Service Level Agreements hold organizations accountable to their users. A high level of service uptime is desirable, but a small margin for error is typically acceptable if established in the service agreement between an organization and its users. The Uptime.com SLA Report allows your organization to report on specific checks or systems for the purposes of SLA accountability.
To skip to a specific section of the "SLA Reports and Scheduled Reports" video, click the links with the !
This article will walk you through the creation of an SLA Report, presenting multiple views to help you determine the best method for your organization to report on Service Level Agreements.
- How to Find SLA Reports
- Downloading an Existing SLA Report
- Creating or Editing a New SLA Report
- Paused Check Behavior
- Reporting Groups
- Viewing and Reading Reports
- Filtering Dates
- Drill Down Into Individual Checks
- Uptime and Response Time Columns in SLA Reporting
- Color Coded SLA Values
- Response Time SLA Achieved
- Average Response Time
- Finalizing SLA Reports
How to Find SLA Reports
To create your first SLA report, click Reports > SLA Reports, then click New SLA Report. By default, all Uptime.com users can view any SLA report, but only users with View & Modify permissions can edit or create new reports.
To edit an existing report, locate the report you wish to edit and click Edit. You can edit your SLA report to define the checks (either by tag or individually) that your report will display, as well as the logic that determines how the report is rendered.
To delete an SLA report, click the "three dots" button, then Delete.
Downloading an SLA Report
To download a PDF or XLS copy of your SLA report, click Reports > SLA Reports, locate the report and then click the button Download PDF or Download XLS.
Creating or Editing a New SLA Report
To create a report, you need to complete several required attributes, including the report’s Name, a Default Date Range, as well as an Uptime and/or Response time section(s). You may add checks at report creation, or at any point by editing a report.
SLA Reports do not have a limit on the number of checks, but some important notes follow:
- You may not run a report containing response time datapoints if the date range is > 31 days.
- When the date range is <=31 days, and checks selected are less than or equal to 100, hourly datapoints are used to calculate the SLA values. This is the recommended limit of checks and reporting range to ensure the most accurate response time SLA calculations.
- If the date range is <=31 days and more than 100 checks are selected, only aggregated daily response time datapoints will be used in response time SLA calculations. This is less accurate than the above method.
- If the date range is more than 90 days ago, which is the limit for hourly data retention, only daily response time datapoints will be used in response time SLA calculations.
Default Date Range
The Default Date Range represents the time period an SLA report will display when viewed. Use this setting to designate reporting specific to a set time period, such as last week or last month.
Tip: You may find your team will need multiple reports for various time periods. For example, executives may want a 30 day review, but your team may benefit from the previous 7 days’ worth of reporting.
Your choices are:
- Today: SLA report from 12:01 AM local time up to the present moment
- Yesterday: Previous day’s 24 hour period, from 12:01 AM local time up to 12:00 AM
- Last 7 days: Beginning from the current date, report on the previous 7 days
- Last 30 days: Beginning from the current date, report on the previous 30 days
- This Week: Beginning on Monday and ending on the present day
- Last Week: Monday to Sunday
- This Month: From first of the current month to present day
- Last Month: From the first day to the last day of the previous month
Uptime or Response Time Section
Sections determine what the end user sees in the generated SLA report. When you toggle on Uptime, the user will see SLA reporting measured against service uptime. When you toggle on Response Time, the user will see SLA reporting measured against target response time.
It is possible to run a report containing both of these sections, which will appear in separate tabs.
Selecting Checks
Auto-Select Checks by Tag
Include all present or future checks with any of the selected tags. Learn more about creating and managing tags to group checks together.
Manually Select Checks
Include checks from a list you create from a pool of all checks within your account.
Tip: You can manually select checks in addition to the checks you’ve selected by tag.
Setting Check SLA Values
To set a check’s SLA value, target SLA percentage and/or response time, click Monitoring > Checks. Next, either create a check or locate an existing check. Click Actions > Edit Check and navigate to the Advanced tab. Here, you can set:
- Target SLA %
- Target Response Time SLA (secs)
Every check has a default Target SLA % value of 99.00%).
Target Response Time SLA default values differ per check:
- Transaction checks have a default value of 32.0 seconds
- API checks have a default value of 4.0 seconds
- Ping ICMP checks have a default value of 1.2 seconds
- NTP checks have a default value of 1.0 seconds
- Heartbeat and Webhook checks require you to configure a Target Response Time SLA
- And all other checks have a default value of 2.2 seconds
Displaying and Sorting Checks
Whether you select to show sections based on Uptime, Response time, or both, you can determine check displaying and sorting logic as follows:
Uptime Section
- Show Target SLA Values on Report: Show the uptime target SLA values that a specific check is to meet. This is a default value of the report.
- Show Only Checks with Downtime: Display only checks that have experienced downtime for the Date Range selected.
- Show Only Checks Below SLA: Exclude any checks that meet or exceed their target uptime SLA such that only checks that are below the target SLA are shown.
- Sort By Lowest Uptime: From top to bottom, display checks with the lowest uptime percentage first.
- Sort By Difference from Check SLA: From top to bottom, sort checks by their mathematical difference from their target SLA. (Secondary sort order is alphabetical)
Response Time Section
- Show Target SLA Values on Report: Show the response time target SLA value that a specific check is to meet. This is a default value of the report.
- Show Only Slowest Checks: For a given Date Range, show only the 5 slowest performers of the checks selected.
- Show Only Checks Below SLA: Exclude any checks that meet or exceed their target response time SLA such that only checks that are below the target SLA are shown.
- Sort By Slowest Response Time: From top to bottom, display checks with the slowest response time first.
- Sort By Difference from Check SLA: From top to bottom, sort checks by their mathematical difference from their target response time. (Secondary sort order is alphabetical)
The Uptime.com SLA Report always uses response time datapoints of either 1-hour or 1-day as noted. After a period of 90 days, only a daily response time average is visible based on account alert retention. The same is true if an SLA report contains more than 100 checks.
If accuracy is a concern, Uptime.com recommends users consider splitting SLA reports into smaller groupings.
Paused Check Behavior
When pausing a check that is currently down check, the time period from check down to pause will be counted as DOWN and can impact the SLA.
For example:
- A check goes down at 10:00 AM and an alert is sent
- 10 minutes elapse before a response to the alert.
- The check is paused at 10:10 AM.
- The 10 minutes to respond impacts the SLA but nothing after the pause will be impacted.
The shared report view will report downtime for the down period of time between the alert triggered and paused. Furthermore, within the same shared report view, the response time metric view and status page drill-in view will also show a period of UP during the pause period, but there will be a line present between the last run point and resumed run point of the check.
The check report page will be affected also by this.
Alerts can still be ignored during the initial downtime, and the alert log will show the alert was active prior to the pause and then resolved by the paused action.
An alert will be sent when the check is down, and when the check is paused, an email will be sent to notify the check has been resolved.
Scenario example:
1. Check Down to Check Paused
2. Check Down to Check Up:
Reporting Groups
Reporting groups to be added to the SLA report to differentiate and group report users. Reporting Groups will also report on the group’s average Uptime %, which calculates as an average of the related checks’ Uptime %.
To create a Reporting Group, adda name and manually select the checks that should be associated., Select the Add button to create the group. It will appear under the List of Groups section.
On your SLA report, you will now see an option to view the newly created Group, with the checks added. You also have the option to hide any groups and search for groups.
When downloading the report, you can choose to download only the filtered data from the groups and/or for all the data.
Note: The maximum number of checks allowed per group on the SLA Report is set to 1000, with a maximum of 1000 groups on the report.
Viewing and Reading Reports
To view a report, click Reports, locate an existing SLA report and click Actions>View Report or click on the name of the report. This section walks through various aspects of your report, and how changes made in your report’s edit screen affect what users will see.
A typical SLA report Metric Summary will include:
- Uptime for Period, expressed as a percentage
- Total number of Outages
- Average Target SLA for all checks
- Links to Check Reports for drill-down and deeper review
Filtering Dates
Users may filter dates for a specific SLA report regardless of the Default Date Range. Click the calendar box at the top right-hand side and select the date range for the SLA report you wish to view.
Drill Down Into Individual Checks
Click an individual check to view that check’s report screen.
Uptime and Response Time Columns in SLA Reporting
Here, you will find the checks within your report, and how their uptime compares to the target SLA value. Note: Average Target SLA value in this section is an average for all checks. This statistic is separate from an individual check’s SLA value.
Certain checks can be excluded from several fields (such as Uptime %, downtime, or Response Time). These omitted checks include checks that run only once-per day, and checks that do not collect response time statistics. Paused checks will also be omitted, as well as checks where Include in Metrics is unticked.
Note: Look for the “i” icon (which provides additional information about checks that are excluded from global uptime and downtime calculations).
Check types in the Response Time Section are grouped together to reflect averages of each check type (e.g. HTTP, API etc.).
Color Coded SLA Values
Target SLA %
If the SLA/Uptime value is above the Target SLA % by 50% or greater, the numbers will appear green. For example, if Target SLA % is 90%, and the check is 95%, the numbers will be green.
If the SLA/Uptime value is between 50% above the target and the target SLA %, the value will change to Orange color. Using the 90% SLA value, the check will switch to Orange when the SLA value reaches between 94.99% and 90%.
If the check falls below its SLA target, 90% in our example, the value switches to red.
Response Time SLA (secs)
If the Response Time SLA is below 70% of the Target Response Time the numbers will be Green. For example, if the Target Response Time SLA is 10 seconds and the check is between 0s-7s the numbers will appear Green.
If the Response Time SLA is between 70%-100% of the Target Response Time, the numbers will be Orange. In our example of a 10s target this range is from 7.01s-10s.
If the check fails above the 10s Target Response Time, the value switches to Red.
Response Time SLA Achieved
This value refers to the proportion of time that the check performed better/faster than the target SLA number or alternatively, the proportion of time SLA was met for a given period.
SLA values are based on hourly datapoints to calculate response time SLA unless otherwise noted. Such as:
- Over 100 checks
- Over 90 days old daily data is used
Average Response Time
Response times are determined by monitoring the time it takes a server to reply to a request from a specific location. The average response time is computed by taking the average of all the response times recorded at the locations designated for that check throughout the selected period in the report.
Finalizing SLA Reports
To view your SLA Report usage, click Billing > Account Usage to view your account's usage page. You can also schedule SLA reports to share with team members. Please submit any feedback about this feature, or reach out to support@uptime.com for assistance.
Want to see our checks in action? Check out our YouTube Library for more!
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