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UCSC Google Apps Service Level Agreement 2019/2021

Quicklinks

  1. General Overview
  2. Service Description
  3. Roles and Responsibilities
  4. Requesting Service
  5. Hours of Coverage, Response Times and Escalation
  6. Maintenance and Service Changes
  7. Pricing
  8. Review and Reporting
  9. Approvals

1 General Overview

This is a Service Level Agreement (SLA) between the campus community and the Information Technology Services Division (ITS) to document:

  • The Google Apps for Education Service "G Suite"
  • The general levels of response, availability, and maintenance associated with these services
  • The responsibilities of ITS as a provider of these services
  • The responsibilities of the clients receiving these services
  • Deviations from the standard processes documented in the ITS and Campus SLA

This Agreement is valid from July 2019. Review is every two years, or as otherwise needed.

2 Service Description

2.1 Service Scope

More information about the UCSC Google Apps Services

  • Core Apps: Email, Calendar, Groups, Drive, Sites, Mobile, Hangouts (Meet), Classroom and Vault. Core Apps are covered by the UC/Google contract.
  • Additional UCSC Google services include: Google Apps-Only Account, Google Group without -group in its name, Google email nickname (Gmail alias).
  • Consumer Apps: Google+, Blogger, Analytics, YouTube, and more. Consumer Apps are governed by a contract between the user and Google. These Apps are self-supported services.
  • Broadcast bulk mailing system provided for Public Affairs to send campuswide email to faculty, staff, and students.
  • Email forwarding for alumni is an opt-in service that is activated when the person's account is closed. This service became available in 2014.

2.2 Operating Parameters

Google Apps services are provided to people who work or attend UCSC, including faculty, staff, students, alumni for the first 12 months after leaving UCSC, and others for UCSC related business, education and research.

2.3 Service Level Performance

For support requests submitted Online/ SlugHub Request (slughub.ucsc.edu), response times will be tracked and reported as part of the ITS and Campus SLA. The report is posted quarterly in the ITS Service Catalog, "Service & System Metrics".

2.4 Assumptions

  • Google Apps services are provided to campus affiliates at no charge.
  • Google Apps services provided by ITS are documented in the ITS Service Catalog.
  • Changes to services will be communicated and documented to all stakeholders via the Service Catalog, Maintenance Calendar and ITS notification process.

3 Roles and Responsibilities

3.1 Parties

The following Service Owner(s) will be used as the basis of the Agreement and represent the primary stakeholders associated with this SLA:

Stakeholder

Title / Role

Contact Information

Leslie Geary

Enterprise Applications Portfolio Manager

leslieg@ucsc.edu

Divisional Liaisons

 

3.2 ITS Responsibilities

ITS responsibilities and/or requirements in support of this Agreement include:

  • Manage Google Apps for Education environment at UCSC.
  • Manage interfaces between Google Apps and other systems, including email forwarding for former students and the campus broadcast system.
  • Meet response times associated with the priority assigned to incidents and service requests in the SlugHub ticketing system. For details on priorities, see KB0010247.
  • Post scheduled changes on the ITS Maintenance Calendar, notify ITS managers and campus business partners, and notify all faculty, staff, and students when needed. 
  • Follow the principle of least perusal, the policy for access without consent, and other specifications in the UC Electronic Communications Policy and the UCSC implementation of that policy.

3.3 Customer Responsibilities

Customer responsibilities and/or requirements in support of this Agreement include:

  • Adherence to UCSC policies, processes and procedures regarding use of email and other electronic data. 
  • Contact the IT Services Manager for additions or changes in established service levels.
  • Contact the ITS Support Center for incidents.

4 Requesting Service

See the ITS and Campus SLA for standard methods of contacting ITS for service.

5. Hours of Coverage, Response Times and Escalation

For all requests, the ITS goal is to have a staff member assigned and acknowledge requests within 4 business hours of receipt. Campus priorities may require exceptions to this goal during certain times of the Academic year.

5.1 Hours of Coverage

Google Apps Services staff coverage is provided 8AM - 5PM, Monday - Friday except for holidays and campus closure.

5.2 Incident Response, Prioritization, Escalation, Service Request

Google Apps service disruptions that impact essential campus business or are identified as impacting a division or the entire campus, will be responded to by the Google Apps Service Team as soon as they learn about the outage. Information about Google service disruptions is available online at: Google Status Dashboard

Requests for service features and functions not provided by this service can be submitted though SlugHub.

See the ITS and Campus SLA.

6 Maintenance and Service Changes

Google Apps Services abide by the standard maintenance and service change process whenever possible. See the ITS and Campus SLA for additional detail. The standard UCSC Google Apps maintenance window is Wednesdays from 4:30 PM to 6:30 PM. Google Inc., has their own service change schedule and as a result, changes to Google Services might be implemented outside of the standard UCSC Google Apps maintenance window. Changes are listed on the ITS Maintenance Calendar. 

7 Pricing

7.1 Rates Process

Google Apps services are partially funded by the Information User Assessment. 

8 Reviewing and Reporting

8.1 System Performance and Availability Reporting

8.2 SLA Reviews

The Designated Review Owner is responsible for facilitating regular reviews of this document. Contents of this document may be amended as required, provided mutual agreement is obtained from the primary stakeholders and communicated to all affected parties. The Document Owner will incorporate all subsequent revisions and obtain mutual agreements / approvals as required. Next Review Date: July 2021

9 Approvals and Signatures

The Divisional Liaisons and ITS Senior Managers approve this document. This document is then published on the ITS Service Catalog website along with other service level agreements. Service level information is integrated into the service page in the ITS Service Catalog.