Service Level Agreement

This Service Level Agreement (SLA) from the Charity Learning Consortium (CLC) specifically for E-Learning & Moodle related services.

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1. SERVICE DEFINITION

1.1 “Services” includes:-

  • provision of access to the System:-
  • the response and support provided to the primary contact in the use of the System

1.2 Definition of CLC priority levels:-

  • Urgent
    • Security Vulnerabilities
    • Site Access
    • E-Learning Availability
  • High
    • E-Learning Tracking
    • Completion Tracking
    • Reporting
    • Inbound Data Syncs
  • Low
    • Outbound Data Syncs
    • Updating User Information
    • Dashboard / Feedback [low]

2. Services Levels

2.1 CLC  will be responsible for:-

  • System Support following System Fault
  • Performance and Availability
  • Adherence to Service Level Agreement Measurements
    • –  Adherence to Service Level Agreement Measurements
    • –  Calculations
  • Disaster Recovery
  • Backup and Recovery. (Split out and define)
  • Change Control of platform.
  • System Support following System Fault Reporting
  • Password maintenance
  • Performance and Availability

2.2 Target Response and Resolution Times

The CLC shall work towards the following Target Response and Resolution Times for all Incidents and Requests. Incidents are prioritised and managed by the Support Help Desk according to the impact and urgency.  All Response and Resolution Times stated are measured within Support Hours (see section 4.1). Targets Resolution Times are not applicable for Incidents or Requests that relate to Software Defects or Product Suggestions (as defined in Service Definitions).
Priority Description Target Response Time Target Resolution Time
Urgent The Services are unable to fulfil their functions overall. An error has occurred causing the loss of major functionality impacting most or all users. No workaround is available 1 hour 1 working day
High The Services are able to fulfil their overall function, but there is significant loss of function or disruption to the use of the Services. A software error has been encountered causing a partial loss of major functionality to one or more users 1 hour 2 working days
Low Minor or cosmetic defects in Services which do not affect the ability of the Services to fulfil their major functions 24 hours 7 working days

3. Performance and Availability

  1. CLC reserves the right to suspend access to the Service between the scheduled maintenance window of approximately 21:00 and 05:30 GMT each day of ‘Planned System Outages’ subject to providing reasonable prior notice for each such occasion which shall not be less than three days notice.
  2. CLC will provide notice of any planned maintenance to the Client on a timely basis. CLC will give at least three days notice wherever possible for any outages not on the above-mentioned schedule.
  3. There may also be occasions when access to the Service is interrupted for emergency maintenance or repairs or to carry out upgrades to improve the performance or functionality of the Service, however CLC shall ensure that these are minimised.
  4. Access may also be interrupted due to failures of telecommunications links and equipment which may be beyond the control of CLC.
  5. CLC undertakes that no single outage shall last more than 4 hours.
  6. CLC undertake updates to the Moodle Core codebase which require CLC and Client interactions to complete which will be applied on a Monday when available. Providing notice wherever possible on status page, with minimum of 48 Hours notice.

4. SLA measurements

Description Agreed Service Level
Availability 99.8% during the core day Not more than 4 hours unavailability in any core day
Faults (incident) CLC will provide a response to problems raised by the Client within 72 hours of receipt during the core day
Password resets (made direct to web Website) 99.9% of new passwords will be emailed to the User within 5 minutes of the request via Moodle LMS. (Site Administrators can contact CLC Helpdesk)
Complaints All complaints received in writing will be responded to within 48 hours
Admin+ Admin+ subscriptions are limited to a maximum of 8 hours in a single week of administration services, which cannot be rolled over and may only be exceeded at the discretion of CLC.
All of the above service levels are measured on an annual basis. A working day for the purposes of this Schedule shall be Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays and bank holidays. A core day for the purposes of this Schedule shall be (Monday – Thursday 09:00 – 17:00hrs, Friday 09:00 – 16:00hrs).

5. Calculation for System availability

5.1 Availability shall be calculated using the following mechanism

A = (480 x WD)  (D Dp) x 100        (480 x WD) Where:-
  • A = Availability in %
  • 480 = Number of minutes per working day
  • WD = Number of working days per calendar month
  • D = Total downtime recorded in minutes
  • Dp = Planned downtime and agreed exclusions recorded in minutes which is scheduled in  advance to perform system testing, upgrades, enhancements and routine maintenance activities.

6. Hosting

  1. All of CLC’s client services are hosted at reputable third party service providers with a comprehensive and certified backup and security standard in operation.
  2. Third party service providers each have independent backup and recovery processes which the minimum level is defined in the following section.

7. Support

  1. Technical support is provided during the working days defined in 4.1 and by the following methods:
  2. Telephone to the Helpdesk number published by CLC
  3. Email to the Helpdesk address published by CLC
  4. Customers may login to the Helpdesk Portal to create/edit tickets. Access to the portal is not restricted to the core working hours defined in 4.1 and may be accessed at any time, though responses will be restricted to the working hours defined in 4.1 Availability of the Helpdesk Portal will be defined by the portal providers SLA.
  5. Where CLC refers or escalates an issue to a 3rd party such as a courseware provider then the 3rd party’s SLA will apply in regard to Resolution Times

8. Backup

  1. Dedicated Servers (isolated clients) are fully backed up weekly and retained for a minimum of 21 days.
  2. RoadMapCloud network EFS instances and Database instances are backed up independently. NFS instances are backed up daily with a 7 day retention. Database instances are incrementally backed up daily and retained for 14 days.
  3. Backups are included in the agreement however additional costs for recovering and temporary hosting of restored backup charges may apply.

9. Situation Management

  1. In the event an issue is detected involving 10% or more of platforms updates will be published to status.charitylearning.org. When an issue is affecting many members our support team and ops team immediately divert 100% of resource to diagnosing and resolving the issue.
  2. When investigating an issue diagnosed as affecting multiple platforms we have a 10 minute window to investigate. In this time we will investigate the issue and attempt to resolve this issue. If we are able to resolve an issue within the 10 minutes a status update may not be triggered. After consultation with members it was identified that spending 3 minutes to add a status page entry would be better utilized resolving an issue which takes under 10 minutes to resolve.
  3. At anytime an issue passes the 10 minute threshold or the ops team are aware the issue will take longer than 10 minutes to resolve one member of the team will provide a detailed update regarding the situation.
  4. Once the situation is resolved an investigation to what caused the issue is conducted and a     post-mortem is made available on the status page within 48 hours of identifying the point of failure.