Update Incident autoclose to 3 business days

[Menalik]

Currently, the auto close system setting for Incidents is set at 7 days. How can I update this to 3 Business days? I think If I change this to 3, it may not be business days. See attached.

[fknell · Accepted solution]

Hi @Menalik,

You’re right: the standard Incident auto‑close setting is in calendar days, not business days, so simply changing it from 7 to 3 will close after 3 elapsed days, including weekends.

I would recommend:

- Set the OOTB property to 0 or disable the default BR if your governance allows.

- Implement a schedule‑aware scheduled job for 3 business days.

- Test first in sub‑prod to validate that it behaves exactly as expected over weekends and holidays.

Hope this helps!

[Menalik]

Thanks! I'll try this method.

[Schaganti]

The system property glide.incident.auto_close_time (shown in your screenshot) works in calendar days only — it has no built-in business day awareness, so simply changing 7 to 3 won't give you true 3 business day behavior.

To achieve 3 business days, the recommended approach is:

1. Set the auto-close property to 0 to disable the native functionality
2. Create a Scheduled Script (System Definition > Scheduled Jobs) that runs daily and uses ServiceNow's business calendar API to calculate elapsed business days since the incident was resolved
3. Use GlideDateTime along with a Business Calendar to check if 3 business days have passed, then close the incident programmatically