Question 1

What are SLA policies in Deskhero?

Accepted Answer

SLA policies let you promise your customers a reply time and have Deskhero hold you to it. An owner or admin defines an ordered list of rules under Configurations → SLA; each rule matches tickets by group and/or priority and sets two targets: how fast the ticket must get a first reply, and how fast it must be resolved. Deskhero then shows a live countdown on every matched ticket, lets you filter and sort by SLA state, warns the right people before a deadline is missed, and reports how often you met your targets. SLA policies are included on every Deskhero plan.

Question 2

How do I set up SLA policies?

Accepted Answer

1) Open Configurations and choose "SLA" (available to owners and admins). 2) Create a rule: pick one or more groups and/or priorities it applies to (leaving either empty means "any"), then set a first-reply target and a resolution target. 3) Choose how the time is counted: 24/7 calendar hours, or one of your business-hour schedules. 4) Drag your rules into priority order. The first rule that matches a ticket wins. A pinned "Everything else" rule always sits last and catches all remaining tickets; you can set it to "No SLA" if you only want targets on specific tickets.

Question 3

How do business hours work with SLA targets?

Accepted Answer

A business schedule is a named weekly calendar: for each weekday you set whether you are open and between which hours, and each schedule has its own time zone. An SLA target counted against a schedule only ticks while you are open, so nothing breaches overnight or over a weekend. For example, a ticket that arrives Monday 16:30 with a one-hour first-reply target on a Mon–Fri 08:00–17:00 schedule is due Tuesday 08:30, not Monday 17:30. A rule with no schedule counts plain calendar hours around the clock. Public holidays are not yet part of schedules.

Question 4

Does the SLA clock stop while I'm waiting on the customer?

Accepted Answer

Yes, for the resolution clock. When a ticket sits in a status your workspace has nominated as a pause status (by default: Pending), the resolution countdown stops, so time spent waiting on the customer does not count against you. The ticket shows as "Paused". The first-reply clock never pauses, because it measures how fast someone (or the AI) responded to the original message.

Question 5

Do AI auto-replies count toward SLA targets?

Accepted Answer

Yes. If Deskhero's AI answers a ticket automatically, that satisfies the first-reply target. It is recorded separately from a human reply, so in Statistics you can always see how much of your SLA performance was met by AI auto-replies versus by your team.

Question 6

Which tickets get SLA deadlines?

Accepted Answer

Only inbound tickets: those created from an email, a website form, or a chat conversation. Tickets created manually, through the API, or by an import never get an SLA clock. There is also no backfill: measuring starts with tickets that arrive after a matching rule exists, so your SLA reporting fills up from the day you configure policies onwards.

Question 7

Where can I see a ticket's SLA status?

Accepted Answer

In three places. 1) The ticket list has an SLA column (on by default when SLA is enabled) showing a live countdown chip per ticket, red when breached, orange when due within the hour, and "Paused" while the clock is stopped; you can sort by it. 2) The ticket's right-hand panel has an SLA block below Tags showing the matched policy name and chips for the first-reply and resolution deadlines, with the exact due time in a tooltip. 3) The ticket timeline logs every SLA event: when a policy was applied, when a target was met or missed, and by how much, and when a rule re-match changed the deadlines.

Question 8

How do I get notified about SLA deadlines?

Accepted Answer

Open your Profile → Notifications and enable the "SLA alerts" row for the groups you care about, with separate toggles for in-app and email. Deskhero then notifies the ticket's assignee, or, if the ticket is unassigned, the members of its group, both when a deadline is at risk (about an hour before it is due) and when it is breached.

Question 9

What happens to a ticket's SLA when its group or priority changes?

Accepted Answer

The SLA is fully recalculated. Deskhero re-runs the rules with the ticket's new group and priority, and the newly matched rule's targets are applied counting from the ticket's original creation time (minus any time the clock was paused), not from the moment of the change. The re-match is recorded in the ticket timeline.

Question 10

Which plans include SLA policies?

Accepted Answer

All of them. SLA policies, including business-hour schedules, list columns and filters, notifications, and SLA reporting in Statistics, are included on every Deskhero plan.

SLA policies

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