Skip to main content

What SLAs do

An SLA (service level agreement) is a set of targets for how fast your team answers and closes conversations.
  • First response: from when the conversation starts until a teammate first replies.
  • Next response: each time the customer writes after a teammate replied, until the next teammate reply.
  • Resolution: from the start until the conversation is closed.
Only replies from teammates count. Replies from the AI agent and internal notes do not.

Setting up an SLA

Go to Settings > Inboxes > SLAs (needs the Edit settings permission) and click New SLA.
  1. Name the SLA, for example “Standard support”.
  2. Targets: switch on the ones you want and set each in minutes, hours or days. At least one is required.
  3. Count office hours only: time outside your office hours and on holidays does not count. While office hours are off, every minute counts.
  4. Applies to: pick inboxes (none picked means any inbox) and add conditions with the same filter builder as routing rules: priority, ticket type, channel (Source), tags, and contact or company fields. Segments are not offered.
SLAs are checked from top to bottom and the first enabled SLA that applies wins, so put specific ones (for example “Urgent billing”) above general ones. Use the arrows to reorder. An SLA starts on conversations created after it is saved. A conversation picks its SLA again when its priority, inbox, ticket type, channel, tags or customer change, and when you edit, reorder or delete SLAs.

The clock

  • It pauses while a conversation is snoozed or closed. Reopening a conversation resumes the resolution clock where it stopped; it does not restart.
  • Closing a conversation ends a next-response target that is running, and a first response target that was not missed yet no longer applies.
  • Timers are updated within a minute of each change.

In the inbox

  • Each conversation in the list shows a countdown: gray while on track, amber once 80% of the target is used, red with the time overdue once it is missed. “Paused” while snoozed.
  • The conversation header shows the same countdown. Hover it to see every target, its due time, and whether finished targets were met or missed.
  • Two views appear under Views while you have an enabled SLA: SLA at risk (80% used, not missed yet) and SLA breached (a target is overdue and still not met).

Alerts

At 80% of a target and again when it is missed, Halo alerts the team once per conversation:
  • Slack: an SLA Alert notification (Settings > Integrations > Slack), on by default, in the default channel unless you pick another.
  • Email: a digest to teammates who have SLA Alerts on in their profile’s notification settings.
Each threshold alerts only once per conversation (once per next-response cycle).