Scheduled Service Status change

[samwoo]

Hi,

I would like to request the ability to schedule a Status change for a Service, much like how we can schedule Bulletins to start and end. Obviously will need to define the default Status for it to switch back to (such as Active).

To start with would be great if available in the Service Portfolio, but imagine what we can do if we can extend this to the BPM too in the future.

Thanks,

Samuel

[Steven Boardman]

Hi @samwoo whilst you can't schedule the service status in the UI, you can already change the status of a service via the BPM.

This option affords you to change the status of the service, the request is logged against so you can make services unavailable and available in a process say a problem or major incident.  

We are also currently working on a story which will record the episodes of service outages and will provide you with metrics such as % availability, MTBF, MTTR for each service

Steve

[samwoo]

6 hours ago, Steven Boardman said:

you can already change the status of a service via the BPM.

This option affords you to change the status of the service, the request is logged against so you can make services unavailable and available in a process say a problem or major incident.  

Thanks for clarifying. This sounds interesting... Can you specify a date and time in the BPM for when the statuses change? 

[Steven Boardman]

@samwoo you can't set a date and time for the service status change node in the bpm.  You could however create a task before the changing of the status and set an expiry on the task which would then progress via a decision node to a set service status node, and likewise follow this with another task with another expiry and have the service status change again on the expiry of the task (obviously a bit of a workaround) 

You could set the 'expires' after to a variable for each time and inject the date / times specified in progressive capture questions or held in custom fields on a request

This approach would allow for both the manual completing of the task which could then trigger the service status change , or if the expiry date and time arrived it would automatically move to change the service status.

Hope that helps

Steve

 

[samwoo]

2 hours ago, Steven Boardman said:

You could set the 'expires' after to a variable for each time and inject the date / times specified in progressive capture questions or held in custom fields on a request

Thanks @Steven Boardman. I am not having any luck I'm afraid.

Can you tell me if I am doing this right?

Progressive Capture

Custom Questions

 

Set the Status

 

Set the Start and End time

 

Business Process

Overall BPM

 

First Human Task to expire from Start Date in PCF
Ooh noticed something here that might be an issue. I populated the Variable against the Human Task "Expires On After" to use the Start Date from the PCF. This would explain why it hasn't been working because I went back into the BPM to find this field blank as you can see below. I have just tested this out again by populating the field, the validating -> publishing the BPM... i come back to find the field blank again.

 

First Human Task as seen on the Request
On another note, the value of the PCF question that shows within the Task Details during the request is wrong:


I'm not sure why it says 10 in the Human Task but 11 in the Questions. Also it's quite hard to read in that format too.

[samwoo]

Sorry I forgot to mention in my previous post that the activity is created but the task doesn't expire at the set time and that's when I noticed the variable being blank in the BPM.

[Steven Boardman]

@samwoo i am seeing the same issue with the missing variable in the expiry field after saving and returning to the process designer.  I've asked my colleague to take a look at the behaviour and we'll post back

[Steven Boardman]

@samwoo haven looked into the option for the expiry duration can't accept a date / time variable (we'll look to remove this to stop this confusion going forward), it is also not possible to offset the expiry time from a variable start time for a task so i am now not sure this approach is going to work for you in the context of trying to schedule the status change using a task. 

Ideally we need a node which manages this specific function. 

In the meantime another workaround (and it is a workaround) would be to use PC date / time variables in conjunction with a requests on hold / off hold logic to hold the changing of the service status. 

In a very crude example i have done the following:

 

1. Get the PC answers

2. Normal assignment node

3. Start a resolve timer

4. Use the update request > place on hold until (variable) option and inject the PC date / time variable

5. Follow this with a suspend await off hold node

6. Once the request comes off hold (based on the PC date / time variable ) follow this with an update service status node

Once you have this you could then put it immediately back on hold until the next PC date / time for when the service status needs to be changed back > again use a suspend await off hold node and another update status node

Not ideal but i thought i would at least offer something to think about

Steve

 

[samwoo]

Hi @Steven Boardman,

Thanks for posting the Workaround. It's seems to be doing the trick for now.

What would be better if we can specify which Service to change the status of and not just the Request Service. I'd like to move this sort of task  into a Service made specifically for this sort thing eventually so having the possibility to change any Service from the BPM would be a massive plus.

Thanks,

Samuel

[samwoo]

Hi @Steven Boardman,

I was wondering if you might be able to provide some insight into the following issue I've been having...

Using the PCF form for capturing the date, I used the Integration Call node to convert the date and time into a more readable format, however the time displayed is set to 1 hour before the actual time I chose on the Forms:

This is the results of the formatted date added to the Description of the request via the BPM:

Here are the questions that I answered from the PCF:

This is obviously an issue with the BST / GMT so I was wondering how I can go about ensuring that the time I selected in the PCF is the time that is displayed in the formatted date?

[Steven Boardman]

Hi @samwoo one quick solution would be to do the following:

Map your date questions from the PCF to date / time custom fields in the request - so for example from = h_custom_21 and too = h_custom_22

This would negate the need to use the date formatter which looks like where the issue is picking up

 

Steve

[samwoo]

38 minutes ago, Steven Boardman said:

Hi @samwoo one quick solution would be to do the following:

Map your date questions from the PCF to date / time custom fields in the request - so for example from = h_custom_21 and too = h_custom_22

This would negate the need to use the date formatter which looks like where the issue is picking up

 

Steve

Hi @Steven Boardman,

I'm afraid i am not having much luck with this

I set PCF questions to Custom_21 and Custom_22 and they look good in the Request Details and Questions area, however the Summary is still showing the wrong time - 1 hour backwards. The Summary field is being updated using the following:

[AUTO] Service Status scheduled between &[global["flowcode"]["customField21"]] and &[global["flowcode"]["customField22"]]

 

And using the Custom Field for the On-hold until Variable it also uses the incorrect time of an hour backward as you can see in the timeline:

 

The On-hold until is using the customField21 and customField22 fields.

 

Thanks,

Samuel

[Steven Boardman]

@samwoo are you passing the pcf values through the iBridge formatter before updating the custom fields / summary and on-hold action?

[samwoo]

Hi @Steven Boardman,

I took out the formatter integration call as per you last comment so am not using that at all.

Thanks,

Samuel

[Steven Boardman]

Hi @samwoo

I can't seem to replicate   

Here i have injected both the answers from the custom fields (21 and 22) into the description field and also the answers from the PCF and they all match to the date / time fields and the questions section with no offset of time , also my SLA is set to 10:00 not offset 

If you have removed the date formatter and are still seeing this it might be time to raise this as an issue and get support to take a look with you, are you ok to raise a support issue via the support form?

Steve

 

[Steven Boardman]

@samwoo obviously raise the support ticket as suggested above, but one bit of info i have found today is that you convert the PCF date / Time into your local settings when you are mapping the pcf value into the description field.   

If you add an additional set of square brackets around the variable [ ] the wiki will convert the value from ISO to your local setting

[2015-03-06T16:46:08Z]
will show like this 06-03-2015 16:46:08

Obviously this does not resolve your 1 hour difference issue but i thought this would be useful to pass on.

Steve