SLA escalation up your org chart: never miss a promise

Every business makes promises with a time on them. A client is told the return will be filed by the 20th. A customer is told someone will call back within two hours. A purchase approval is supposed to take one working day. Most of the time these promises are kept by memory and goodwill. When they are missed, the owner usually finds out from the customer.

This post shows how to use the TaskSync SLA centre to see every time target in one place, warn people before a deadline, and send late work up your org chart on its own, without anyone having to chase.

What counts as an SLA

In TaskSync, an SLA is any piece of work with a target time and a clock. The SLA centre collects them from across your company, each area on its own tab:

• Tasks: due dates and response targets from task SLA policies.
• Approvals and Compliance: approval chains and compliance due dates.
• Leads, Tickets, Orders & flows and Cases & NDR: when your company uses the Sales CRM, Service Desk or E-commerce operations hub add-ons.

A tab shows only when your company uses that area and you are allowed to see it. Each tab shows Running now, At risk (warned, not late yet), Breached now and Met (30 days), with a 12-week chart of the share met on time, the people and teams with the most breaches, and the open clocks, late ones first.

Step 1: Get the clock right

An SLA is only fair if it counts the right time. A task given to someone at 5:30 pm on a Friday should not be "late" on Saturday morning.

TaskSync uses one business-hours clock for every SLA. It follows your company's work week, working hours and company holidays. Set these once, and every clock (tasks, approvals, leads, tickets and flows) counts the same way. Service desk calendars can also skip company holidays: tick Also use company holidays under Contracts & SLAs > Business calendars.

Leave matters too. A task SLA policy can pause on the assignee's approved leave, so nobody is marked late for a day they were rightly away.

Step 2: Switch on the standard escalation ladder

Open Reports > SLA centre > Settings. Nothing changes until an owner or admin switches something on here, so you can roll it out one area at a time.

Under Standard escalation ladder, tick the areas that should use it: Sales leads, Store tasks, Flow stages, Flow departments, Approvals, Compliance or Tasks. Late work in those areas then goes:

1. to the assignee's manager or team lead,
2. then to the department head,
3. then to owners and admins.

The ladder uses the reporting lines you already keep in TaskSync (Reports to and departments on the Members page). It never sends the escalation to the assignee themselves. It skips suspended and removed members. Anyone on approved leave is replaced by their cover, so an escalation does not sit in the inbox of someone who is on holiday.

Set Next step up every N working hours to decide how fast it climbs. With 4, a task that is still late four working hours after the first escalation goes one step higher. With 0, it escalates one step only.

Areas you do not tick keep their own escalation exactly as before.

Step 3: Put targets on the tasks that matter

Not every task needs an SLA. Turn on Task SLA policies and stage time limits, then click Add policy. A policy matches tasks by priority, task type and project (empty means any), and sets one of two targets:

• the due date, with a reminder some working hours before and an optional grace period, or
• a response within a number of working minutes of the task being created.

For example: "Urgent tasks in client projects must get a response within 60 working minutes." The first matching policy, in order, applies.

For work that moves through stages, give a workflow column a time limit. Open Settings > Workflows, edit a workflow and fill Limit (in working hours) on a column such as "Review". Tick Pauses SLA on columns such as "On hold" or "Waiting for client", so the clock stands still while the work is genuinely blocked, and the target moves on by the time held.

Step 4: Warn before the breach, not after

An escalation is useful. A warning before the deadline is better.

• Task alerts in the app and by push: due-soon, overdue and escalation alerts arrive in TaskSync and as push notifications on phones and computers, not only by e-mail.
• Warnings before a breach: leads, flow stages and failed deliveries can warn at 50% and 80% of their target.
• Approvals on working hours: approval chains can escalate on company working hours, with a reminder at half time.

To keep alerts from becoming noise, each person can set quiet hours for push notifications. Managers can choose a Summary e-mail, Daily or Weekly (Mondays), with the numbers of their tabs, instead of a stream of separate alerts. When a task SLA policy covers a task, its due and overdue notices come from the policy, not from Alert Manager, so nobody is told twice.

Step 5: Review once a week

Open SLA centre in the menu (group Reports). Owners and admins see the whole company; managers see their own people. Filter by Owner, Team or the target dates, and open any item to act on it.

A short weekly review works well:

1. Look at Breached now first, then At risk.
2. Check the people and teams with the most breaches. Repeated breaches on one person are often a workload problem, not a discipline problem.
3. Watch the 12-week chart. If the share met on time is falling, a target may be unrealistic or a step may be missing an owner.

People with the "Export data" permission can download a CSV of up to 20,000 rows when a client or auditor asks for the numbers. Every download is recorded in the company Audit log, which owners and admins can open on every plan to see sign-ins, settings, member changes, records and exports.

A simple starting set-up

If you are not sure where to start, try this for one month:

• One task SLA policy: Urgent tasks, due-date target, reminder 4 working hours before.
• The standard ladder on Tasks and Approvals, stepping up every 8 working hours.
• A Pauses SLA column called "Waiting for client".
• A weekly summary e-mail for owners.

Then look at the SLA centre at the end of the month and adjust.

Get started

The SLA centre, task SLA policies, the escalation ladder, task alerts and the audit log are part of every TaskSync plan. Read more on the SLA & alerts page, see how leave fits in on HR & leave, or check Pricing and start a free trial.