How does Pause Condition work in SLA and why is it important?

ny424436
Mega Contributor

7 hours ago

Hi everyone,

I have a question regarding the Pause Condition in SLA within ServiceNow, and I would like to understand its actual purpose and usage.

As per my understanding, the pause condition is used to temporarily stop the SLA timer when certain conditions are met (for example, when an incident is in an "On Hold" state).

However, I would like more clarity on the following:

  1. What is the exact purpose of the pause condition in SLA?

  2. Why do we actually need pause conditions instead of letting the SLA run continuously?

  3. In which real-life scenarios should we configure pause conditions?

  4. What issues can occur if pause conditions are not used in an SLA?

It would be helpful if someone could explain this with a practical example related to a real incident.

Thanks in advance!

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Vishnu-K
Kilo Sage

57m ago

Hi @ny424436  ,

The Pause Condition temporarily holds the SLA timer when a situation is outside the support team's control. When the pause condition becomes true the timer freezes, and when it is no longer true the timer resumes from exactly where it stopped. The time spent in pause is not counted against the SLA.

 

We need this because it would be unfair to count time where the team is genuinely waiting on the user or a third party. A common example is when an agent moves an incident to Awaiting User Info state. The timer pauses while waiting for the user's response and resumes once the incident moves back to In Progress. Without this, that waiting time gets counted as active resolution time and causes false breaches.

 

Other common scenarios where pause conditions are used are On Hold pending a change window, waiting on a third-party vendor, or pending an approval.

 

If pause conditions are not configured, SLA timers run through all waiting periods which leads to false breaches and inaccurate performance reporting.

 

Reference: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/bundle/washingtondc-it-service-management/page/product/service-level...

 

Hope this helps.

If it helped you please do mark it as helpful and accept the solution

 

Thanks,

Vishnu

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