Help Desk SLA, Requests, and Priority Processing

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This explains the Service Level Agreement (SLA) for the Office of Information Technology Services (OIT). The administration, faculty, staff and students of Salt Lake Community College (the College) are referenced herein as customers.

Engaging OIT Services and Support

All requests for OIT services may be made by contacting OIT Technical Support/Help Desk.  OIT Technical Support/Help Desk is staffed during normal business hours (Monday through Thursday 7 am - 8 pm, Friday 7 am - 6 pm.  Note: the college is closed on Fridays for the summer) and all calls are entered into the Technical Support Help Desk ticketing system which is browser-based.  Work request cases can be generated by the Technical Support/Help Desk staff, customers (self-service) or by OIT technicians.  Tickets can be submitted by any of the following methods:

  • Initiate a self-service case in the Technical Support/Help Desk service portal.
    • Support portal
    • You may also ask the Virtual Agent questions regarding technical support needs
  • Contact Technical Support/Help Desk via phone.
    • 801-957-5555
    • Technical Support/Help Desk is staffed during normal business hours.  After Hours Support is facilitated through the use of email or voicemail, or use the Virtual Agent on the Support Site.
  • Send email to helpdesk@slcc.edu
  • Chat is available during normal business hours from the Support Site.
  • Walk-ins are accepted during normal business hours.

HELP DESK WORKFLOW

Help Desk Requests and Processing

Listed below are guidelines used to prioritize and process customer requests for OIT Services and Support. The response times that are outlined herein are intended as goals and represent the service levels that the customers should expect. All efforts will be made to exceed these service level commitments. 

Help Desk Support Call Process

Step 1: Gather as much information from customers as possible.  Required information:

  • Customer name, location, and contact information.
  • Detailed description of the problem.
  • Duration of issue.
  • Number of users affected.
  • Alternative contact information.

Step 2: Based on the priority definitions (defined herein), assign a priority to the support call and communicate that to the customer (e.g. “I’m assigning this as a Priority X call which requires an X hour/day response from the technician)

Step 3:  For Priority One (1) calls, contact the responsible Manager/Director immediately.  For Priority Two (2) calls, contact the assigned Subject Matter Expert (SME) immediately. 

Step 4:  Determine time estimates for resolution and pertinent information to provide to the user and/or user supervisor.  Inform customers as soon as possible once the appropriate OIT personnel have been contacted. Update voice mail, System Advisory Page and communicate via e-mail where appropriate. 

Step 5:  Follow up periodically with customer and assigned technician as to status of issue. 

Step 6:  As the issue is worked on and resolved, it must be documented clearly in Service Now. Update status via voice mail, system status page and e-mail. Every attempt will be made to clearly identify status through the Help Desk voice mail system so that customers can call to obtain information. When a priority one is identified, the system status line (voice mail) will be updated at regular intervals.

SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT (SLA)

Normal Business Hours 

  • Monday - Thursday 7:00 am – 8:00 pm (MST), Friday 7 am – 6 pm (MST) Excludes College holidays. Note: The college is closed on Fridays during the summer.
  • Help Desk is staffed by 4 Help Desk technicians and 1 Help Desk Specialist

After Hours 

  • Hours and days outside Normal Business Hours 
  • College holidays 
  • E-mails and voice mails are monitored by the assigned Help Desk technician. The technician will gather information to determine if an immediate response is required or if the next business day response is appropriate. The technician will contact the department technician if the problem is identified as an emergency. 

Response time commitments do not promise a complete resolution within the stated time frames.  It promises the customer will be contacted by either the technician assigned to the ticket, or by the assigned department’s manager to initiate support activities. 

Incident priority is a critical part of resolving incidents. Without a framework for establishing priority, it is difficult to meet service level agreements and trigger incident escalations appropriately. If priority becomes a subjective process of personal interpretation, incidents cannot be resolved in an efficient and logical way. 

Incident Priority in OIT Ticketing System

The ticketing system incident module supports three factors for determining incident priority: 

  • Impact: Measure of the business criticality of the affected service, business loss and potential damage caused by the incident. This would constitute a major outage of a system. Work has stopped for multiple users. 
  • Urgency: Measure of the business criticality based on the impact and of the business needs of the customer. Speed at which the business expects the incident to be resolved, this would be a work stoppage for the customer, a system shut down or outage or failure of needed software. 
  • Priority: Sequence in which the incident or problem should be resolved, it is the intersection of impact and urgency. 

TIMEFRAME OF RESPONSE FOR PRIORITY

Details

Details

Article ID: 2137
Created
Mon 10/27/25 12:59 PM
Modified
Fri 11/14/25 9:57 AM