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An SLA is a promise about timing that Zendesk measures for you, flags before it is broken, and reports on afterwards.
What a policy contains
- Conditions: which tickets it applies to.
- Targets: how long, per priority.
- A clock: calendar hours or business hours.
One ticket gets one policy. The first policy in the list whose conditions match wins, and the rest are not considered.
There is a fourth thing, which is not on the policy but on the ticket: priority. Targets are set per priority, so a ticket with the priority field empty falls outside every policy no matter how well its conditions match. That is the usual answer to "why is this ticket not showing an SLA".
What it does on the ticket
Agents see the next target and how long is left, and views can be sorted by it. That is the useful part day to day: a queue ordered by what is closest to breaching rather than by age.
Triggers can act on it too, so a ticket approaching its target can be escalated automatically.
The clock mostly does not pause
This is the assumption worth losing early. Of the seven targets, four keep counting through every status: first reply time, next reply time, periodic update and total resolution time. Only pausable update, requester wait time and agent work time stop, and each stops for different statuses.
So the difference between pending and on-hold matters, but not in the way people expect. It does not pause a reply target. What it does is make the two kinds of waiting visible, so you can pick a target that measures the one you are willing to be judged on.
An SLA is a promise, not a mechanism
Zendesk measures whatever you tell it. It does not make anything faster. A policy with targets nobody can meet produces a dashboard of breaches and a team that stops looking at it.
Set targets from what you achieve today, then tighten deliberately.
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