Configuration: Service Levels: Policies
Overview
Use this page to create and manage business-hours policies and maintenance/incident exclusions used in service-level objective calculations. A business-hours policy is a named, time-zone-scoped weekly schedule of day windows marking when a service counts toward compliance, instead of being measured around the clock. An exclusion is a one-off UTC time range, tagged Maintenance or Incident, that is subtracted from those calculations for a specific service so planned work or a handled outage doesn't count against it.
A service must already exist in Configuration: Service Levels: Services before you can scope an exclusion to it, and an exclusion can optionally target one objective from Configuration: Service Levels: Objectives. What you set here feeds the compliance figures shown on Service Levels: Dashboard, Service Levels: Health, and Service Levels: Violations.
This page itself lets you add, edit, and delete business-hours policies in the Business hours panel, and add, edit, and delete exclusions in the Maintenance and incident exclusions panel, each with its own confirmation before a destructive delete.
Key concepts
- Business hours policy - A named, time-zone-scoped weekly schedule made up of one or more day windows that marks when a service is considered in scope for service-level calculations. (related: Configuration: Service Levels: Services)
- Day window - One weekday plus a start and end time within a business-hours policy; a policy can hold several day windows to build up its weekly schedule.
- Exclusion - A one-off time range, entered in UTC and tagged Maintenance or Incident, that is subtracted from service-level calculations for a specific service. (related: Service Levels: Violations)
- Objective - A specific service-level target defined for a service; an exclusion can be scoped to just one objective instead of the whole service. (related: Configuration: Service Levels: Objectives)
When to use it
- You need SLO compliance to count only business hours instead of 24/7 measurement.
- A maintenance window is planned and shouldn't count against a service's error budget.
- An incident has already been investigated and recorded, and its downtime should be excluded from future compliance reporting.
- A service's support hours or time zone changed and an existing business-hours policy needs updating.
- You're reviewing why a service's compliance number doesn't match the raw uptime data, and want to check which policy or exclusions are in effect.
Before you begin
- A service you want to scope exists in Configuration: Service Levels: Services, since both business-hours policies and exclusions are applied against a specific service.
- If you plan to scope an exclusion to one SLO target, that objective exists in Configuration: Service Levels: Objectives.
- You know the time zone and the weekday/time ranges the business-hours schedule should cover before opening the create-policy dialog.
- You know the UTC start and end time, the reason, and whether the window is Maintenance or Incident before opening the create-exclusion dialog.
Common workflows
Create a business-hours policy
Persona: load-test operator or admin
- Click + Business hours in the page header.
- Expect: A create-policy dialog opens with an empty Policy name, a Time zone preset to the appliance's configured zone, Enabled on, and no day windows yet.
- Enter a Policy name that describes the schedule, and confirm or change the Time zone.
- Expect: The fields reflect your entries; the time zone you choose determines how the day-window times you add next are interpreted.
- Click Add day for each day you want to include, and set the start and end time on each row.
- Expect: A day-window row appears for each click, each with its own weekday and time range, and a Remove link next to it.
- Click Save policy.
- Expect: The dialog closes and the new policy appears in the Business hours panel with its time zone and day-window count.
Verify: The new policy's name, time zone, and day-window count appear in the Business hours panel and it's available for selection when scoping a service's business hours.
Add a maintenance exclusion window
Persona: load-test operator or admin
- Click + Exclusion in the page header.
- Expect: A create-exclusion dialog opens with empty Service, Objective, Type, Source id, Reason, From (UTC ISO), and To (UTC ISO) fields.
- Select the Service (and Objective, if scoping to one) and set Type to Maintenance.
- Expect: The dialog reflects the selected service and type; Type stays limited to the two manual values since business hours is its own policy, not an exclusion type.
- Enter a Reason, for example DB failover window, and the From (UTC ISO) / To (UTC ISO) timestamps.
- Expect: The dialog shows your reason text and the time range you entered.
- Click Save exclusion.
- Expect: The dialog closes and the exclusion appears in the Maintenance and incident exclusions panel, replacing the 'No exclusions configured.' message.
Verify: The Maintenance and incident exclusions panel lists the new window with its type and reason, and that From/To range no longer counts against the selected service's compliance.
Steps
Step 1
Open the Policies page under Service Levels configuration.
Expected result: The page loads with two panels: Business hours, showing the existing 'Office hours (Mon-Fri 08:00-18:00)' policy scoped to Europe/Amsterdam across 5 day windows, and Maintenance and incident exclusions, showing 'No exclusions configured.'
This view is the starting point for reviewing or changing the business-hours schedules and exclusion windows that feed into service-level objective calculations.
- Refresh reloads both panels from the server.
- + Business hours and the Business hours panel's New link open the same create-policy dialog.
- + Exclusion and the exclusions panel's New link open the same create-exclusion dialog.
-
Edit and Delete on the Office hours row act on that specific business-hours policy.
Field reference
| Field | Purpose | Format / Validation | Required | Default |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Policy name | Identifies the business-hours schedule so you can find and assign it to a service later; give it a name that reflects the hours it covers. | free text | Yes | - |
| Time zone | Sets the time zone that the day windows below are interpreted in; changing it shifts which UTC hours count as business hours without changing the displayed day/time values. | time zone selector | - | Preset to the appliance's configured time zone when you open the dialog; falls back to UTC if that value isn't available yet. |
| Enabled | Turns the policy on or off without deleting it; switch it off to temporarily stop it from being applied while keeping its day windows intact for later reuse. | toggle | - | - |
| Day windows | Each row is one weekday plus a start and end time; add more rows to cover additional days or a split shift on the same day, and remove rows to narrow the schedule. | weekday + HH:mm to HH:mm, added via Add day | - | Empty until you click Add day. |
| Service | Selects which service this exclusion's time range is subtracted from; only that service's compliance is affected. | select | - | - |
| Objective | Narrows the exclusion to a single objective on the selected service instead of all of that service's objectives; leave it unset if the service only has one objective. | select | - | - |
| Type | Classifies the exclusion as Maintenance or Incident; business hours are handled by their own policy, so only these two manual types are offered here. | select: Maintenance, Incident | - | - |
| Source id | Optional free-text reference, such as a change or incident ticket number, to trace the exclusion back to the record that justified it. | free text | - | - |
| Reason | Short description shown on the exclusion row and in the delete-confirmation prompt, so anyone reviewing exclusions later understands why the window exists. | free text | Yes | - |
| From (UTC ISO) | Start of the excluded time range, entered in UTC regardless of your browser or the policy's time zone; everything from this point until To is removed from compliance calculations. | UTC ISO date-time | - | - |
| To (UTC ISO) | End of the excluded time range in UTC; a longer From/To span excludes more time from compliance, so keep it tight to the actual maintenance or incident duration. | UTC ISO date-time | - | - |
Controls reference
Refresh
Reloads the Business hours and Maintenance and incident exclusions panels from the server.
When to use: After a change made elsewhere (another tab, another admin) that you expect to see reflected here.
Side effects: Read-only; no data is changed.
Business hours (+)
Opens the create dialog for a new business-hours policy.
When to use: To add a new weekly schedule before assigning it to a service.
Side effects: Opens a dialog only; no data changes until Save policy is clicked.
Exclusion (+)
Opens the create dialog for a new maintenance or incident exclusion window.
When to use: To exclude a planned maintenance period or an already-recorded incident from compliance calculations.
Side effects: Opens a dialog only; no data changes until Save exclusion is clicked.
New (Business hours panel)
Opens the same create-policy dialog as the header's Business hours button.
When to use: When working directly from the Business hours panel.
Side effects: Opens a dialog only.
New (Maintenance and incident exclusions panel)
Opens the same create-exclusion dialog as the header's Exclusion button.
When to use: When working directly from the exclusions panel.
Side effects: Opens a dialog only.
Edit (business-hours row)
Opens the edit dialog pre-filled with the selected policy's name, time zone, enabled state, and day windows.
When to use: To change hours, rename the policy, disable it, or add/remove day windows.
Side effects: Opens a pre-populated dialog; changes apply only after Save policy.
Delete (business-hours row)
Prompts to confirm permanent deletion, warning that services using the policy lose their business-hours window.
When to use: Retiring a schedule that's no longer referenced, or that you've already replaced on the services that used it.
Side effects: Mutating and destructive: permanently removes the policy; any service still linked to it loses its business-hours scoping. Cannot be undone.
Edit (exclusion row)
Opens the edit dialog pre-filled with the selected exclusion's service, objective, type, source id, reason, and From/To range.
When to use: To correct or extend an exclusion window after it was created.
Side effects: Opens a pre-populated dialog; changes apply only after Save exclusion.
Delete (exclusion row)
Prompts to confirm permanent deletion, naming the exclusion's type and reason.
When to use: Removing an exclusion that was entered in error or is no longer needed.
Side effects: Mutating and destructive: permanently removes the exclusion, so that time range again counts in future compliance calculations. Cannot be undone.
Add day
Appends a new day-window row to the business-hours policy being edited.
When to use: To cover an additional weekday, or a second window on the same day for a split shift.
Side effects: Non-destructive; changes stay local to the open dialog until Save policy is clicked.
Remove
Removes one day-window row from the policy being edited.
When to use: To drop a day or shift that no longer applies before saving.
Side effects: Non-destructive; changes stay local to the open dialog until Save policy is clicked.
Cancel
Closes the open dialog without saving.
When to use: When you opened a dialog by mistake or decide not to proceed with the change.
Side effects: Discards unsaved changes; stored data is unchanged.
Save policy
Persists the business-hours policy being created or edited.
When to use: After entering a Policy name, confirming the Time zone, and adding the day windows you need.
Side effects: Mutating: creates or updates the policy, which immediately becomes available for services to reference.
Save exclusion
Persists the maintenance or incident exclusion being created or edited.
When to use: After selecting the Service, Type, Reason, and From/To range.
Side effects: Mutating: creates or updates the exclusion, so the From/To range is excluded from SLO calculations for the selected service going forward.
Verify the result
After creating or editing a business-hours policy or exclusion, it appears in the matching panel: business-hours policies list by name with their time zone and day-window count, and exclusions list with their type and reason once at least one exists. If the Maintenance and incident exclusions panel still reads 'No exclusions configured.' after you click Save exclusion, the save didn't complete and the dialog likely reopened with a validation issue. Click Refresh if a change you expect to see is missing, since the panels don't automatically poll for updates made elsewhere.
Troubleshooting
- Symptom: The Time zone on a new business-hours policy shows UTC instead of your appliance's configured zone. Fix: The appliance agent wasn't reporting its configured zone yet when the dialog opened; close the dialog, wait a moment, and open + Business hours again.
- Symptom: Deleting a business-hours policy affects services you didn't expect. Fix: Read the confirmation text before confirming - it warns that services using the policy lose their business-hours window; reassign those services to another policy first if that's not what you want.
- Symptom: The Type field on a new exclusion doesn't list Business hours as an option. Fix: This is expected; business hours are managed as their own policy in the left panel, so only Maintenance and Incident are valid exclusion types.
- Symptom: Save exclusion won't complete. Fix: Confirm Reason, From (UTC ISO), and To (UTC ISO) are all filled in and that From is earlier than To.
- Symptom: The Maintenance and incident exclusions panel still shows 'No exclusions configured.' after adding one. Fix: Click Refresh to reload the panel; if it's still empty, reopen the exclusion to confirm it saved against the correct Service.
Related articles
- Prerequisite: Configuration: Service Levels: Services - policies and exclusions are both applied against a specific service defined there
- Prerequisite: Configuration: Service Levels: Objectives - an exclusion can be scoped to a single objective defined on that page
- Next step: Service Levels: Dashboard - shows the compliance figures that result once business hours and exclusions are applied
- See also: Service Levels: Violations - violations recorded during an exclusion window are explained by the policy set here
- See also: Service Levels: Health - current service health reflects whichever business-hours and exclusion windows are active