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Time Tracking, SLA Policies & Business Hours (Admin)

Arketic times your team's tasks automatically — most tasks need nothing more than an estimate or a start/end date. As an admin, you have two things to look after: Business Hours, which make that timing accurate and fair, and SLA Policies, the list of response and resolution times your organization has agreed by department and priority.

Both live on the Settings tab of Tasks. By default that tab, the Business Hours panel and the SLA Policies block are open to department managers, Executives and Admins. Your organization can also give them to other people through a custom role — see Roles & Permissions.

How Timing Works​

Every task is measured against a target. The target is taken from the first of these that applies:

  1. The task's Estimated Hours
  2. Its Start Date / End Date range
  3. Otherwise, no target — Arketic still records the time spent, just without a pass/fail result

Only business hours count toward the target. Time outside a department's working hours and non-working days is not counted, so a task opened late on Friday is not unfairly marked over time on Monday morning.

For the user-facing view of how a task's timing appears, see Time Tracking.

SLA Policies​

An SLA Policy is a named record of a response time and a resolution time for a department and a priority — the service levels you have agreed for that kind of work.

note

An SLA policy does not set or change a task's time target. As shown in How Timing Works, a task's target comes only from its own Estimated Hours or its Start Date and End Date.

Create a policy​

  1. Go to Tasks → Settings and scroll to the SLA Policies block.
  2. Click New Policy.
  3. Fill in the fields:
FieldNotes
Policy Name *Required — your own label, e.g. "Standard SLA"
DepartmentAll (the default) or one department
PriorityAll (the default), Low, Medium, High or Critical
Response Time (min) *Required — minutes to first response, as a whole number
Resolution Time (min) *Required — minutes to full resolution, as a whole number
Business hours onlyTick it when the times are meant to be counted inside the department's business hours only
  1. Click Create. You'll see "SLA policy created".

Create stays disabled until the name and both times are filled in. There can be only one policy for each combination of department and priority; a second one for the same combination is refused.

Each saved policy is listed with its name, Department, Priority (when one was chosen), Response and Resolution in minutes, and Business hours when that box was ticked. If there are no policies, the block reads No SLA policies yet.

Edit a policy​

  1. Click the pencil icon on the policy. The form opens in place, filled in.
  2. Change the name, the times or Business hours only.
  3. Click Update. You'll see "SLA policy updated".

When you are editing, the form has one more checkbox: Active. It appears only for an existing policy — a new policy is always created active. Untick it to switch a policy off without deleting it; the policy then carries an Inactive badge in the list.

caution

Department and Priority are shown in the edit form, but changes to them are not saved. To move a policy to another department or priority, delete it and create a new one.

Delete a policy​

Click the trash icon on the policy. There is no separate confirmation window: a red Delete button appears next to Cancel in its place. Click Delete — you'll see "SLA policy deleted".

Who can manage which policies​

  • Admins and Executives can create, edit and delete any policy.
  • A department manager can manage the policies of the departments they manage. A policy for All departments is managed by Admins and Executives.
  • Seeing the list, creating, editing and deleting are each allowed separately, so a custom role can give a person some of them and not others. New Policy, the pencil icon and the trash icon appear only for people who are allowed to use them.

Setting Business Hours​

Business hours are set per department, because durations are calculated separately for each one.

  1. Go to Tasks
  2. Open the Settings tab
  3. In the Business Hours panel, pick a Department
  4. Set the Start and End times and choose the Working Days
  5. Click Save. You'll see "Business hours updated"

Repeat for every department so that no team is timed against the wrong schedule. A department that has never been configured uses 09:00–18:00, Monday to Friday.

Business Hours fields​

FieldWhat it does
DepartmentChoose which department these hours apply to. Each department is configured on its own. Admins and Executives can pick any department; department managers see the departments they manage, plus their own.
StartThe time the working day begins.
EndThe time the working day ends. Must be later than Start.
Working DaysClick the days (Mon–Sun) that count as working days. At least one day must be selected.
caution

End must be later than Start, and you must keep at least one working day selected. If these aren't met, saving is blocked and you'll see "Start hour must be before end hour" or "Select at least one work day".

tip

Set hours that reflect real working patterns for each team. Realistic hours keep timing fair across departments that work different shifts.

Monitoring​

Targets are set on the tasks themselves, but you can watch how your teams are doing against them:

  • SLA Compliance appears in the task Performance view, alongside completion and overdue figures — see Task Performance.
  • SLA Breach Rate and Overdue counts appear on the task Dashboard — see Team & Dashboard.
  • On individual tasks, an Over time badge shows on the board when a task passes its target, and an SLA Breached marker appears in the task detail when a task finished past its target.

Tips​

  • Keep business hours realistic. They are the foundation of fair, accurate timing.
  • Set Estimated Hours on tasks so every task has a clear target to be measured against.
  • Review compliance regularly in the Performance view to spot teams that are consistently over time.