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Response timer


chrisnutt

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Hi All,

Is there any criteria that must be met in order to have the response timer work correctly?

I have an incident that has a service level looks like the first attachment. It has a business process like the second attachment. As you can see there is a response timer initialise node, however, the Service Level does not reflect that. The process has moved onto the second stage and has started the resolve timer.

 

The service is associated with an SLA which has target response SLA times set. See third attachment.

Any ideas?

Is it because the priority gets chosen after the response timer is started? I thought the Service Level node would set the response target accordingly.

Thanks in advance

Chris

Service Level.PNG

business_process1.PNG

SLA.PNG

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@chrisnutt is all down to SLA service level rules configuration in conjunction with your current BP design.

30 minutes ago, chrisnutt said:

Is it because the priority gets chosen after the response timer is started?

It could be unless you have a "Service Level Update" node afterward... (which you do)

37 minutes ago, chrisnutt said:

I thought the Service Level node would set the response target accordingly.

It does... and it would have if the BP from your screenshot is the BP associated with the request... but is not.

Request screenshot is from IN00068590, have a look at the service associated with this incident. You will see is just the service, no catalog item. Then look at the service configuration, go to "Request Config", go to "Incident". Then have a look to see what workflow (BP) is configured for this service (don't look at the catalog item as the request does not have a catalog item). Go then have a look at this BP and you will see what I mean ;) 

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Hi @Victor,

Thank you for the response but I am afraid you are mistaken. The request screenshot is from IN00068520 which is associated with the IT Software service and catalog item Software Fault. The process for this is IT Service Desk Incident Self Service Process.

Updated screenshots attached.

IN00068590 is currently awaiting the actions required to meet the response

I hope this is clearer.

Thanks

Chris

IN00068520.PNG

Software fault.PNG

IT Service Desk Incident Self Service Process.PNG

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@chrisnutt ah, I understand now. The issue lays with the BP design still...

You would need a "Get Request Details" node prior to "Update Service Level"... the update SL node uses the priority gathered by the latest "Get Request Details", which in your current design is the first node in the process... when "Get Request Details" occurred as the first node in the process, there was no priority. This is changed later via "Wait For Priority" node.

As a rule of thumb, if there are any changes in request details, and you use any part of this request details in another node, you would need to "refresh" the request details using "Get Request Details" node after the values were changed... of course you would need to do this is your BP is using these new values, otherwise there is no need for this node

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Thank you @Victor that makes sense now.

Are there any plans to integrate the 'get request details' into the nodes that require it?

I only ask because, as I'm sure you know, these processes can get quite busy quite quickly! It would be greatly beneficial to reduce the number of nodes (and the number of mistakes caused by forgetfulness or inexperience) by integrating the 'get request details' into the node that requires those details.

Thanks again.

Chris

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19 minutes ago, chrisnutt said:

Are there any plans to integrate the 'get request details' into the nodes that require it

I don't think so and I honestly don't think is a good idea (but this is just my thought, I could be wrong)...  You only need this node in a handful of situations, having this node used only when necessary helps the BP work faster ... 

Perhaps having a setting on certain nodes to "refresh" the request details... Like on "update" node, have a setting in it which when enabled will invoke "Get Request Details"... but having completely integrated and invoked every time, I don't know... I can imagine some processes becoming "very heavy" with this...

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10 minutes ago, DeadMeatGF said:

automatic refreshing could cause a performance hit.

It could... I'm just thinking of some BP configurations I've seen and I can definitely say it can... anyway, as any suggestion, is worth being discussed and pros and cons weighted...

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14 minutes ago, Victor said:

I don't think so and I honestly don't think is a good idea (but this is just my thought, I could be wrong)...  You only need this node in a handful of situations, having this node used only when necessary helps the BP work faster ... 

Perhaps having a setting on certain nodes to "refresh" the request details... Like on "update" node, have a setting in it which when enabled will invoke "Get Request Details"... but having completely integrated and invoked every time, I don't know... I can imagine some processes becoming "very heavy" with this...

I forever seem to have to be putting "Get Request Details" in places. It would seem to my mind, that if a node might require details that have been updated it could be something that is switched on by the administrator when they place that node. As you say, only on certain nodes.

Certainly wouldn't suggest it happening all the time every time.

With proper documentation, it would be much easier to build a process.

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Something just occurred to me while I was going through all these processes updating them with the get request details node.

I have no idea if it would be possible for you to develop, but it would be great if we could have re-usable 'functions' in Business Processes (just like in many programming languages). At the moment, we can group things to tidy up the screen. If the functionality could be added to insert these groupings as functions in other processes it would be very useful.

I might be suggesting too much, but I thought I'd put it out there!

 

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@chrisnutt we try to avoid as much as possible introducing "programming" concepts and functionality into business process design... The design of a BP is intended for technical and non-technical people alike... for many people, terminology like "functions" (which is a really simple programming concept) would not make much sense and they would need to research and learn the concept... etc. ... something we don't really want...

The idea is good I think, however, we would need to carefully consider how it could be implemented so a non-technical person can easily understand how it works and how is used...

Just my $0.02 ;) 

 

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If this was to be implemented my instinct is that having a "Run another Business Process" node might be an option.
Users unfamiliar with functions will already be comfortable with having a Business Process taking data from a Progressive Capture, so I feel it could be a comprehensible jump to a Business Process taking data from another Business Process.
I would have thought a bigger difficulty would be testing that any linked BPs have the required entry and exit values set correctly at build time to prevent catastrophic failures in the testing phase.

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@Victor ,

Just to get back to the original topic.

Can you take a look at IN00068707 in my instance?

I've moved the already existing "Get priority' (Get Request details) node earlier in this process, before an update Service Level node and it is still not including a Response time on the new request. Have I misunderstood or done something wrong?

Also, our instance is now running extremely slowly. Could this be because I have added a "Get request details" node on several processes?

Thanks

Chris

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Hi @Victor

Please check IN00068738 when you look at this. I have cancelled the earlier one.

One other thing I notice is that the correct action is not in focus at the suspend node. I have the "Wait for priority" node set the focus to "prioritise", but nothing is selected. The same thing happens at the "wait for assignment" node with the assignment action.

Thanks in advance.

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@chrisnutt hmm... I think this is the same challenge I faced when building the process for our service desk... what should happen (from what I can see) is that "Start Response Timer" should create a start time and a target time... but it can only do this IF it can find an SLA and SL (service level) matching current SLA rules... in your current configuration, you have no SLA or SL to cater for a no priority on the request... therefore when the "Start Response Timer" node is reached it can't create the start timer (which is the issue here, the target time does not matter at thsi point but the start time is essential). It does not matter if later a priority is assigned and SL updated because we don't have that start timer, nothing will happen...

So, my suggestion: create another Service Level (I called it in our process "No Service Level") with no response or resolve targets (I'll explain later why). Add another rule to assign this service level when there is no priority on the request (I did this by having priority not equal to each existing priorities, basically anything else than a possible priority). When you have this in place, when the "Start Response Timer" node is reached, it will match the "No Service Level" service level and it will create a start timer. It won't create a target timer because we haven't configured any but we don't need the target timer at this point, we only need the starting timer. When the priority changed and SL updates, you will then have your target time as well and everything will be ok... You can also have a target (response/resolve) timer for this "No Service Level" placeholder but is not required and is going to be overwritten anyway when the priority is changed.

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1 minute ago, chrisnutt said:

I was moving the rule to the top of the list instead of leaving it at the bottom!

@chrisnutt it should not matter...the rule should trigger regardless of where is positioned as long as the criteria is met and there is no previous rule that would trigger before it...

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That's what I thought, but I found I was getting an error when the response timer stopped and the fix timer was started. Today I tried (what I thought was) the same thing again but didn't move it to the top and it works. That's the only thing I did differently today. That I am conscious of, at least!

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