Manage Indications

Create indications

An indication is a time counter. It is automatically generated when the indicator start conditions are met. It shows all primary timings, time points, and the current state of the SLA for a particular record (an incident, a service request, and others) that allows you to track the level of the service quality target indicators.

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

To check the indication for an incident, complete the steps below:

1. Open the required record.
2. In the Related Lists area, select the Timepoints Indication tab.
3. Open the indication record you need to check.

To check the active indications, navigate to Service Level Management → Indications.

Indication form fields

Field	Description
Indicator	An indicator that initiated the start of the indication and started the counter.
Timezone	The indication timezone.
Record	The original task the agreement counts for.
Breached	The marker that shows whether the agreement has been breached.
Astronomical time elapsed	Actual time that has elapsed since the indication started, displayed in days, hours, minutes, and seconds. It is calculated on the regular 24/7 basis. The field itself stores duration in milliseconds.
Astronomical time elapsed in %	The ratio calculated by the formula is described below.
Astronomical time left	Actual time left until the agreement is breached, displayed in days, hours, minutes, and seconds. It is calculated on the regular 24/7 basis. The field itself stores duration in milliseconds.
Start time	The date and time when an indication started.
Complete time	The date and time when a time counter (an indication) stopped.
State	The current state of an indication specified: In progress – an indication is active, and the counter is on. Paused – an indication pauses when the system meets an indicator pause condition. In this case, the Breach time value increases by the pause time duration (or the total pause duration if the indication has been paused more than once).  It works only for the indication where the indicator Breach time value is defined by the indicator duration. When the Breach time value is defined by the field, the pauses are not taken into account. 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 agreement is not breached.
Pause on	The last date and time when the indication paused.
Pause time	The total duration of the indication pauses, displayed in days, hours, minutes, and seconds. The field itself stores duration in milliseconds.
Business time elapsed	Business time that has elapsed since the task was started, displayed in days, hours, minutes, and seconds. It counts the working calendar specified in the Schedule field of the original indicator. The field itself stores the duration in milliseconds.
Business time elapsed in %	The ratio calculated by the formula is described below.
Business time left	Business time left until the agreement is breached, displayed in days, hours, minutes, and seconds. The calculation counts the working calendar specified in the Schedule field of the original indicator. The field itself stores the duration in milliseconds.
Breach time	The date and time of the agreement breach that the system calculates, taking into the pause duration, or that is taken from the field defined in the Breach time field of the original indicator.
Original breach time	The original date and time of the agreement breach, calculated at the moment when the system creates an indication, or taken from the Breach time field of the original indicator.

Timings and percentages

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

• Astronimical time elapsed
• Astronimical time elapsed in %
• Astronimical time left

and

• Business time elapsed
• Business time elapsed in %
• Business time left

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

Example

1. Create an indicator with the following conditions:

Field	Value
Name	Name
Commintment type	Resolution Time
Table	Task
Active	true
Indication start time	Defined by condition
Indication breach time	Defined by duration
Duration	10 minutes
Schedule	24x7
Timezone	Europe/Moscow
Timezone source	Indicator timezone

Start Conditions

Field	Value
Start conditions	State IS In progress
When to cancel	Do not cancel

Pause Conditions

Field	Value
Pause conditions	State IS Postponed

Complete Conditions

Field	Value
Complete conditions	State IS Completed

2. Create a task record:

   1. Navigate to https://{your_instance_url}/record/task.
      
   2. Fill in the mandatory fields. Move it to the In progress state.
      
   3. Click Save or Save and exit to apply the changes. An indication starts.
      

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

Next, consider a case when an indicator uses a popular schedule "8x5" (5 working days for 8 hours). Using this schedule, the difference between astronomical and business timings can be considerable. For example, an incident raised at 1 pm on a working day. The indication start condition is defined as "State IS In progress", and an indication complete condition is defined as "State IS Completed." So the incident was taken to work at 2 pm (the indication started), and it was completed at 11 am on the next day (the indication completed). So, its business time elapsed was 5 hours, while the astronomical time elapsed was 21 hours.

Calculation nuances

---

As mentioned above, the "astronomical" time values are always calculated on the 24x7 basis, unlike the "business" values. These "business" fields consider the schedule specified in the indicator.

• If the specified schedule is invalid or deleted, the 24x7 schedule is used for calculations.
• A schedule is applied based on the timezone specified in the parent indicator.

note

In formulas below, NOW stands for the current date and time.

Used values

Value	Formula	Description
Start time (ST)	-	Indication start date and time.
Breach time (BrT)	-	SLA breach date and time. If the breach time is defined by duration, in pause it is counted every time when the indication is recalculated. If the breach time is defined by the field, it does not take PT into account in calculations.
Pause time (PT)	-	Total duration of pauses that is calculated based on the schedule.
Astronomical duration (AD)	BrT - ST	An actual duration. It is used to calculate the astronomical time according to the 24x7 schedule.
Indicator duration (D)	-	An indicator duration. It is used in business time calculations according to the specified schedule.
^SCH	-	The ^SCH means that the formula uses the specified schedule when calculating.

caution

The Business time elapsed and Business time left values are calculated based on the schedule specified and stored in the Duration format.

1. The Astronomical time elapsed (ATE) value is calculated as the difference between the current date and time and the Start time (ST) value.

ATE = NOW - ST

2. The Astronomical time left (ALT) value is calculated as the difference between the Breach time (BT) value and the current date and time.

ALT = BrT - NOW

After the indication is breached, the Astronomical time left stops calculating (that is, no more time left). Also, the Astronomical time elapsed and Astronomical time left values are stored in the Duration format.

3. The Astronomical time elapsed in % (ATE%) value is calculated by the formula below:

ATE% = ATE/AD* 100 (%)

4. The Business time elapsed (BET) value can be calculated using the formula below:

BET = (NOW - ST)^SCH - PT

5. The Business time left (BLT) value can be calculated using the formula below:

BLT = (BrT - NOW)^SCH

After the indication is breached, the Business time left stops calculating (that is, no more time left).

6. The Business time elapsed in % (BTE%) can be calculated using the formula below:

BTE% = BET/D * 100 (%)

The working time consumption rate is calculated to 999% by default.

Configure indications

There are system properties that allow to set indication records such as the breach time and recalculation period.