Reply To: Email and Calendaring SLA

#494
zurn
Keymaster

Hi Rooney,
Thanks to you and everyone else for their questions and thoughtful suggestions on this. I’ll try to answer each one below beginning with “IT Response” so we can keep track.

– Should title of SLA be “O365 Services” or similar? Email and calendaring does not fully encompass all of the services available in O365 unless there will be separate SLAs for IM and OneDrive for Business.
IT Response: We actually debated this several times both in the SLA meetings and in many Service Catalog meetings related to this. I think at some point we may need to collapse these, but initially we wanted to treat email and calendaring separately given the significant reliance on the service, time constraints, the need to focus on email service specifics, and the desire to keep the SLA to a manageable size. But good to hear that you and others are with us in thinking about these services as related.

2.1.1.1:
– Is the baseline level of service departments are expected to provide the material provided in the FastInfo documentation?
IT Response: Yes, but there may be internal Fastinfo answers used for triage and troubleshooting that might be shared as well.

– IT Agent participation is at Banner Level 3 org. A Level 3 org can have multiple representatives, but that requires approval by the CIO per http://cio.unm.edu/agents/role.html. Should language be adjusted to reflect end-users or departmental IT working with their Level 3 rep?
IT Response: This is a good point and personally I didn’t remember this about the Agent role—I think your suggestion is a good one.

– Should there be different bullet points depending on the type of support relationship the department has with UNM IT? Some departments have Tier 2 support and some do not?
IT Response: Possibly, if I understand you right that might help to delineate further what we’re getting at there. I’m told there was a great discussion at IT agents regarding how to appropriately reference IT support provided by departments. The agreements committee is looking at this issue from the perspective of standard language in the SLAs, at least as a starting point. We will forward this suggestion to that group.

– Should self-service docs also be added as an end-user responsibility in 2.1.1.2?
IT Response: Good catch: we had it there at one point and it fell out in one iteration or another. Thanks!

2.1.1.2:
– Seems like users checking email and frequency is out of scope for SLA and not something UNM IT (or any IT dept) should have to worry about. That is an HR and employee performance issue?
IT Response: We wondered about that as well and had added it in relation to the Student policy that has language to that effect and the related boundary in 2.1.2 regarding forwarding. We tend to agree and will reconsider this point.

– Should this also be a requirement of departmental IT? Business-related communications and information should not be forwarded off site and we will not assist folks forwarding emails to non-UNM accounts?
IT Response: That’s a great suggestion as well—that helps us address the fact that we don’t have an official UNM Policy on Employee use of email and at least puts all of us (UNM IT and Dept IT) in alignment on that issue.

2.1.2:
– Are there specific timelines that can be included in the SLA for this separation process and when work-product/email disappears? Same timelines as those listed in NetID SLA?
IT Response: Great idea. And yes, they are more or less the same timelines that follow the NetID, but with a few specific notes on email. So this could refer to the other SLA/Service and add additional information.

– For bullet item 4, should that also include personal, non-UNM devices? Is setting up the Outlook client on my home PC or personal smartphone akin to forwarding sensitive emails to non-UNM accounts?
IT Response: That’s a really great question, and it might be more than one question! That is, I hear both a support question and a security question in there. Either way, it breaks down across student/employee lines, of course, since at one end of the spectrum our core users don’t have anything *but* personal devices. However, with both questions with regard to employees are a different matter, and we should give those points additional thought. Were you suggesting we say something along the lines of “Support is not available to employees for personal devices”?

– Is it appropriate to provide a time line for provisioning of service when an employee starts?
IT Response: Could be, and makes sense to include that as related to the first item about de-provisioning. Again—basically the same as NetID, but with specifics to email.

– Are instant messages (IMs) treated the same as emails with respect to retention?
IT Response: Yes—IF you have Skype for Business saving your conversation history. We are not retaining those outside the user-driven settings.