What is an incident's relative due date (incidents.rel_due) and how is it calculated?

Environment:

Service Level Agreements, Response Time

Resolution:

When an incident is created, an initial due date is calculated. This value only changes when the response requirements associated with the incident are changed due to the application of a service level agreement (SLA) or if the RECALC_INCIDENT_DUE configuration is set. 

The relative due date is calculated by taking the incident's time of creation and adding the response time (from response requirements) associated with the incident. In addition, the due date takes into account the work hours that are configured in the Default Response Requirements table or the hours configured in the applied SLA.

For example if RECALC_INCIDENT_DUE is set to 0, the incident's response time is 45 minutes and the incident comes into the system at 9:00am on 10/10/07, the due date will be 10/10/07 at 9:45. This value does not change regardless of customer updates to the incident and/or additional responses. The value only changes if the response requirements change.

Similarly, if the work interval is configured to be 8:00 to 17:00 on Monday through Friday, and the response requirement is 540 minutes (9 hours). If an incident comes in at 3:00pm on Friday, the date due will be 3:00pm on Monday because the work intervals are taken into account when calculating the date due.

When incidents are created outside of business hours, the time the incident remained in the queue until the business hours begin is not counted against the due date. For example: Business hours are M-F 8:00 to 17:00. The response time is three hours.  An incident submitted on Saturday at 15:00 would be due Monday, 11:00 am.

Note that the Resolution Time that is configured for the response requirements or an SLA is never used in calculating the date due value. Both the Response Time and the Resolution Time are based on the created time stamp of when the incident is initially created in the system.

For examples of when the RECALC_INCIDENT_DUE is enabled, see Answer ID 4729: Description of RECALC_INCIDENT_DUE configuration setting

For additional information, refer to the 'Configuring resolution due calculations' section in the Online Help User Guide documentation. To access Oracle B2C Service manuals and documentation online, refer to the Documentation for Oracle B2C Service Products.