Indication

Indication

An Indication is a time counter automatically generated when the Indicator start condition is met. It shows all primary timings, time points, and current state of the SLA for a particular record (an incident, a request, etc.), which allows tracking the level of the service quality target indicators.

To check the active service level indications, navigate to Service Level Management → Indication.

When creating an Indication record, the system also fills in the fields of this record. Time points and timings are also automatically recalculated when the indicator counting pauses, cancels or stops.

The Indication form

Timings and percentages

The indication record contains two field sets containing timing information related to the task. These are:

• Actual Elapsed Time
• Actual Elapsed Percentage
• Actual Left Time

and

• Business Elapsed Time
• Business Elapsed Percentage
• Business Left Time

The difference between these values is that the "actual" values are always calculated on the 24x7 basis and the "business" values take the schedule specified for the related indicator into account.

Let us consider an example for more clarity.

1. Create an indicator with the conditions like shown below:

   Indicator

   Field	Value
   Name	Specify a preferable name here
   Table	Task
   Active	Enabled
   Duration	10 minutes
   Schedule	24x7
   Timezone	Europe/Moscow
   Timezone	Indicator timezone
   Start conditions
   Condition	State IS Registered
   When to Cancel	Never
   Pause conditions
   Condition	State IS Postponed
   Complete conditions
   Condition	State IS Closed complete

2. Create a Task record and move it to the Registered state. For this, please complete the steps below:

   1. Navigate to https://{your_instance_url}/record/task
   2. Fill in the mandatory fields.
   3. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply changes. An indication started.

The Start Time field of the indication is populated with the time when it actually started. The Original Breach Time field is populated with the time when it is to breach. This value is calculated by summarizing the indication start time and the related indicator duration.

Consider a case that an indicator uses a popular schedule "8x5" (5 working days for 8 hours). Using this schedule, the difference between actual and business timings can be considerable.

For example:

An incident raised at 2 pm on a working day. The indication start condition is defined as "State IS In Progress", and indication complete condition is defined as "State IS Completed". So the incident was taken to work on 3 pm (the indication started), and it was completed on 11 am on the next day (the indication completed). So, its business elapsed time was 5 hours, while the actual elapsed time was 21 hours.

To check the incident indication, please complete the steps below:

1. Open the incident form.
2. Scroll down to the Related Lists area and open the Timepoints Indication tab.
3. Open the indication record you need to check.

Calculation nuances

As mentioned above, the "actual" timing values (that is, the values of the Actual Elapsed Time, Actual Elapsed Percentage, and the Actual Left Time fields) are always calculated on the 24x7 basis, unlike the "business" values (the values of the Business Elapsed Time, Business Elapsed Percentage, and the Business Left Time fields). These fields consider the schedule specified in the parent indicator.

The Actual Elapsed Time value is calculated as the difference between the current date and time and the Start Time value.

AET = NOW - ST

The Actual Left Time value is calculated as the difference between the Breach Time value and Indicator Duration value.

ALT = BrT - NOW

The Actual Elapsed Percentage value is calculated by the formula below:

AE% = AET/D*100%, where D is for Indicator duration.

Business timings and percentages are calculated as given below.

The Business Elapsed Time value can be calculated using the formula below:

BET = (NOW - ST) - ( PT + mPT)

The Business Left Time value can be calculated using the formula below:

BLT = ((BrT + mPT) - NOW)

The Business Elapsed Percentage can be calculated using the formula below:

BE% = BET/D * 100 (%)

Indications recalculation

Sometimes indicators may no longer be valid (for example, after the cancel conditions were met). This happens because the indicator (and the indication as well) originally started with other conditions, and after that, a new indication is to be started with the same Commitment.

To simplify this process, indication recalculation was implemented.

How it works (example)

1. An indication started, equal to four hours according to the relevant indicator.  
2. Three hours later, due to meeting the cancel conditions, the indication has been canceled.
3. A new indication is started.

   1. The business_elapsed_percentage parameter from the canceled indication is used to make an equation like 0%<business_elapsed_percentage <100%.

   2. If the value of this parameter meets the condition, then the new indicator duration equates to (indicator.duration*(business_elapsed_percentage/100)).
      
      

All these activities are logged in the History (sys_history) table. To acquaint with them, please navigate to System Logs → History and open the record that is the entry of interest.

Configuring indications

There are system properties that allow setting indication records such as breach time and recalculation period. To set them, please do the following steps:

1. Navigate to System Properties → All Properties.
2. Find the property you need to edit using the list search boxes or the Condition Builder and open it.
3. Edit the Value field.
4. Click Save or Save and Exit.