---
sourceDocument: Australia IT Service Management
sourceDocumentLink: https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/r/it-service-management

 Release :

    - australia

ft:locale :

    - en-US

ft:publication_title :

    - Australia IT Service Management

ft:clusterId :

    - itsm

bundleId :

    - itsm

workflow :

    - Technology


---

# Understand why an SLA did not trigger as expected

# Understand why an SLA did not trigger as expected {#ariaid-title1}

Release version: Australia  
Updated March 12, 2026  
![](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/portal-asset/ico-clock) 1 minute to read  
Describes the conditions when an SLA might not trigger as expected.

Using Task SLA -1 (highlighted in the screenshot) as an example, an SLA Manager may have
expected this SLA to trigger earlier.

To troubleshoot this inconcistency, the SLA Manager can enable Show all task updates from the settings menu in the upper right of the SLA Timeline. The SLA
timeline displays task updates that do not cause an SLA stage change as a white triangle.

If you click the first or second task updates that did not cause a stage change, the details
section displays the SLA start conditions and the task values that are key to trigger the start
condition. In this case, the Configuration Item field is not populated and the SLA Definition
conditions are defined to trigger when the Configuration Item is defined as the CI SAN 001.

On inspecting the details for the task update that triggered the SLA start condition, you can
find that the configuration item is set to Storage Area Network 001 and this matches the SLA
Definition start condition.

Show all task updates is a powerful tool to help SLA Managers understand
why an SLA may not have behaved as expected.