Estimated hours - assigning partial hours to a given request/ticket type

I am trying to use the Estimated Hours field for a subset of tickets to provide some benchmarks for our current capacity. We have not implemented resource management yet and actual hours time tracking at the ticket level is not really beneficial given the large number of tickets we do. We know that certain types of requests take X number of hours (usually X number of minutes really). I assigned estimated hours in increments of .25, .5, and 1 depending on the type and known effort. Then I ran a report. It appears the field ignores anything less than an hour. How can we track our efforts for operational requests that take less than an hour but take up a lot of our time if we cannot enter less than an hour at a time?

Thanks!

Melinda Mattox

University of St. Thomas

estimated-hours

Asked by Melinda Mattox on Fri 5/6/22 7:41 PM

Answer (1)

Mark Sayers Mon 5/9/22 10:14 AM

Hello Melinda,

I just tested in the Estimated Hours field of a ticket and I *could* save a value that was less than 1 full hour (I used .25 as the value). Can you take a screen recording showing you attempting this and provide it so we can see what is happening when you try to use a value less than a full hour?

Sincerely,
Mark Sayers
Sr Support Consultant, CS

No feedback

Hi there - I can save a value. But it won't show up in the reports I write. Anything less that 1 winds up as 0. - Melinda Mattox Mon 5/9/22 4:19 PM

Are you able to provide screen shots showing the ticket has a saved value (in its details view, not in the Edit view) for Estimated Hours, and then show the same ticket in a report that includes the Estimated Hours column? - Mark Sayers Mon 5/9/22 4:21 PM

I would prefer not to include screenshots with our production data in a general forum. I can tell you that I am seeing inconsistent results with estimated hours. I do see it in the details view where I would expect it to be, but it does not always carry over to the other view, and when this happens it is missing from the reports. - Melinda Mattox Mon 5/9/22 5:01 PM

Ok, and when you say the other view, do you mean reporting on that ticket, or do you mean on the ticket's Edit screen? - Mark Sayers Tue 5/10/22 8:54 AM

My apologies - I mistakenly referred to the Edit screen as the "Details" view because it has more details. So the data is actually in the Edit screen (carried over from the form default). It often does not show up in the Details screen or the reports. - Melinda Mattox Tue 5/10/22 10:45 AM

You have to *Save* the Edit page in order for that default to actually be applied to the ticket. If all you did was enter the "Edit" screen, see the value in the field, then cancel back out of it, that never did save the value to the ticket. Try going to the Edit page of one of these tickets, Save it with a value in the Estimated Hours field, then go back to the ticket Details view and confirm if the hours value does show up. - Mark Sayers Tue 5/10/22 11:40 AM

What about if the value was applied as a default at the form level (which is what I have done for a set of our services)? What I'm trying to do is use something more automated and only have our techs update the estimated hours if they vary from that default in a meaningful way. - Melinda Mattox Tue 5/10/22 11:50 AM

I guess it depends on how the tickets are being created. If the tickets are being created via API or via an email monitor, that default value for the Est. Hours field is *not* getting applied to the ticket on creation. It takes at least 1 time of someone accessing the ticket's Edit screen and saving the page for the value to be applied/saved to the ticket. - Mark Sayers Tue 5/10/22 12:30 PM