How to find total on hold time per tickets created on last month

[ShobhitA]

What is the difference between Business pause duration and Pause duration in the Service Now incident_sla table?

My objective is to find the total time an incident was On Hold, Working time is from 9 am to 6 am, and excluding weekends

[pratikjagtap]

Hi @ShobhitA ,

Pause Duration

• This is the total elapsed time (in real hours/minutes) that the SLA was paused.
• Ignores the business schedule.
• Includes nights, weekends, and holidays

Business Pause Duration

• This is the business elapsed time that the SLA was paused.
• Respects the business schedule defined in the SLA definition.
• Excludes non-business hours, weekends, and holidays, as per the business calendar.

Your Objective

• You want to find the total time an incident was On Hold, calculated only during business hours (9 AM to 6 PM, excluding weekends).

In that case, you should use:

Business Pause Duration:

• This gives you exactly what you're looking for:
• Time the SLA was paused (e.g., incident in On Hold state),
• Only during the defined working schedule (9 AM to 6 PM),
• Excludes nights, weekends, and holidays.

If my response helped, please hit the 👍Thumb Icon and accept the solution so that it benefits future readers.

Regards,
Pratik

[J Siva]

Hi @ShobhitA 

Business Pause Duration: The time during which an SLA clock is stopped or paused within business hours.

Pause Duration: The time during which an SLA clock is stopped or paused from the moment the ticket is created, including outside business hours.

Example: If the ticket is put on hold at 8 AM and moved to "In Progress" at 10 AM, then:

• Pause duration is 2 hours.
• Business pause duration is 1 hour.

You can use "Business pause duration" field for your usecase.

Hope this helps.
Regards,
Siva

[ShobhitA]

Hi Siva, my understanding was also same, but details in the incident_metrics table is not matching with incident_sla table. My incident was put on hold multiple times. 

in this case as per my understanding the business pause duration should be 6 min only as working hours are between 9 am till 6 pm

14/04/2025 06:00

14/04/2025 09:06

[Mark Manders]

You can't compare metrics with the SLA engine, because metrics aren't taking the schedules into account. A metric is created when a value is set and calculates the total time when the value is changed again. 

The duration calculation of the SLA definition only takes the business hours into consideration, although 'pause' can be a tricky one, since the SLA itself is also paused outside of business hours.

Can you share the actual data you have? And also why it is important to know how long a ticket has been on 'on hold'? Are you trying to use other logic, related to that?