This blog is an update to our original Power BI reporting series posted here.
We’ve made some updates to our Power BI Dashboard with support for improved error handling and the introduction of a new page dedicated to Service Level Agreements (SLAs) across your Tikit environment. Just like before, we’ll need an Access Token which we can generate at https://web.tikit.ai. Learn about Access Tokens here.
With our token, let’s open up the updated Power BI Template with Power BI Desktop. Paste your key in and click Load.
While the initial page you see may not look all that different from the previous dashboard, you’ll notice a wholly new page tab dedicated to SLAs in the lower left hand corner. With the SLA Dashboard, you’ll be able to see all of your SLAs, all of the tickets associated with each of them and the count of all tickets within their respective SLA Status (About to Breach, Breached, Satisfied). There is also a breakdown beneath the graph that shows you the specific tickets associated with each SLA so you can quickly pinpoint and remediate any tickets that need attention. This also means that it’s possible you see the same ticket multiple times as it could have more than one SLA associated with it.
Updating Your SLA Filters
As always, we’ve included some out of box filters to get you started. But SLAs bring in a whole new dimension to reporting, so its worth explaining what these new datasets are in our report.
- Service Level Agreement: All of the SLAs that you’ve configured within Tikit. This includes Active and Inactive SLAs
- SLA Status: All of the possible Status values that an SLA can be such as Satisfied, Breached or Approaching Breach
- Ticket SLA: This represents the actual one or many SLAs that relate to Tickets within your environment. We’ve gone a couple steps further for you and added Service Level Agreement + SLA Status + Tickets into this dataset to make customizing dashboards as easy as drag’n’drop.
For example, maybe we really only want our SLA Dashboard to reflect just our “All Level 3 Tickets” SLAs. We can introduce a Filter to the entire Page to ensure our Stacked Column Chart and Table are both updated in a single go. We’ll just drag “Service Level Agreements.value.Name” from “Ticket SLA” into the “Filters on this page” and then select it.
If you have any questions or issues configuring your Power BI reporting with Tikit, please reach out to our support team at help@tikit.ai. To read part two in the original Power BI reporting series, find it here.
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Do you know if your team is actually meeting its service commitments, or does your ITSM team simply have a log of pending and completed service tickets?
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are the benchmarks that tell us if our help desks are operating at the level users and stakeholders expect, but many service desks are merely tracking tickets rather than grading their SLA compliance. When a ticket quietly sits past its response window, that’s more than a metrics problem–it erodes trust and, without the right visibility, those patterns are nearly impossible to catch before they compound.
Tikit’s Power BI template provides a dedicated SLA dashboard page, giving IT teams and multi-department help desks a clear, real-time view into SLA performance—right inside Microsoft Teams. Here’s how to set it up.
What Is an SLA Dashboard?
An SLA dashboard is a reporting view that shows whether your help desk tickets are being resolved within the agreed service windows. Rather than manually reviewing individual tickets, an SLA dashboard surfaces compliance status across your entire ticket queue at a glance.
For IT teams managing high ticket volumes, this kind of visibility is the difference between reacting to breaches after the fact and catching them before they happen. It also gives managers and department heads the data they need to have informed conversations about capacity, prioritization, and team performance.
What You'll Need Before Getting Started
To connect Tikit to Power BI and access the SLA dashboard, you’ll need three things:
- Tikit set up and running in your Microsoft Teams environment — explore Tikit’s full feature set if you haven’t already
- Power BI Desktop installed on your machine
- A Tikit Access Token, which you’ll generate at web.tikit.ai
If you’ve already completed the original Power BI dashboard setup, you’re most of the way there. This guide covers the updated template specifically, which includes the new SLA reporting page.
Step 1: Generate Your Tikit Access Token
Head to web.tikit.ai and click the Settings gear in the top right corner. Select Access Tokens from the left-hand menu.
Click + New Token, give it a name (something like “Reporting” works well), set an expiration date, and assign the Analysts application role. Click Save.
Your token will appear once—copy it immediately and treat it like a password. You won’t be able to retrieve it again after closing that window. You can learn more about managing Access Tokens in the Tikit Knowledge Base.
Step 2: Load the Updated Power BI Template
Open the updated Power BI Template in Power BI Desktop. When prompted, paste in your Access Token and click Load. If you’d prefer to follow along visually, the full setup walkthrough covers this process step by step.
Your ticket data will populate and the dashboard charts will render. If you’re not using Groups in Tikit yet, a few charts may appear empty—that’s expected and nothing to worry about.
Once loaded, you’ll notice something new: a second page tab in the lower left corner labeled SLA Dashboard. That’s where the real work begins.
Step 3: Understanding the SLA Dashboard Page
The SLA Dashboard gives you a consolidated view of every SLA configured in your Tikit environment and how your tickets are performing against each one. Specifically, you’ll see:
- All active and inactive SLAs configured within Tikit
- Each SLA’s associated tickets
- A count of tickets broken down by SLA status
- A detailed table beneath the chart showing individual tickets per SLA for quick identification and action
One thing worth knowing upfront: a ticket can appear more than once in this view. That’s not a data error—it means that ticket has more than one SLA associated with it. Each SLA relationship is tracked independently.
What Do SLA Status Values Mean?
Before diving into filters, it helps to understand what each status actually represents:
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- Satisfied — The ticket was resolved within the agreed SLA window. This is the target state.
- About to Breach — The ticket is approaching its SLA deadline and hasn’t been resolved yet. This is your early warning signal.
- Breached — The SLA deadline passed without the ticket being resolved. This is what you’re trying to prevent.
The stacked column chart on the SLA Dashboard page breaks ticket counts into these three statuses for each SLA, so you can spot trouble at a glance rather than digging row by row.
Step 4: Understanding the Three SLA Datasets
When building or customizing your SLA dashboard, you’ll work with three core datasets. Each one serves a different purpose:
- Service Level Agreement — A list of every SLA you’ve configured in Tikit, including both active and inactive agreements. Useful for filtering the dashboard to specific SLAs.
- SLA Status — The full set of possible status values a ticket SLA can carry: Satisfied, Breached, or About to Breach.
- Ticket SLA — The most versatile dataset. It represents the actual SLA-to-ticket relationships in your environment and comes pre-combined with Service Level Agreement, SLA Status, and Ticket data. Most of your custom dashboard work will happen here—it’s designed for drag-and-drop use, so you don’t need to model or join data manually.
Step 5: Filtering the SLA Dashboard by Agreement
Out of the box, the SLA Dashboard shows all SLAs across your entire Tikit environment. Most teams will want to narrow that down.
Say you only want to see data for your “All Level 3 Tickets” SLA. Here’s how to apply a page-level filter so both the stacked column chart and the ticket detail table update together:
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- In the Filters pane, locate the Filters on this page section
- From the Ticket SLA dataset, drag Service Level Agreements.value.Name into that section
- Select the SLA name you want to isolate
The entire page will update in a single step—no need to apply filters to individual visuals separately. You can apply the same approach to filter by SLA Status if you want a view focused specifically on breached or about-to-breach tickets.
Why Does the Same Ticket Appear More Than Once?
This is a common question when teams first explore the SLA dashboard. If you see a ticket listed multiple times, it simply means that ticket has more than one SLA tied to it—for example, a separate SLA for first response time and another for full resolution. Each SLA relationship surfaces as its own row, which is intentional. It lets you track compliance at the SLA level, not just the ticket level.
Keeping Your Dashboard Current: Scheduled Refreshes
Once you’ve published your report to Power BI Online, you can configure automatic data refreshes so your dashboard stays current as tickets move through your queue—without manual exports or re-running the template.
In Power BI Online, navigate to your Dataset settings and expand Scheduled Refresh to configure your preferred cadence. You can also update your Tikit Access Token through the Parameters section when the time comes to rotate it. For teams managing service desks where ticket resolution and SLA performance are reviewed regularly, scheduled refreshes mean your stakeholders always see accurate data without anyone lifting a finger.
Embedding Your SLA Dashboard in Microsoft Teams
With your report published to Power BI Online, you can surface it directly inside a Teams channel—making it accessible to the support team, managers, or any other stakeholder who needs visibility.
In the Teams channel of your choice, click the + icon in the top tab row, select Power BI, find your workspace and report, name the tab (something like “SLA Dashboard” works), and click Save.
Your dashboard is now a permanent tab in that channel, visible to anyone with access, and it refreshes automatically on the schedule you’ve configured. For organizations running help desks across multiple departments, this means every team lead can have their own SLA view in their own channel—scoped to their department’s agreements.
Get Your SLA Dashboard Up and Running
Once your SLA dashboard is configured, you’ll have a live view into exactly where your team stands on every active agreement—across every ticket, every department. That kind of clarity doesn’t require a BI analyst or a complicated setup.
If you’re looking to take your reporting even further, the custom dashboard walkthrough covers how to build department-specific views and publish them directly into Teams channels.
Questions or issues configuring your Power BI reporting? Reach out to the support team today.
Ready to transform your service desk with Tikit + Power BI? Book a demo or schedule your free setup today! We’ll handle everything for you so you can get the most out of your 14-Day, no strings attached, Free Trial.
