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Service Management (services, SLAs, contracts) Module

IT Service Management (ITSM) is a process-based practice intended to align the delivery of IT services with needs of the enterprise. Part of this, is the management of the service catalog that defines services, SLA and contracts with the end users (or customers).

This module allows a service manager to define all the pieces of the service catalog:

  • Service
  • Service subcategories
  • SLA & SLT
  • Customer contracts
  • Provider contracts

The service management is integrated with the ticket management system:

  • When creating a ticket for a given customer, the agent can select the service amongst the list of services defined for this customer.
  • Ticket deadlines are computed depending on the SLA signed with the customer.

There is two alternatives to manage the service catalog in iTop:

  • Service Management (services, SLAs, contracts)
  • Service Management (services, SLAs, contracts) for Service providers

The first one is used to manage service within a single company, whereas the second is desgined for service providers. Both modules provides the same elements to be managed, the differences are the relationships between those elements. In the sections below we describe those differences.

Contract Type

The contract type allows you to define a typology for the customer and provider contract in order to regroup them. For instance:

  • Hardware contract
  • Maintenance contract
  • Outsourcing contract

Contract Type Properties

Name Type Mandatory?
Name Alphanumeric string Yes

Customer Contract

A customer contract allows you to define which services have been purchased (requested) by a customer and what are the SLA corresponding to those services. By default, no coverage window is defined in iTop.

It is possible to document several contracts for a given customer. For each customer contracts you can link documents, and contacts related to it.

Customer Contract Properties

Name Type Mandatory?
Name Alphanumeric string Yes
Customer Foreign key to a(n) Organization Yes
Description Multiline character string No
Start date Date (year-month-day) No
End date Date (year-month-day) No
Cost Alphanumeric string No
Cost Currency Possible values: Dollars, Euros No
Billing frequency Alphanumeric string No
Cost unit Alphanumeric string No
Provider Foreign key to a(n) Organization Yes
Status Possible values: implementation, obsolete, production No
Contract type Foreign key to a(n) Contract Type No

Tabs

Tab Description
Contacts All the contacts for this customer contract
Documents All the documents for this customer contract
Services All the services purchased for this contract
If you have installed the Service Management for Providers module, there are 2 additional tabs:
Tab Description
Provider contracts All the provider contracts to support this service
Depends on CIs All the configuration items that are used to provide this service

Creating a Customer Contract

The menu “Customer contract” provides a list of already defined customer contracts. Just click on the button “New” to create a new one.

The tab “Services” display the list of services provided to the customer for this contrat. You can specify for each service which SLA is applicable.

Delivery Model

A delivery model defines which teams are providing support and services to a set of organizations (customers). It can be used also to document key people with their role: * Service Manager * Chief technology officer * Helpdesk manager

Several customers can share the same delivery model. Nevertheless, it may be useful to define several delivery models, especially if you want to limit the number of teams to which you can assign a ticket.

The delivery model of a given customer is used to identify to which team you can assign a ticket for this one.

If no delivery model is defined for a given customer, then you will not be able to create tickets for that customer.

Delivery Model Properties

Name Type Mandatory?
Name Alphanumeric string Yes
Organization Foreign key to a(n) Organization Yes
Description Multiline character string No

Tabs

Tab Description
Contacts All the contacts (Teams and Person) for this delivery model
Customers All the customers having this delivering model

Creating a Delivery Model

The menu “Delivery models” provides a list of already defined delivery models. Just click on the button “New” to create a new one.

Provider Contract

A provider contract allows you to document all the contracts you have with your providers (Support, maintenance, hardware contracts, etc.) This helps you to retrieve quickly such information and better manage the contract renewal process.

You can also link configuration items that are covered by a provider contract. For each customer contracts you can link documents, and contacts related to it.

Provider Contract Properties

Name Type Mandatory?
Name Alphanumeric string Yes
Customer Foreign key to a(n) Organization Yes
Description Multiline character string No
Start date Date (year-month-day) No
End date Date (year-month-day) No
Contract type Foreign key to a(n) Contract Type No
Cost Alphanumeric string No
Cost Currency Possible values: Dollars, Euros No
Billing frequency Alphanumeric string No
Cost unit Alphanumeric string No
Provider Foreign key to a(n) Organization Yes
SLA Alphanumeric string No
Service hours Alphanumeric string No
Status Possible values: implementation, obsolete, production No

Tabs

Tab Description
Contacts All the contacts for this customer contract
Documents All the documents for this customer contract
CIs All the configuration items covered by this provider contract

Creating a Provider Contract

The menu “Provider contract” provides a list of already defined provider contracts. Just click on the button “New” to create a new one.

SLA

A service level agreement (SLA) is a group of SLT. It defines the agreement between a provider and a customer for a given set of services.

Each IT department can define its own list of SLAs.

SLA Properties

Name Type Mandatory?
Name Alphanumeric string Yes
Provider Foreign key to a(n) Organization Yes
description Multiline character string No

Tabs

Tab Description
SLTs All the service level targets for this SLA
Customer contracts All the customer contracts using this SLA

Creating a SLA

The menu “SLA” provides a list of already defined service level agreements. Just click on the button “New” to create a new one.

SLT

A service level target (SLT) allows you to define metrics for agreements that have to be respected. By default, iTop is proposed with two types of metrics:

  • Time to own (TTO): This is time between the creation of a ticket and the time to take it into account (assign it to an agent)
  • Time to resolve (TTR): This is the time between the creation of a ticket and the time to resolve it

A SLT is defined by:

  • a name
  • the type of metric
  • the type of request
  • the priority of the request

SLT Properties

Name Type Mandatory?
Name Alphanumeric string Yes
Priority Possible values: critical, high, medium, low No
Request type Possible values: incident, service request No
Metric Possible values: TTO, TTR No
Value Numeric value (could be negative) No
Unit Possible values: hours, minutes No

Creating a SLT

The menu “SLT” provides a list of already defined service level targets. Just click on the button “New” to create a new one.

Service

The services are the basis of the service catalog. They are used to document all the services that can be provided by one or several IT Departments. For example:

  • Application management
  • Desktop and End user management
  • Network management
  • System management

Each IT provider can define its own list of services. Services are used to characterize a user request or an incident.

Services must be grouped into service families as soon as you use the Enhanced Portal.

For each service you can document:

  • the configuration items required to deliver the service
  • the provider contracts, on which the service is depending

Service Properties

Name Type Mandatory?
Name Alphanumeric string Yes
Provider Foreign key to a(n) Organization Yes
Service Family Foreign key to a(n) Service Family No
Description Multiline character string No
Status Possible values: implementation, obsolete, production No

Tabs

Tab Description
Service sub categories All the sub categories for this service
Documents All the documents linked to the service
Contacts All the contacts for this service
Customer contracts All the customer contracts that have purchased this service
Provider contracts All the provider contracts to support this service
Depends on CIs All the configuration items that are used to provide this service
If you have installed the Service Management for Providers module, then the tabs “Provider contracts” and “Depends on CIs” are available on Customer Contracts

Creating a Service

The menu “Service” provides a list of services. Just click on the button “New” to create a new one.

Service Family

Service Family is the first level in the tree structure of your Service Catalog.

Service Family Properties

Name Type Mandatory?
Name Alphanumeric string Yes

Tabs

Tab Description
Services All the services in this category

Service Subcategory

The service subcategories are used to define more precisely a service. For example you can define the following subcategory for the service System management:

  • Troubleshooting
  • Order a new server
  • Configure a new virtual machine
  • Repare a server

A service subcategory is related to a type of user request (Incident or Service request). This is done to automate the qualification of a user request or an incident.

Service Subcategory Properties

Name Type Mandatory?
Name Alphanumeric string Yes
Service Foreign key to a(n) Service Yes
Provider Field mapped to an external key Yes
Status Possible values: implementation, obsolete, production No
Request type Possible values: incident, service request Yes
Provider Name Field mapped to an external key Yes
Description Multiline character string No

Creating a Service Subcategory

The menu “Service subcategories” provides a list of service subcategories. Just click on the button “New” to create a new one.

Defining the 3 levels, Service Family, Services and Service Subcategories is mandatory for your Portal users to be able to submit a new request in the Portal, otherwise, they will get “no services”
There are many other reasons why they could get no service, but this is one of them.
3_1_0/datamodel/itop-service-mgmt.txt · Last modified: 2023/07/21 10:19 (external edit)
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