Service-level agreements

A service-level agreement defines intervals of time, such as a goal and deadline, that you can apply to a case or elements in the life cycle of a case. By using service-level agreements, you can standardize the way that case workers resolve cases in your application.

You assign service-level agreements when you define a life cycle for a case type. The following types of service-level agreements are supported:

• Case — Starts when a case is created or most recently reopened, and stops when the case is resolved.

• Stage — Starts when a case enters the stage and ends when the case leaves the stage.

• Process in a stage — Starts when the process is called, and ends when the last step in the process is completed.

  You can create processes, which are flows, by defining a life cycle for a case.

• Flow — Starts when the flow is called, and ends when the flow reaches an End shape or is otherwise stopped.

  This service-level agreement is ignored when you define a service-level agreement for a process in a stage that represents the flow.

• Assignment — Starts when the assignment is created and routed to a work queue or worklist, and ends when the assignment is completed or is stopped due to an error condition.

  The time at which a user opens the form for an assignment does not have any effect on the service-level agreement.

• Approval step — Starts when the subprocess for the Approval shape is called, and ends when the subprocess reaches an End shape.

  You can review the configuration of this subprocess by opening the Work-.pxApproval flow. The service-level agreement for an approval step is propagated to assignments in this flow.

At run time, an agent detects unmet goals and deadlines in your application. You can define escalation actions, such as notifying a work party, for this agent to run to help users resolve cases faster.