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I&R IT Service Response Times, explained

Understanding IT service response times and priorities is crucial for efficient operations. The I&R IT group has defined how IT issues are classified, prioritized, and addressed:

  • Emergency issues: Addressed within 1.5 hours to ensure minimal disruption.
  • Urgent issues: Resolved within 2 business hours.
  • Standard requests: Handled within 1 business day.
  • Best effort tasks: Addressed within 2 business days.

Read more about the different types of issues, from incidents to projects, and learn how each is managed:

Response times

  • Emergency: User must be available to troubleshoot until resolution. Response within 1.0 hour, action within 1.5 hours -- actively worked on until resolution or work-around in place, at which point the incident may be downgraded to Urgent priority with affected service owner approval.  Resolution or downgrade to urgent within Recovery Time Objective for affected services. Regular progress updates provided.
  • Urgent:  User must be available to troubleshoot until resolution. Response within 1.0 business hour, action within 2.0 business hours. Resolution or viable work-around in place within Recovery Time Objective for affected services. Regular progress updates provided.
  • Standard  (default priority for most Requests ) -- response within 1 business day.  Action time varies, tickets are generally handled in a first-in first-out basis within the same priority level.  Most resolved within 5 business days. Defined standard requests may have specific response times:
    • New employee requests - 1 business week
    • Person of Interest (POI) - 1 business week
  • Best Effort (Projects and out of scope processes) - response usually within 2 business days.  Action time varies, tickets are generally handled in a first-in first-out basis within the same priority level

Definitions:

Priorities:

  1. Emergency:  An issue which is severely preventing work from occurring and cannot be worked around, one that is affecting a large number of users such as a system-wide outage, or any issue which may put safety, property (physical or intellectual), data, reputation or security at risk. Most outages affecting Critical/High-Impact services fall into this category.
  2. Urgent:  An issue which is preventing work from occurring and cannot easily be worked around.  Most incidents will fall under this priority level depending on impact.
  3. Standard:  The default priority level for most requests, projects and maintenance tasks.  Incidents with a lower impact (1 or 2 users or with a viable work-around) and risk may also fall under this priority level.
  4. Best Effort:  Requests, changes, training, projects and maintenance tasks which are not time-sensitive or have a lower potential benefit to the University compared to standard-priority items.  These items are typically put on hold until resources are available.

Issue Types:

  1. Incident:  An unplanned interruption to an IT service or reduction in the quality of an IT service. (The system is not operating as designed or in a degraded state.)
  2. Request:  A Service Request is a user request for information or advice, or for a standard change (a pre-approved change that is low risk, relatively common and follows a procedure) or for access to an IT service.  (The system is working as designed)
  3. Change: The addition, modification, or removal of any authorized service or component that could affect IT services.
  4. Project: Similar to a request, but with a larger scope-of-work, Project Manager, Sponsor, etc. Must follow I&R IT Project Management Standards (link coming soon) and have a defined start and end.
  5. Maintenance: Similar to a request, but internally-initiated. Can be a recurring task, although many recurring tasks are not tracked as tickets.

Issue Statuses with changes:

  1. New: a newly-received issue that has not yet been responded to.
  2. In Progress: an issue which is currently being worked on.
  3. Scheduled: an issue with a scheduled start date in the future.
  4. Approval Needed: When a ticket needs approval to proceed, replaces "Waiting for Approval"
  5. On Hold: Issue which has intentionally been put on hold, requires supervisor review.
  6. Closeout: Substantial completion of work, some closeout or review work needed.
  7. Complete: Work is complete, including all closeout items.
  8. Closed:  Work is complete, including all closeout items.

Project Statuses:

  1. See I&R IT Project Management Terms (link coming soon).