Chuck is precisely correct, this is precisely what the SLA engine in ServiceNow was designed for. Take a look at the SLA Definitions module, and look at the out-of-the-box SLAs provided. From there, it should be pretty easy to create your own.
To get an SLA to pause, look at the Pause condition tab. You can specify a condition under which the clock stops ticking on an SLA, as shown in the screenshot below:
By far one of the coolest features of SLAs, however, is that you can specify a schedule. In the screenshot above, I didn't specify one, so the clock will tick 24x7x365. However, if I specify a work schedule as shown below, the clock will only tick on the SLAs during business hours (specifically, 8-5 on weekdays):
As a side note, if you want to get this right quickly out of the gate, you might want to read a bit on the difference between SLAs, OLAs, and Underpinning Contracts (UCs). Functionally in ServiceNow, they all work identically, and the only difference is how you treat them administratively. Technically in a nutshell, though:
- If you're measuring time that is specified in a formal contract to a customer or legal entity, set the type to SLA.
- If you're measuring time that represents an internal commitment between your team and another internal team or your internal IT organization, set the type to OLA.
- If you're measuring time that represents a third party supplier's commitment to you, set the type to Underpinning contract.
A great analogy I use is the "McDonald's drive-through" analogy. When you pull up to a drive-through at McDonald's, an SLA represents the restaurant's commitment to get you your food and is measured in the time from when you place your order until the time they hand you your bag of food. An OLA represents the internal time it takes to complete various parts of your order, such as the time it takes the burger chef to make your burger, the fry cook to cook your fries, the drink person to prepare your beverage, etc. An Underpinning Contract represents the time it would take, for example, for the credit card processor to process and approve the financial transaction initiated by swiping the customer's credit card.
The reason I mention all of this is because I frequently see companies screw this up. You might want to set a pause condition for an SLA to something like Pending Vendor while you're waiting on some third party support entity to respond to you opening a ticket. If you're working off an OLA or Underpinning Contract, that's probably a good idea. But if you're working on an SLA, you probably shouldn't do that since it's uncommon to have in your external contracts for it to be your customer's responsibility to wait on your third party provider to fix your issue. If you have a Pending Customer/Client status, however, you might want to pause the clock on that since it's normal for you not to have to suffer SLA breaches because you were waiting for your customer to respond to something.
But I digress. My main point is that SLAs are exactly what you need here and should accomplish exactly what you're looking for.
--Dennis R
