Definitions of default incident fields.

[wbmore]

I have been asked to explain reporting based on how to best determine what field to use. Reports seemed very straight forward to me so I was unsure what she needed. After looking at the wiki and further discussion I found what she was really looking for is definitions of each of the fields on the incident form. In the future I am sure this will be for all forms, but incident is our bread and butter currently. What enlightened me to her need was the active field. She said this field is perfect now that she knows it indicates the status of the incident, (open or closed) but she had no clue what that field was for. I found a comments section on the table but it is empty. As I don't want to recreate the wheel what I am looking for is a layman's dictionary of the defaults fields from the incident table.

Thanks

[wbmore]

Guys this has gone way beyond my original intention. This post was not intended to beat on SNC about documentation. I know documentation is in works and improvements to the wiki and community are coming along nicely. I posted here instead of on the hi server in hopes that one of the other members had started creating a list like this for a zealous manager that wanted to create their own reports. Based on your comments and since no one else seems to have started this my plan is as follows. Wait for the new release and then I will likely open the dictionary, go to the task table and modify my list to include tool tips and other various fields. Do an export to excel. I think that will be a marvelous starting point for what I will call a vocab list. From that point I will likely post more explicit request for assistance on the fields that I do not know or understand in a crystal clear fashion.

A definition for business duration would be helpful.
Open to close, or closed minus opened minus other field information.
My guess is this is Closed minus Opened. Then evaluate against SLA rules determined by priority and a Calendar for final total in milliseconds, but I can not find this in an un-ambiguous form.
I can probably work on this for few hours to create a theory and find that I am right or wrong. I am trying to avoid those hours and/or guessing at it.

Matt,
Using tool tips works great for fields on the form. When you try to pick fields out of the available list of fields in reporting you don't get hints. Maybe this is changing in the next release.