Is it safe to delete SLA definitions?

[Pétur Björn]

Hi guys

I´m setting up a 3rd party solution for managing SLA´s. When I first started using Jira, I defined SLA using the built-in SLA. 

Now I want to delete the built-in SLA and just use the 3rd party solution. Is that ok?

[Sam Nadarajan]

Hello @Pétur Björn

Not sure what you are looking for by asking if it's okay. There are advantages to using the SLA functionality in Jira, but there are probably advantages to using your 3rd party solution as well.

I'd reckon that if you have a 3rd party solution for SLA management, that solution manages SLAs across multiple systems outside of Jira? If that's the case, then the advantage for you would be that you only have to manage SLAs in a single location as opposed to multiple locations.

With the built-in SLA functionality in Jira, you're getting a lot more than just defining time, calendars, and the scope of issues. Some advantages I find that I think are worth reconsidering are:

1. You can quickly see what the status of an issue is in relation to SLA goal is, whether it's breached, nearing a breach, met, paused, etc. These quick visuals can help your support team identify what should be prioritized first.
2. You can write queries against the SLAs using JQL. This can affect the order of issues in your queues (for example, ordering your queue by tickets nearing their SLA first). If you needed to write other queries that showed issues in relation to an SLA you could do that.
3. You can take advantage of reports in Jira Service Management - by using the built in SLAs, you can create custom reports that use those SLAs to determine trend lines and other data.

This is all that you would lose if you didn't use the built in SLA functionality in Jira. But again, you'd have to weigh the advantages/disadvantages in your situation. 

Out of curiosity, can you explain your scenario in a little more detail? Why you want to go with a 3rd party solution for just the SLAs?

Hope this helps,

[Pétur Björn]

Thank you @Sam Nadarajan for a great answer!

The one thing that´s bugging me when using the built-in SLA, is that when an issue is created over the weekend (when the SLA is configured to not count) it still shows up in our SLA reports, dragging down our percentage in First Response and Resolution. Even though I configured the SLA not to look at weekends. I hope to resolve this using the 3rd party solution.

[Sam Nadarajan]

Hello @Pétur Björn , can you provide a couple of screenshots please? It is possible that you aren't setting a configuration to pause your time but I won't know for sure until I can see it.

[Pétur Björn]

Here you can see 2 saturdays showing up in our SLA success rate report 

[Pétur Björn]