Underpinning Contracts

An Underpinning Contract (UC) embodies an agreement between the yourselves and your suppliers to deliver support at specified times of the day. Penalties can also be involved when this agreement is breached. UCs are based on one or more Response Levels, support hours and calendars which define the working day in which support calls are accepted (bank holidays and weekends are treated as special cases), and the required turnaround time for the call to be resolved.

To create a new Underpinning Contract:

1. Start the Administration component.
2. On the Service Level Management tree, expand the Agreements folder, then expand the required module.
3. Expand the relevant business process, for example, Task Assignment.
4. Select the Contracts folder, then on the Actions list, click New Contract.
   The Contract window appears.
5. Specify a name and description, then if applicable, specify the start and end dates for the contract.
6. Click .
   You can add the suppliers that you want to apply this agreement to, and any specific assets that you want to use it.
7. On the Actions list, click Manage Groups.
   The Supplier dialog box appears.
8. In the Available Items list, select the relevant supplier, then click .
   The supplier is added to the Selected Items list.
9. Repeat as required, using the arrow buttons to add or remove suppliers.

You can also double-click suppliers to move them between the lists.

10. Click OK.
11. Complete the relevant information, then click .

You can now add any agreement rules as required. For more information, see Agreement rules.