How can I get the 'Time to response' SLA to stop counting immediately upon ticket creation?

Question

Currently the only SLA we have set up is the 'Time to first response'.

When a customer creates a ticket, Jira automatically sends them the initial email saying "Thanks, we've received your request and it's filed under ticket number INC12345". This is the default email from Jira and not something we have set up via automation.

What I want, is that email to be the trigger to stop the time to first response SLA. Is there a way to do this? Or failing that, can we set a rule via automation to stop the timer once that email has been sent? I'm struggling to find how to use that email as a trigger for any events/automations.

Also, I'm aware this isn't the way SLA's should work. I am new to this company and I will be changing that soon, but to begin with I need to ensure Jira matches our current ticket system for functionality before I start changing internal processes.

Thank you so much.

Gareth Jones_re2t7s · Answer

Hi @Walter Buggenhout . I had time to implement your suggestion and can confirm that worked perfectly. Thank you for the advice.

Now my next challenge is to change the SLA's we agree to, but that's another story for another day :)

Thanks again.

Gareth Jones_re2t7s · Answer

Thanks Walter. Yes I completely agree that we need to look at what this SLA is actually monitoring. I will change this shortly, however at the moment I need to be able to get us away from our current ITSM tool before I try and make too many changes internally.

Once I have a tool in place that allows us the usability we require (JSM), then I can start to change our processes and what SLA's we set and track.

I'll give your suggestion a try this evening out of hours and then come back and mark as resolved if it works.

Thanks and have a nice evening,

Gareth

Walter Buggenhout · Answer

Hi @Gareth Jones,

You are right in your last paragraph: that does not simply make any sense. If you stop an SLA from running the instant a ticket gets created, then what's the point in having that SLA whatsoever? Let's be honest: if you could pull that off, that would automatically make you have a 100% success rate, no matter what happens. So my advice would be to simply drop that SLA rather than trying to make it stop.

If we forget the sense / nonsense of the setup, you always need an event to start and stop your SLA timer. The issue create event would be the event that starts the timer.

A logical way to let it stop, is by responding to a status transition. Add an additional status to your workflow (e.g. confirmed) and use an automation to automatically transition your issue to that status upon creation. Then you could use that (automated) transition to stop the timer for your SLA.

Hope this helps!