Managing service level criteria

Service level criteria (SLCs) are performance objectives that require processing to occur within a certain time window.

For example, a Sterling Connect:Direct® process may need to begin by 20:00 and end by 20:30. An SLC can monitor for the timeliness of both events. If either does not occur within a certain window, the SLC can be used to notify you of that fact. IBM® Sterling Control Center Monitor can monitor processing start times, stop times, or durations depending on the type of SLC schedule you define. You can define a rule that creates an alert and then view the alert through the Alerts Monitor. The alert might lead you to investigate to determine why the processing did not occur as expected, and to make corresponding adjustments.

There are four types of SLCs:

• Standard—Standard SLCs monitor specific Process names, file names, etc. Use standard SLC groups when you know the specific item to monitor.
• Wildcard—Wildcard SLCs monitor Processes, file names, etc. with names that do not remain constant, such as Batch IDs with the date and time in their names. To specify monitoring criteria in wildcard groups, you can use the wildcard characters asterisk and question mark, or regular expressions (regex).
• Workflow—Workflow SLCs monitor the flow of related Processes. For example, a workflow SLC can monitor a transaction consisting of three Processes, all of which must run and finish within three hours of the first Process's initiation.
  Tip: Workflow SLCs provide the most flexibility when it comes to specifying the criteria you need to monitor one, or more, processes, and can be used in place of any of the other SLC types. For this reason, Workflow SLCs are recommended for use over any of the other types.
• Simple—Simple SLCs are created using a question/answer format to define the scenario you want to monitor and to select basic parameters and specify values for those parameters.

Tip: You can use the Overflow Menu for the following actions:

• View Details: Click View Details to open the details page of a particular SLC.
• Duplicate: Click Duplicate to copy the definition or components listed.
• Cross Reference: Click Cross Reference to determine other objects reference.
• Update: Click Update option to edit the information of a selected entry.
• Enable/Disable: Click Enable/Disable to enable/disable a SLC
• SLC Debug Report: Click SLC Debug Report option to run report. For more details, refer to Troubleshooting SLCs
• Delete: Click Delete to open the Delete window which helps you to delete the entity.
• Audit Logs: Click Audit Logs to view the logs.