Calendars

The ITSMA Service Management calendar is an optional feature that enables the System Administrator to define custom work schedules for each group in the organization. These custom calendars determine when alerts and notifications occur for particular groups.

By default, Service Management uses a calendar with a 24-hour work day and a 7-day work week to determine when alerts and notifications occur. In the default 24-hour, 7-day calendar, Service Management sends alerts and notifications without regard to operator work shifts. For example, if an operator schedules a notification to occur in 6 hours, then Service Management sends the notification after 6 hours have passed regardless of whether any operator is present to receive it. A notification scheduled at 5:00 p.m. in the default calendar arrives at 11:00 p.m. the same day.

Using a custom calendar, however, the same 6-hour delay occurs only during the defined work schedule. For example, a System Administrator can define an 8-hour work day lasting from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., which includes a 1-hour break from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. If an operator then schedules a notification to occur 6 hours after 5:00 p.m., the notification actually occurs at 3:00 p.m. the next work day, or 6 working hours after the notification start time.

System Administrators can create custom calendar records to use throughout Service Management. The caldutyhours table contains custom calendar records that a System Administrator can assign to Service Management activities:

• Change Management work schedule
• Change Management group definitions
• Incident Management assignment group definitions
• Incident Management deadline alert group definitions
• Request Management target order times
• Request Management target completion times
• Service Level Agreement service hours
• Service Level Agreement availability schedules
• Service Level Agreement response time schedules
• Service Desk on call times
• Vendor schedules