An indicator is a rule of a time counter activation that is specified by proper conditions for starting, pausing, resetting and stopping this counter. It also determines a time limit for declaring SLA as breached and contains time conditions of a Commitment type implementation.
For example, you can create separate SLA indicators for incidents having an impact from Low to Very High and set a separate Breach Time value for them, based on your SLA agreement.
When an indicator starts, the system automatically generates an Indication, which is a time counter that tracks current timings and time points of the target service level commitment.
Depending on your business needs, you may need different types of indicator:
- standard – indicator creates indications that start at the moment when specified conditions are met.
For example, start time is the moment when the task was assigned to John Doe. - retrospective – indicator creates indications which count time basing on the Date/Time field defined manually. Indications are created for records meeting specified conditions. To use this type of indicator, select the Defined by field option in the Indication start time field and specify the field you need.
For example, start time is the value of the Opened at field, and the indication is created for a record assigned to John Doe.
Role required: service_level_manager. |
Indicator
To add a new Indicator, please complete the following steps:
- Navigate to Service Level Management → Indicator.
- Click New and fill in the form.
- Click Save or Save and Exit to apply changes.
The Indicator form
Field | Required | Description | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Y | An indicator name.
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| Agreement | N | Specify an agreement related to this indicator containing tracking metrics. | ||
| Commitment Type | N | Specify a commitment type for this indicator. Available options:
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| Table | Y | In this field, select a dictionary to apply conditions of the Indicator. | ||
| Inheritance | N | Select this checkbox if you are creating an indicator on a parent table and it is necessary to use it against all of the child tables. Example Turning this attribute on, you can create a single indicator on a parent table which will affect every child table created. | ||
| Active | N | Select this checkbox on to make the indicator active or inactive. | ||
Indication start time | N | Select one of two options:
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| Start time field | Y | Define the column of the Date/Time type on the basis of which indications will be calculated, i.e. indications retrieve value for the start time from this column.
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| Duration | Y | Business time measure the SLA runs before it is marked as Breached.
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| Schedule | Y | A working schedule selected from the list. It determines working hours that the system uses when calculating an actual duration of the Commitment implementation under certain conditions. To configure this timeline, use the Schedules features. | ||
| Timezone | Y | |||
| Timezone Source | Y | Select one of the available records from the drop-down list if you need to specify a special timezone bond. The default value is Indicator timezone. Available options:
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Please keep in mind that if you create an inherited indicator on a parent table, and after that a separate indicator on a child table, the indications are to be created only for a child table. |
Also, when creating an inherited indicator against a parent table, please keep in mind that the extended attributes from child tables will not be available there. See the brief illustration below:
On this picture, the table set is displayed:
- The parent table, attribute set XX
- The child table 1, attribute set XXYYY
- The child table 2, attribute set XXYYYZZ
Considering the fact that the attribute inheritance is going top-down, the table attributes (such as fields) that extend parent table will be inaccessible on the lower level. Please note that when configuring conditions of your indicator, make all critical attributes accessible on the top level.
Duration calculations
Example 1
Company A uses schedule "24x7", which means 24 working hours, 7 days a week, around-the-clock shift-working, as an example. In this case, if you enter "2" into the days field, this value is converted to 48 working hours or 2 working days. Nothing extraordinary.
Example 2
Company B uses schedule "8x5", which means 8 working hours, 5 days a week, one of the most common working schedules. In this case, if you enter "2" into the days field, this value is converted to 48 hours (because there are 24 hours in a day), which gives 6 working days.
Specifying indicator conditions
Field | Required | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Start Conditions | Y | Establish conditions with the Condition Builder to make the Indicator start. The system uses the Table fields as transactional data to verify the conditions. When the transactional data changes, the system checks these conditions. E.g., for incidents, it is appropriate to use Impact as a condition field with one of the possible values – Low, Medium, High, Very High. The When to cancel setting allows to establish a condition for start cancellation by one of the options below:
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| Cancel Conditions | Y | This option appears when the Cancel conditions are met is selected in the When to cancel field. It allows defining additional conditions to meet before the indicator cancels. In other words, if the system meets these cancel conditions, it ignores the start conditions. | |
| Pause Conditions | N | Establish conditions with the Condition Builder to make the Indicator pause. The system uses the Table fields as transactional data to verify the conditions. When the transactional data changes, the system checks these conditions. E.g., for incidents, it is appropriate to use Impact as a condition field with one of the possible values – Low, Medium, High, Very High. The When to resume setting allows to set a condition for pause resumption by one of the options below:
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| Resume Conditions | Y | It allows defining additional conditions to meet before the indicator previously paused resumes. In other words, if the system meets these resume conditions, it ignores the pause conditions.
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| Complete Conditions | Y | Establish conditions with the Condition Builder to make the Indicator stop. The system uses the Table fields as transactional data to verify the conditions. When the transactional data changes, the system checks these conditions. | |
| Reset Conditions | N | Establish conditions with the Condition Builder to make the Indicator reset. The system uses the Table fields as transactional data to verify the conditions. When the transactional data changes, the system checks these conditions.
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If an indication was not on pause when the reset condition has been met:
If an indication was on pause when the reset condition has been met:
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