question SLAs on Incident Tasks in ITSM forum

SLAs on Incident Tasks

Janelle3 — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 07:50:01 GMT

We want to encourage the use of incident tasks for complex high priority incidents where the work of multiple teams is required in parallel / in collaboration. However incident tasks do not seem to have SLAs attached. The Incident Task form shows a Priority but there is no tab for Task SLAs or even the SLAs of the Parent incident. The issue is the team assigned the Incident Task does not get to see the elapsed percentage time, breached etc and so does not get a sense of the urgency and remaining time before SLA breach. Is there a way to show SLAs on the Incident Task itself? Preferably with minimal customisation.

Thank you!

Re: SLAs on Incident Tasks

Jaspal Singh — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 07:56:06 GMT

Hi Janelle,

Yes, you can. All you need is to configure SLA definitions for Incident task table. Once done you can add the Task SLA related list to the incident task form.

Re: SLAs on Incident Tasks

ServiceNow Use6 — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 07:57:37 GMT

Hi Janelle,

Please navigate to SLA -> SLA Definition from Application Navigator. There you should have OTB SLA's for various priorities. Probably they are not active. Make them active.

For more information,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjPFVcL248s&ab_channel=BasicoServiceNowLearning

Regards

Suman P.

Re: SLAs on Incident Tasks

Tony Chatfield1 — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 07:57:49 GMT

Hi, the functionality is the same regardless of task type and you can add the task_sla related list to incident_task in the same manner as incident via the UI menu at top of form.

Re: SLAs on Incident Tasks

Janelle3 — Sun, 25 Jul 2021 03:51:26 GMT

Thank you very much to everyone who has replied! I work within Service Management and don't have developer/admin access so I can't see what's possible to configure beyond reading ServiceNow doco and what I learn through these forums. How would you advise setting the SLAs on the Incident Task? Ideally I would want the SLA clock on the Incident and its child Incident Tasks to be in sync.

The scenario I'm thinking these would be used in is we have a complex incident that requires multiple teams to either investigate/do work in order to resolve. The person coordinating the incident resolution can hold onto the Parent incident while assigning work to various teams through the Incident Task. All teams should have visibility of the overall Incident SLA as that is their shared resolution target. It's really just about having this shared visibility and sense of urgency, which you don't get when you are assigned an Incident Task in our current system configuration.

Since there will be separate SLAs associated with each Incident Task and parent Incident, they may start off being created in-sync (e.g. by having the Incident Tasks inherit due date or elapsed time of the Parent Incident upon creation), could they become out of sync when Tasks are put on hold and the SLA clock is stopped?

As another alternative is it possible to not actually create separate Incident Task SLAs, but just have the Parent Incident SLA/resolution clock visible on the Incident Tasks?

Thank you!

Re: SLAs on Incident Tasks

Alex Rathwyn — Fri, 20 Aug 2021 13:48:37 GMT

Hi Janelle,

I am also not an Admin/Developer, but I can tell you this is possible since we have implemented something similar (except we are not using Incident Tasks, we're using Catalog Tasks, but I'm looking to change that which is how I came across your post). It did require separate SLAs and custom fields and business rules. Based on what we did but with an eye towards implementing against all Incident Tasks, you would need:

A custom date/time field on the Incident Task table and a business rule that will populate the field with the Opened timestamp of the INC when the Incident Task is created
An SLA definition for Incident Tasks created for each possible Priority with the same (or shorter) allowed duration as the corresponding Incident ones
Enable retroactive start and retroactive pause on the Incident Task SLAs and for the 'Set Start To' field choose the custom date/time field with the INC's Opened timestamp

This results in the Incident Task SLA inheriting the elapsed duration of the Incident. However, as you called out, if they pause the Incident Task then the due date on the SLA will be pushed out and no longer be in line with the Incident. Incident Tasks don't inherit On Hold values from the parent Incident, so that disconnect would be true in the other direction as well.

Due to the above, I've been considering setting the allowed duration for Incident Tasks to be less than the allowed duration of the Incident, like an OLA, but so far can't find any best practice recommendations on that.

Re: SLAs on Incident Tasks

Janelle3 — Mon, 23 Aug 2021 23:31:43 GMT

Thank you Alex for your in depth response! It does seem to quickly get quite customised/complex to go down this path, and we can still end up with the SLAs on parent/child potentially getting out of sync.

I wonder if rather than implementing Incident Task SLAs, there is a way to instead give visibility of the Parent Incident SLA from the Incident Task form? It is a shared resolution target after all, and we want all teams working towards the resolution to have that shared visibility and sense of urgency.

Re: SLAs on Incident Tasks

Alex Rathwyn — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 21:51:51 GMT

Hi Janelle,

It's been a while, but I have a couple other thoughts for you:

To create Incident Task SLAs that inherit the elapsed time of the originating Incident, you might not need the custom date/time field on the Incident Task table, since the Incident that generated it is populated in a field already existing on the Incident Task - so in theory you should be able to dotwalk to the main Incident's Opened timestamp in the SLA Definition instead of creating a new field. This is not the case with Catalog Tasks, which is what we were using in my environment, so I didn't think of it.
To expose the Incident's SLAs on the Incident Task... I would think this should be possible? There is an OOB Related List for Task SLA->Task which automatically shows all SLAs associated with the ticket currently being viewed. I know you can Define New Relationships in ServiceNow, so there has to be a way to create a Task SLA->Incident relationship that would show SLAs in the related list that are associated with the Incident populated in the Incident field of the Incident Task. In fact, this is such a great idea I'm probably going to see if we can do that here, now that we switched over to using Incident Tasks for this work instead of Catalog Tasks.

Re: SLAs on Incident Tasks

Janelle3 — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 22:24:25 GMT

Thanks Alex, sounds like you have given this a lot of thought! I would love to know how you go with this idea. It's more in line with what I was hoping was possible, exposing the Incident SLA on the Incident Task rather than creating a separate SLA for the incident task. If we go down this path even if it starts out inheriting values from the parent it could end up out of sync. Thanks again!

Re: SLAs on Incident Tasks

Samantha Sam — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 19:51:28 GMT

Hi @Alex Rathwyn , @Janelle Can you pls share finally how you did for this scenario.

Re: SLAs on Incident Tasks

Raine — Mon, 04 Jul 2022 10:32:03 GMT

Hi Janelle, I tried Alex's suggestion and was able to successfully surface the parent incident's Task SLA on the Incident Task record Related List. See screenshot on the "query with" condition script.