In legacy default SLA workflow, 50% email is triggered at around 75% of duration of task wrongly

[Sharique Azim]

Hi,

We are observing a strange issue where the SLA timer for the 50% stage is being calculated from the last activity time of the workflow instead of the time the task_sla  record actually reaches the 50% duration.

As a result, instead of running at the 50% mark of the duration, it is triggering based on when the 25% mark workflow activity was triggered, thereby adding additional time to the 50% trigger email.

Please note: In my observation, the incidents was never on hold or pause/stop condition during this SLA workflow. Neither our instance uses the flow designers for the SLA flow yet. Currently, we are in Australia patch 2.

Example Scenario:

Suppose a P3 response SLA having 2 hours duration running 24x7.

An incident is created at 9 AM and is not assigned to any groups till 2 PM. Therefore not invalidating the start condition or going into the pause condition of the same SLA.

Expected Behaviour:

• 25% of 2 hours is 30 mins (Trigger: 9:30 AM).
• 50% of 2 hours is 1 hour (Trigger: 10:00 AM).
• 75% of 2 hours is 1.5 hour (Trigger: 10:30 AM).
• Calculated Breach time (Trigger: 11:00 AM).
  

Actual Behavior:

• The 25% alert email is sent correctly at 9:30 AM.
• The 50% alert email is sent incorrectly at 10:30 AM (i.e. the 75% mark).
• Interestingly, the email body mentions "30 mins left", which is the correct remaining duration, but the email itself was triggered at the wrong time.

Does anyone have insight into why this is happening, or if this is a known product issue? While I understand moving to the Flow Designer default SLA flow may be a recommended path, I am hoping to understand the root cause of this error within the legacy workflow first.

Shariq

[Vikram Reddy]

Hi @Sharique Azim,

This is almost certainly a workflow configuration issue, not a platform bug. The SLA Percentage Timer activity in the legacy Timeline workflow does not take an absolute percentage of the SLA's total duration, it waits for that percentage relative to where the previous activity in the chain left off. So if your 25% timer is set to 25 and the next one is also set to 50 (instead of the incremental 25), the workflow actually pauses another 50% on top of the first 25%, landing you at 75% elapsed instead of 50%. Worth checking:

• Open the workflow attached to this SLA definition (Timeline tab, Workflow field) in Workflow Editor.
• Click each SLA Percentage Timer activity in sequence and note its configured percentage value.
• Confirm the values are incremental deltas (25, 25, 25, 25 to hit 25/50/75/100 cumulative) and not the cumulative targets (25, 50, 75, 100) themselves.

That single misconfiguration reproduces exactly the "25% fires correctly, 50% fires at the 75% mark" pattern you're seeing, with no hold or pause involved.

Thank you,
Vikram Karety
Octigo Solutions INC