How I Automated Weekly SLA Reports in Our Support Team — Without Buying Any Tool
👋 Hi, I’m Arooj Javed, a software support engineer with 10+ years of experience helping tech teams solve real-world problems through smart, lightweight automation.
I specialize in improving internal workflows, automating SLA reporting, and building scalable support systems using tools like Excel, VBA, and JIRA without relying on expensive platforms.
I’ve worked in cross-functional environments across Pakistan and Europe, and have recently started sharing my technical contributions publicly through open-source projects and blogs.
On this blog, I document practical solutions I’ve built around reporting, dashboards, and support automation all based on real work I’ve done in fast-paced tech environments.
My goal is to contribute to the wider tech community, learn in public, and help others turn manual tasks into repeatable systems.
📖 Blog Content:
In most support teams, we spend more time managing internal reports than helping users. That was exactly the problem I faced when I joined a mid-sized software company. Every Friday, I had to compile our support ticket data into a weekly SLA report — manually. It took hours, and even small mistakes could affect management decisions.
I’ve always believed that support teams deserve automation just like developers and marketers get. So I decided to take a small step and build something myself.
💡 The Problem
Our ticketing process was mostly manual. Data was stored in Excel or exported from JIRA, but no one had time to calculate how many tickets met the SLA — or how long each priority type was taking.
We were tracking these manually using formulas, but it wasn’t sustainable. The SLA performance report took me 4–5 hours a week, and we had no charts, trends, or priority breakdowns.
🛠️ My Simple Fix
I built a basic Excel-based solution using formulas and a small macro (VBA). Here's what it did:
Pulled ticket logs from exported files
Calculated resolution times using simple date differences
Compared each case with SLA thresholds based on priority
Flagged SLA breaches in red and successful resolutions in green
Created a visual summary chart showing SLA compliance per priority
It wasn’t fancy, but it worked. More importantly, it gave us consistency and saved hours of time.
⏱️ The Result
Report time reduced from 4 hours to under 1 hour
SLA breaches were now easier to spot
Junior team members could generate the report without help
Our manager could make faster decisions with weekly trend charts
This project didn’t need any paid tool — just Excel, a bit of scripting, and the motivation to solve a real problem.
🎯 What I Learned
Sometimes we think automation means building complex tools or buying software. But often, real value comes from solving a small, annoying problem in a smart way.
This project showed me how valuable even a basic workflow improvement can be. It also taught me the importance of documenting processes — I created a small guide for the team, so this system could keep working without me.
🔗 Next Steps
I’m now working on building a more advanced version using Google Sheets and Apps Script. I’m also exploring how HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) principles can improve internal tools for support teams.
I’ll post updates here as I go. If you're in support or operations and doing the same report every week — trust me, you can automate it.
✍️ Author: Arooj Javed
Technical Support Engineer | Automation Enthusiast | C++ Educator