Set response and resolution targets and route tickets to the right team
SLA targets and queues live in Service Settings.
Open the gear affordance in the Service section nav to reach Service Settings, then choose SLA or Queues. Configuring SLA policies needs the SLA manage permission; queue setup needs the same. Agents without those permissions still see SLA timers and queues on their tickets — they just cannot change the configuration.
An SLA target is a clock that measures how quickly you respond to and resolve a ticket.
A Service Level Agreement (SLA) policy sets time targets for support tickets. When a ticket matches a policy, Service stamps it with one or more target clocks. Each clock counts down toward a due time and surfaces as a countdown chip on the ticket and in the queue list.
Each target moves through a small lifecycle.
Every SLA target advances through these states automatically:
The clock can stop while you are waiting on the customer.
When a ticket is waiting on the customer, you do not want the resolution clock to keep running against you. SLA targets account for pause windows so time spent waiting on the customer does not count against your targets. Business-hours configuration on the policy lets a clock run only during your working hours.
Conditions decide which tickets a policy applies to.
A policy can apply to tickets based on their queue, priority, channel, or account tier — so an Urgent ticket from a top-tier account can get a much tighter first-response target than a Low ticket from a free-plan user. Escalation rules let a breach notify a lead or escalate the ticket.
Queues group tickets and route them to the right team.
A queueis a named bucket of tickets — for example “Billing,” “Tier 1,” or “VIP.” Queues appear in the queue rail on the left of the Inbox, each with a live open-ticket count, so agents can focus on the work that belongs to their team.
In Service Settings → Queues, create a queue and give it a clear name. Queues are organization-scoped and isolated to your tenant.
Add the agents who work that queue. Membership drives round-robin assignment and tells Service who can pick up work from the queue.
Assign tickets to the queue manually, via inline triage, or automatically from an automation. Tickets can move between queues as they are triaged.
Balance load automatically across queue members.
Queues can auto-assign new tickets to their members in rotation, so work is shared evenly without a lead manually dispatching every ticket. Assignment is safe under concurrency — two tickets arriving at the same moment never both land on the same agent by accident.