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Service Level Agreement (SLA) policies in FusionDesk define the maximum amount of time your team should take to first respond to and fully resolve a support ticket. When a ticket is created, FusionDesk automatically assigns the matching SLA policy and starts the clock. If a deadline is approaching or is missed, FusionDesk triggers escalation rules and notifications to keep your team accountable. Setting up SLA policies correctly is one of the most impactful things you can do to maintain consistent, measurable support quality.
When an SLA is breached — that is, the first-response or resolution deadline passes without the required action — the ticket is permanently flagged as Breached in reporting, even if the agent responds or resolves it moments later. Breached status cannot be cleared retroactively. Make sure escalation notifications are configured before you go live so agents have enough lead time to act.

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Default SLA Policy

Every FusionDesk workspace comes pre-configured with a default SLA policy that applies to all tickets unless a more specific policy is matched. The default targets are: These targets assume 24/7 coverage. If your team operates on business hours only, configure the Business Hours setting on each policy (covered in Pausing SLAs) so that timers only count down during working hours. You can view and edit the default policy under Settings → SLA Policies → Default Policy.

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Creating a Custom SLA Policy

You can create as many custom SLA policies as your workspace needs — for example, a stricter policy for enterprise customers, or a relaxed policy for low-priority internal requests.
1

Open SLA Policy settings

In the left sidebar, go to Settings, then select SLA Policies under the Help Desk section.
2

Click New SLA Policy

Click the New SLA Policy button in the top-right corner of the SLA Policies page.
3

Name your policy

Give the policy a descriptive name that identifies its scope or tier, for example Enterprise - 24/7 or Internal IT Requests.
4

Set response and resolution targets

For each priority level (Urgent, High, Medium, Low), enter the target First Response Time and Resolution Time in hours or minutes. You can leave a target blank to indicate no SLA commitment for that priority.
5

Configure business hours (optional)

Toggle Apply Business Hours if this policy should only count time during your team’s working schedule. Select the business hours calendar to use. See Pausing SLAs for more details.
6

Save the policy

Click Save Policy. The new policy is now available to assign to ticket categories, groups, or individual tickets via automation rules.

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Assigning SLA Policies to Ticket Categories

A custom SLA policy only takes effect when it is assigned. FusionDesk evaluates policies in the following order of precedence (highest to lowest):
  1. Ticket-level override — an SLA manually set on an individual ticket
  2. Automation rule — an SLA assigned by a trigger/condition rule
  3. Category or group policy — an SLA attached to a ticket category or agent group
  4. Default policy — the workspace-wide fallback
To assign a policy to a ticket category:
1

Go to Ticket Categories

Navigate to Settings → Ticket Categories.
2

Select or create a category

Click the category you want to configure, for example Billing or Technical Support.
3

Choose the SLA Policy

In the category settings panel, find the SLA Policy dropdown and select the policy you want to apply to all tickets in this category.
4

Save changes

Click Save. All new tickets created under this category will automatically inherit the selected SLA policy. Existing tickets are not retroactively affected.
You can also assign SLA policies dynamically using Automation Rules under Settings → Automations. This lets you apply policies based on any combination of ticket fields — for example, applying an enterprise SLA whenever a ticket’s requester belongs to an enterprise account group.

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SLA Breach Notifications and Escalations

FusionDesk notifies the right people before and after a breach so your team can act in time. Notification triggers are configured per SLA policy. For each priority tier, you can define alerts at:
  • A percentage of the deadline elapsed (e.g., notify when 75% of first-response time has passed)
  • A fixed time before the deadline (e.g., notify 30 minutes before resolution is due)
  • At the moment of breach
Who gets notified is configurable per trigger:

Assignee

The agent currently assigned to the ticket receives an in-app alert and email.

Team Lead / Supervisor

Escalate to a manager or group when the assignee hasn’t acted within a threshold.

Ticket Requester

Optionally notify the customer that the ticket is taking longer than expected.

Webhook / Integration

Fire a webhook to a Slack channel, PagerDuty alert, or any external endpoint.
To configure escalations, open Settings → SLA Policies, click the policy you want to edit, and navigate to the Escalations tab. Add one or more escalation rules by selecting the trigger timing and the notification targets.

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Pausing SLAs (Business Hours Configuration)

If your team is not available around the clock, you should configure SLA policies to count time only during business hours. This prevents tickets from breaching overnight or over weekends when no agents are working.
1

Define a Business Hours calendar

Go to Settings → Business Hours and click New Schedule. Set your team’s working days and hours, and select the appropriate timezone. You can create multiple schedules for different regions or teams.
2

Link the schedule to an SLA policy

Open the SLA policy under Settings → SLA Policies, toggle on Apply Business Hours, and select the schedule from the dropdown.
3

Configure holiday calendars (optional)

Under Settings → Business Hours, click Holidays to add dates on which SLA timers should be fully paused — for example, national public holidays. Holiday calendars are shared across all SLA policies that reference the same business hours schedule.
4

Save and verify

Save your changes. Create a test ticket and confirm the SLA deadline shown on the ticket respects your business hours window before rolling out to your team.
When a ticket’s status is set to Pending — indicating you are waiting for a customer reply — you can configure FusionDesk to automatically pause the SLA resolution timer. Enable this under Settings → SLA Policies → [Your Policy] → Pause on Pending. The timer resumes the moment the customer replies and the ticket moves back to In Progress.