Automation related to how long a ticket has been in a certain status?

[Ben Weisman]

Hello,

   I am hoping to build an automation that moves tickets from standard to high priority if they've been sitting in standard priority for 7 days. Is this possible?

Thanks.

[Jack Brickey · Accepted solution]

Hi Ben,

So first and foremost there isn't an easy way to determine time and status OOTB. There are add-ons for this or you could consider a hackey automation rule to keep track of this. 

automation idea

The idea would be to have a couple of fields that would capture the number of days in the current status. An automation rule would run daily and increment the count in a field if the current status = previous day's status. Then the same rule or separate rule would check the days in status to see if it has exceeded your limit. Obviously this could get pretty messy depending on your exact needs but it may be something you're willing to try.

[Ben Weisman]

Thanks @Jack Brickey , what about if I used the updated field? If X ticket has not been updated in 7+ days, change status.

Is that possible?

[Dirk Ronsmans]

Do you need to change the Status or the Priority cause now I'm confused :)

I would personally not use the "updated" field because Updated can be on anything.. they add a comment and it has been updated or any other field..

[Jack Brickey]

Agree with Dirk here and I misread your original goal too.

if your goal is to simply escalate priority after X number of days in the lesser priority and still u resolved then I would approach it differently.

I would create an automation role something light below...

• trigger - scheduled daily
• condition - priority = standard (?)
• condition - resolution = unresolved 
• condition - created date < now -7d (?)
• action - set priority to high

something like this?

[Ben Weisman]

@Jack Brickey @Dirk Ronsmans 

Sorry for being unclear. What I need to auto-update is the Priority, not the status. If a ticket has been sitting in a status of In Progress for 7 days, I would like it to be escalated to High priority, for example.

[Ben Weisman]

So the condition is the status. The action is the priority.

[Jack Brickey]

Ok then here would be my approach (similar to Dirk's recommendation)

1. custom field 'date entered in progress' - use post function to set the date on transition into "in progress". Use post function to clear the field (or possibly update it depending on your requirements).
2. automation daily to check the current date vs. 'date entered in progress' and take action if conditions met.

[Dirk Ronsmans · Accepted solution]

Hey @Ben Weisman ,

To build the concept of priority aging I think you'll have to create 2 rules. Initially I thought about doing it with an SLA but then you rely on status changes so these 2 rules might be "better"

1. Create a custom field e.g. "Priority Changed Date" and create a rule that sets the current date/time each time you change the Priority field
2. Create a scheduled rule (each day?) and on that rule set a JQL where you use that date field and compare it to the current date/time (with your offset). 

Then you can do your change priority based on the outcome of that "scheduled JQL"

That's just what my brain can come up with :)

[Jack Brickey]

Like this approach...a bit less hackey than mine!😉

[Ben Weisman]

Thanks @Dirk Ronsmans . Could I skip the custom field and maybe just run step 2 off of the updated field?

[Dirk Ronsmans]

You could, but the updated field doesn't specify what field was changed.

If you only need to know if something has been done on the ticket before you change the Priority then Yes you could :)

If you really need to know that the Priority has not been changed on a specific issue and the ticket is still open then you'll need to log the time of that field change somewhere.

Since you specifically mentioned 

if they've been sitting in standard priority for 7 days

I thought of this.

If it's more "not been touched for x days" then updated should work fine. Just keep in mind that when a customer asks an update this will also "update" the ticket (or any other automations that might run)