Timepoint Indicators

A Timepoint Indicator is a rule of a time counter activation that is specified by proper conditions for starting, pausing, 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 a Timepoint indicator starts, the system automatically generates a Timepoint Indication, which is a time counter that tracks current timings and time points of the target service level commitment.

Role required: service_level_manager.

Timepoint Indicator

To add a new Timepoint Indicator, follow the steps below:

Navigate to the Service Level Management → Timepoint Indicator menu.
Click New and fill in the form.
Click Save or Save and Exit to apply changes.

The Timepoint Indicator form

Field	Required	Description
Name	Y	A timepoint indicator name.
Agreement	N	Specify an agreement related to this indicator containing tracking metrics.
Commitment type	N	Specify a commitment type for this indicator. Available options: Resolution time - the time it takes to resolve the issue (generally, a time from issue creation until the "Completed" status update). Response time - the time it takes to process the issue in a non-automated-way (generally, a time from issue creation until the "In Progress" status update).
Table	Y	In this field, select a task-based entity (Incidents, Problems, Requests) that applied to define conditions of the Indicator attachment.
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 The Service Requests table can be considered as a parent table, and every table extending it is a single service request. Turning this attribute on, you can create a single indicator on a parent table which will affect every child table created.
Parent dependency column	N	In this field, you can specify a column in case if you need to build "parent-child" dependencies between indicators.
Active	N	Select this checkbox on to make the Timepoint indicator active or inactive.
Duration	Y	The length of time the SLA runs before it is marked Breached. Please note that all day duration (not only business hours) according to the chosen schedule is taken into account. See the calculation samples below this table.
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	Determines a Timepoint indicator Timezone.
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 Timepoint Indicator's timezone. Available options: Caller's timezone CI location's timezone Caller location's timezone Timepoint Indicator's timezone Task location's timezone

Indicator inheritance

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.

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 Condition	Y	Establish conditions with the Condition Builder to make the Timepoint 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: Start conditions are not met: the system ignores the start conditions if it doesn't meet them; Cancel conditions are met: this option enables additional conditions setting that cancel start conditions when met. In other words, if the system meets these cancel conditions, it ignores the start conditions. To set cancel conditions, use Condition Builder below the When to cancel menu. The Condition Builder for cancel conditions appears only after selecting the Cancel conditions are met option. Never - start conditions are always verified.
Pause Condition	N	Establish conditions with the Condition Builder to make the Timepoint 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: Pause conditions are not met: the system ignores the pause conditions if it doesn't meet them; Resume conditions are met: this option enables additional conditions setting that resume pause conditions when met. In other words, if the system meets these resume conditions, it ignores the pause conditions. Resume conditions can be set with the Condition Builder below the When to resume menu. The Condition Builder for resume conditions appears only after selecting the Resume conditions are met option.
Stop Condition	N	Establish conditions with the Condition Builder to make the Timepoint 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 condition	N	Establish conditions with the Condition Builder to make the Timepoint 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.

Timepoint indication

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

To monitor the active service level indicators, navigate to Service Level Management → Timepoint 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 Timepoint Indication form

Field	Description
Indicator	An indicator that triggered the indication creation and started the counter.
Record	An original task that induces the SLA counting.
Breached	A marker that shows whether SLA has been breached or not.
Actual Elapsed Time	An actual time that has elapsed since the moment of an indication creation. It only counts an actual calendar time 24/7.
Actual Elapsed Percentage	A percentage of the Actual Time Elapsed to the duration specified in an Indicator according to the SLA.
Actual Time Left	An actual time left until the SLA breaches.
Stage	The current state of an indication specified with one of the values below: In progress - an indication is active and the counter is on; Paused - an indication counter pauses when the system meets an Indicator pause condition; Canceled - an indication cancels counting when the system meets an Indicator cancel condition; Completed - an indication counter stops when the system meets stop condition, the SLA is not breached.
Pause on	The last date and time of the Indicator paused.
Pause Time	The duration of the Indicator paused.
Business Elapsed Time	A business time that has elapsed since the moment of an indication creation. It counts the working calendar specified in the Schedule field of the original Indicator. This field displays how much business time has passed since the task creation.
Business Elapsed Percentage	A percentage of the Business Time Elapsed to the duration specified in an Indicator according to the SLA.
Business Time Left	A business time left until the SLA breaches.
Timings
Start Time	A date and time when the system has created an indication.
Complete Time	A date and time when a time counter (an indication) stopped.
Breach Time	A date and time of the SLA breach, which the system calculates, taking into the pause duration.
Original Breach Time	Original date and time of the SLA breach, calculated at the moment when the system creates an indication.

Retrospective indications

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.

To simplify this process, retrospective indications delivering percentage recalculation were implemented.

How it works

An indication started with the standard equal to four hours according to relevant agreement.
Three hours later, due to meeting the cancel conditions, indication has been canceled.
New indication is started in the past retrospectively.
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 new indicator duration equates to
  1. indicator.duration*(business_elapsed_percentage/100)
    .
3. New indication start time equates to previous indication start time (the started_at field values are the same).

All this retrospective 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.

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