Get active with inactivity monitors

[Suzanne Smith]

"I think the most important thing is to keep active and to hope that your mind stays active."

-Jane Goodall

If you use tasks, consider setting up an inactivity monitor to help prevent the work from being forgotten. Inactivity monitors trigger an event for a task if the task has not been updated in a predefined period of time. For example, the event can send an email notification or trigger a script. If the task continues to be inactive, the monitor keeps triggering the event. Tasks are commonly used on incidents, problems, changes, projects, and SDLC sprints.

Creating an inactivity monitor with an email notification

1. Navigate to System Policy > SLA > Inactivity Monitors.
2. Click New.
3. Type a Name. For example, Priority One Inactivity.
4. Select the task type to monitor in the Table field. For example, Incident.
5. In Wait, specify the time in hours and/or minutes to wait before sending notification. For example, 2 hours.
6. In Condition, at least one condition must be specified. You can set multiple conditions. For example, on a priority one incident inactivity monitor, the conditions could be:
   
7. Click Save.
   
   Note: The Order field on the Inactivity Monitor record is optional, but can be important. If more than one inactivity monitor could have their conditions met for a specific record, the monitor with the lowest Order number is used. As you create more inactivity monitors, double-check existing inactivity monitors and their conditions to identify the monitors that are related and could apply to the same record.
   
   
8. Now, you need to set up an event for the inactivity monitor. We want to create an email notification, so navigate to System Policy > Email > Notifications.
9. Type a Name. For example, Priority One Inactivity.
10. Select the correct Table. In this example we would use Incident [incident].
    
11. Under Related Links, click Advanced view.
12. In Type, select EMAIL.
13. In Send when, select Event is fired.
14. In Event name, select incident.inactivity.
    
    If necessary, you can create a new event and register the event.
    
15. Click Update.
    
    

Tips for using inactivity monitors

• Inactivity monitors only apply to records on the Task table or tables (such as Incident or Problem) that extend the Task table.
• Updates to the task record restart the monitor. However, if the monitor has reset conditions defined, but the conditions are not met when the task record is updated, the monitor is not restarted.
• When the conditions for an inactivity monitor are met, an event is generated in the form <tablename>.inactivity. No actions take place, however, unless an email notification or script action is defined.
• There is a nifty way to close incidents automatically, but if you want to use this method and you have an inactivity monitor on your incidents, you'll need to put a reset condition on your inactivity monitor. For more information, see Closing Resolved Incidents Automatically in the product documentation.
• Inactivity monitors are different from service level agreements (SLAs). An SLA checks that a task reaches a specific condition in a specific amount of time. For example, SLAs are commonly used to ensure that an incident is resolved within a certain amount of time. A key difference between inactivity monitors and SLAs is that SLAs are workflow driven, so they are very flexible and can be customized. For more information about SLAs, see Service Level Agreements in the product documentation.
• In the task history, inactivity monitors against a specific task show as updated by "System." This can be confusing when reviewing the task history.

ServiceNow offers more information about inactivity monitors in the product documentation:

System Performance Best Practices - Removing Unused Inactivity Monitors

Events and Email Notification

Introduction to Tasks