Available on Enterprise
Status SLAs let you set how long a job may sit in a status before it’s at risk, and before it’s over. installHUB counts the time in your working hours and puts stuck jobs in front of the right people, on the dashboard, in the job list, as alerts and in a morning email, so jobs get moving again before a customer has to chase.
How the clock works
- It starts when a job enters a status that has an SLA, and stops when the job leaves it. If the job comes back to that status later, the clock starts again from zero.
- It counts working hours only, from your Company Working Hours, and pauses on the closures in Company Unavailability, like bank holidays. With a 9 to 5 working day, a job that enters a status at 4pm on Friday has used one hour by Monday morning, not a whole weekend.
- On Hold pauses it. While a job is on hold it doesn’t count, and doesn’t show anywhere as at risk or over. When it comes off hold into the same status, the clock carries on from where it was.
- Jobs already in a status are included. When you save a rule, jobs already sitting in that status are timed from when they entered it, so you may see a batch of jobs go over straight away. That’s the backlog you want to see.
- It updates every 15 minutes, so a job can take up to a quarter of an hour to turn amber or red after it crosses a limit.
If you haven’t set your working hours yet, the Job SLAs page shows a Set your working hours warning: until you do, SLAs run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Add an SLA
Open Job SLAs under Settings, Jobs & Installations, and click Add SLA:
- Status: where jobs tend to get stuck, for example Quote accepted or Install Scheduling. Statuses a job can rightly stay in for good, such as Completed, On Hold, Lost and Archived, aren’t offered.
- Applies to: all installation types, or one type if it needs a different limit.
- At risk after (working hours): when the job should turn amber, as an early nudge.
- Over after (working hours): when it’s overdue. This must be more than the at-risk limit. The bar under the fields shows the two points on a timeline.
- Leave Active on and click Save.
Limits are in working hours, so work out days from your own hours. If your working day is 8 hours, 2 days is 16 and a week is 40. You can use part hours, like 4.5.
You can have one rule per status for all installation types, plus one per installation type. A rule for a specific type always takes over from the all-types rule for that status, even if the all-types rule is stricter. A job with several installation types follows the strictest of its type rules. Editing a rule recalculates jobs already in that status.
Choose statuses where a job is waiting on you to move it on. Completed can’t have an SLA, because a finished job never leaves it. Think twice about other end points, like Installed if you rarely move jobs on from it, or Quote rejected: a rule there flags every job that stops in that status.
Where stuck jobs show up
- Dashboard: on the Dashboard, the Jobs at risk and Jobs over SLA tiles count them, and click through to the job list filtered to just those jobs. The Jobs breaching SLA widget lists the five most urgent, over first, with who they’re assigned to. Both update live.
- Job list: in Jobs, at-risk rows are tinted amber and over rows red. The SLA column shows the time left or how far over, and the SLA filter shows At risk, Over SLA or both.
- Job page: a pill next to the job’s status, such as “At risk · 2.5h left” or “Over by 3h”, and a job alert saying how long it’s been in the status against its limit.
Who gets told
When a job goes at risk, and again when it goes over, installHUB sends an in-app notification and an email to:
- the person the job is assigned to, and
- the people on your SLA digest list in Email Notifications.
The same people get the daily digest at 07:35, but only on days when something is at risk or over. Assignees see their own jobs; the people on the list see every job. The Email Notifications page previews what tomorrow’s digest would hold.
The SLA digest list is set to specific people, not everyone, so add your operations manager and anyone else who should see the whole picture. If the list is empty, only assignees are told. If you also use contractor request links, the same people are emailed when a contractor flags a change or completes a request, and the row says so. See Send requests to contractors with a link.
Each person can turn off the at-risk and over emails for themselves with SLA breach alert emails on the same page. They still get the in-app notification. The alert emails link straight back to Settings, Email Notifications.
When you first add a rule over a backlog, people get one summary email listing the jobs that went over at once, rather than one email per job.
Examples
Quotes that are accepted but never booked
A customer has said yes, and then nothing happens for a fortnight. Add an SLA on Quote accepted with at risk after 8 and over after 16 working hours. Every accepted quote that hasn’t moved on within two working days turns red, and the office sees it on the dashboard the next morning.
Jobs waiting to be scheduled
Add an SLA on Install Scheduling of 16 and 24 working hours. Combined with stage gates on Install Scheduling, a job only enters the scheduling stage once it’s ready to book, so a red job there really is the scheduler’s to deal with.
A tighter limit for one installation type
EV charger installs are quick to arrange and customers expect them fast. Keep your all-types rule on Install Scheduling at 24 working hours, and add a second rule just for EV Charger at 8 and 16. EV jobs are held to the tighter limit while everything else follows the general one.
Waiting on the customer
If a job is stuck because the customer has asked you to wait, put it on hold. The clock pauses, the job drops out of the tiles and digest, and it carries on counting when you take it off hold.
Account managers can manage SLAs. To let an admin manage them too, add Manage job status SLAs to a custom role in Custom Roles and give them that role. Anyone who uses the dashboard and job list sees the SLA tiles, tints and pills.
