request). This is done to automate the qualification of a user request or an incident.
Service Subcategory Properties
Name | Type | Mandatory? |
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Name | Alphanumeric string | Yes |
Service | Foreign key to a(n) Service | Yes |
Provider | Field mapped to an external key | Yes |
Status | Possible values: implementation, obsolete, production | No |
Request type | Possible values: incident, service request | Yes |
Provider Name | Field mapped to an external key | Yes |
Description | Multiline character string | No |
Creating a Service Subcategory
The menu “Service subcategories” provides a list of service subcategories. Just click on the button “New” to create a new one.