How Business Duration Calculated in Incidents and the SLA table

Shweta Mayekar
Tera Contributor

‎06-01-2025 04:34 AM

Hello All,

 

We have business duration field, is the time an incident remains open within defined business hours, excluding weekends and holidays. It helps measure the time spent on an issue while considering the working schedule of the resolver. Since business hours vary by location, the system calculates duration based on the time zone of the person resolving the incident, not the person viewing it. 

 

The system follows a Monday thru Friday, 9 AM - 5 PM US/Pacific schedule based on sys_calendar table, which translates to:
• 10:30 PM - 6:30 AM IST (India)
• 6 PM - 2 AM Amsterdam (Europe)

 

ServiceNow uses a function (calDateDiff) that considers the resolver’s time zone and the first business calendar in the system. As a result, the calculation may appear incorrect if viewed from another perspective. To verify the business duration accurately, it’s best to impersonate the resolved by user in ServiceNow.

 

How can this be solved and what is the impact of making the changes to the OOTB setting on the process.

  1. A reason why the sys_calendar doesnot reflect the working hours for the users and resolver. If this is set OOTB only to US pacific even then it seems wrong.
  2. Business duration is added on the incident and incident_SLA table based on the sys_calendar table setting for the resolver now if the resolver is in India with IST it shows the start time 22:30 (IST) - end time 6:30 am (IST) which is completely incorrect for the actual working hours of the agent. 
  3. How can this be corrected
  4. what is the impact on the other ITSM processes.
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Uncle Rob
Kilo Patron

‎06-01-2025 06:55 AM - edited ‎06-01-2025 06:56 AM

Worst thing you could possibly do is try to alter how this is handled OOB.  That knowledge will live and die with you.  When the next gen of SN builder enters OR the SLA tastes change, nobody will remember why this doesn't work the way OOB does.

There also sounds like there's some SLA vs OLA conflict here.  An SLA is something we guarantee the customer.  If we're worried about the IST missing their 'fair hours' you're in OLA land.  In my estimation this is best handled with OLA's for IST teams in particular.  Then configure the SLA definition to run based on that schedule.

UncleRob_1-1748786157174.png

 


Yeah, its more work, but it will keep your system running the way 99.999% of people expect it to.

 

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