Zendesk SLA and backlog dashboard

Make SLA drift and backlog visible

Service desks rarely fall over all at once. More often, they drift: a few tickets age out, response times slip, then breaches start arriving in clusters.

This dashboard is built to make that drift obvious - with SLA performance, breach risk, and volume trends visible on one screen.

What this dashboard is for

  • Monitor SLA health without living in Zendesk views
  • Identify which groups are driving breaches
  • Keep “nearing breach” work visible so it gets handled first
  • Track whether you’re stabilising or accumulating backlog over time
  1. Zendesk SLA and backlog dashboard

    What’s on the dashboard

    SLAs past 14 days (breaches by group)
    What it shows: breach count by group (Service Desk L1/L2, End User Compute, Identity & Access, Workplace Ops, HR Ops).
    Why it matters: turns “we’re missing SLAs” into “this is where it’s happening.”

    Breaches over time (bar/column chart)
    What it shows: daily breach volume over the last 14 days.
    Why it matters: highlights clusters and whether you’re trending up or recovering.

    Compliance (big number)
    What it shows: SLA compliance percentage (for example: 90.6%).
    Why it matters: executive-friendly signal that still maps to operational reality.

    Nearing SLA breach (table)
    Columns: ID, Priority, Status, Subject, Next SLA breach at (expressed as “in 14 minutes”, “in an hour”, etc.).
    Why it matters: this is the “do this next” list. It turns SLA management into prioritised work, not a retrospective.

    1-touch rate today (big number)
    What it shows: percentage of tickets resolved with one reply/touch.
    Why it matters: a useful proxy for quality and efficiency — and it often drops when work gets more complex.

    Active breached (number tile)
    What it shows: tickets currently in breach (not just “breaches today”).
    Why it matters: prevents breaches becoming a background statistic.

    Ticket volume (line chart: created vs solved)
    What it shows: created and solved volume over time (multi-week view).
    Why it matters: tells you if the desk is structurally under-capacity (created > solved) or recovering.

    FAQ

    What’s the difference between SLA breaches and tickets at risk of breach?
    Breaches are already missed. “Nearing breach” is the work you can still save - and usually the most valuable widget on the screen.

    What’s a good SLA compliance rate?
    It depends on your SLA policy and business hours. Where teams get caught out is setting SLAs that don’t match capacity — then using “compliance” as a stick instead of a signal.

    • Focus area

      SLA health, breach risk, and backlog trends for IT service desks.

    • Who looks at it?

      IT service desk managers, reliability owners, and team leads.

    • How often?

      Throughout the day and in daily standups or weekly reviews.

    • Zendesk Support

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