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ServiceNow SLA Interview Questions 2026

What is SLA?

Service Level Agreement is a commitment between vendor and a client.

As per SLA vendor has to provide the services to customer as agreed upon on the contract.

e.g. Let’s says customer is facing an issue and he raised an incident in ServiceNow which is of Priority 1, then there is an agreed contract between the vendor (Who resolve the incident) and the customers that P1 incident will be resolved on first priority with in the agreed timeline (for e.g. 3 hours). If the vendor did not resolve the incident within agreed timeline, which means customer has a loss in any terms of business, then there will be agreed fine which vendor has to pay to customer.

What are different type of SLA?

SLA's are of three types:
SLA - Service level agreement
OLA-Operational level agreement
UC- Underpinning Contract

What is Retroactive start?

If Retroactive start check box selected, the Set start to field appears, offering options for starting the SLA from various events on the table selected.

e.g. If an Incident's priority is changed to 1 (Critical) and a Priority 1 SLA is attached at that time, Retroactive start means that the SLA counts from when the incident was first created, rather than from when the Incident's priority changed.

Schedule significance in SLA?

Schedule will determine the actual business hours to be considered when calculating SLA business elapsed and left time. For example 8 x 5 schedule. 8 hours 5 days between 9am to 5pm. Outside this SLA will be paused.

What happens to old SLA when new SLA gets attached?

Old SLA gets cancelled and new SLA gets attached.

What is repair SLA and what it does?

SLA Administrators can repair SLA records to ensure SLA timing and duration information is accurate.

Repair of SLAs is useful to determine accurate timing information if your system has SLA records that contain incorrect values.

e.g. You may need to repair SLA records as a result of:

- Changing the SLA definition or SLA schedule for any task SLA that is still active.

- Changing the conditions of the SLA definition for any task SLA that is still active.

The repair function removes the SLA record, then recreates and recalculates it from the start, including recreating the workflow. The repair uses the history from the Task and if appropriate will also create new Task SLAs that did not previously exist.

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Real Interview Questions & Answers

Questions shared by ServiceNow professionals and reviewed for clarity, relevance, and interview usefulness.

Arunavas 21 May 2026
We are migrating from ServiceNow instance A to Instance B. How we can ensure the SLA will be intact even after DATA migration?
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Rohit 09 Jan 2025
What is stop condition in SLA ?
Chaitanya Petkar 11 Feb 2025
A condition when SLA stops counting the time after fulfilling the STOP conditions
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Narendra 29 Sep 2024
What is the use of schedule field in SLA?
Ttharun 18 Apr 2025
In ServiceNow, the Schedule field in an SLA definition dictates the business hours or working hours that the SLA will consider when calculating time. This allows for more accurate SLA tracking by factoring in weekends, holidays, and non-standard work schedules.
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Sarthak 18 Jun 2024
If three priority change did take place on one incident. How can we calculate the SLA.
Anonymous 21 Feb 2026
When an incident’s priority changes, ServiceNow stops the old SLA and attaches a new one based on the updated conditions. The SLA calculation depends on whether you configure it to reset or continue, but only the SLA tied to the current priority remains active.
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Kiran 03 Jun 2024
Suppose if I have priority 2 sla attached to my p2 incident suppose if itil user moves that to p1 ticket and major incident ala gets attached to that sla so what happens to p2 sla which is attached to the incident
Harshal 28 Jun 2024
OLD SLA Get cancelled when new sla attached
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Keerthana Arumugam 09 May 2024
Give one scenario where retroactive start and retroactive pause is used
Ayush Srivastava 15 Aug 2024
Let’s imagine a project with a specific start date and timeline. However, due to unforeseen circumstances or delays, the project actually started a week later than originally planned. In this case, retroactive start can be utilized to update the project start date to reflect the actual day it commenced. This allows for accurate tracking of project progress and ensures that any associated tasks or dependencies are adjusted accordingly. Similarly, if there was a need to pause the project for a certain period, retroactive pause can be applied to indicate the actual day the project was put on hold. This helps in recording the pause duration accurately, enabling project managers to plan and adjust future timelines and dependencies accordingly.
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Anand V A 21 Feb 2024
What is response and resolution Sla
Unknown 25 Apr 2024
Response SLA: Is calculated from the time the incident created and assigned to a group till it is assigned to someone from the group. It is the time taken to acknowledge the ticked. Resolution SLA: It is calculated from the time incident is created till the time the incident is resolved.
1 helpful
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Basavaraj 05 Nov 2023
Can we select The callers' location's timezone in SLA ?
Gopal 16 Nov 2023
Yes, user.location
0 helpful
Anand 15 Feb 2026
You can choose "The caller's location's time zone" option from the timezone source
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Venkatesh 13 Oct 2023
What is Difference Between Business Elasaped time and Actual Elapsed Time?
Basavaraj 02 Nov 2023
Actual elapsed values are calculated on a 24x7 basis. Business elapsed values are calculated based on the schedule specified in the task SLA. The schedule is taken from the SLA definition by default.
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Anonymous 09 Dec 2023
Actual elapsed time is the total time the SLA has taken from the time SLA start until the SLA completed. Business elapsed time is the total time which is calculated as per Schedule type (Give in SLA form for e.g., 2 business days by 4 pm) and as per time zone. To analyze the exact SLA timing condition, we always see Business elapsed time.
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Sp 15 Jun 2023
What is RetroActive Pause?
Rathan 10 Jul 2023
If Retroactive pause is checked, any new SLA gets associated to the ticket also considers the pause time. For example, I have 2 SLAs for 2 different group. Both have Retroactive Start is set as ticket creation date. When ticket is created and assigned to first group, SLA1 got associated to the ticket. The ticket was put on hold for 1 hour and then assigned to 2nd Group, which linked the SLA2 to the ticket. Since the SLA2 has Rectroactive Start is set as ticket creation date, it will consider the SLA start time as ticket creation date. Now if the Retroactive Pause is also set for SLA2, it will also consider the 1 hour of pause time, which will extend the SLA breach date by 1 hour.
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Comments 1
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Satyam 14 Jun 2026
These are great questions!
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