Create a time period

A time period must contain one or more rules in order to create occurrences. A time period rule stores all the recurrence patterns, and reflects the recurrence of the future start and end times of the time period occurrences. Rules are the central element in the Time Period module to create time period occurrences.

To create a time period from scratch, follow these steps:

1. Click Time Period Management > Create New Time Period.

   A list of time period categories is displayed. The categories are grouped by Type.

   Time period type	Description
   Availability Hours	A period of time in which a service should be available.
   Maintenance Window	A period of time in which Change requests may be implemented.
   Neutral	A period of time indicating an external event, such as a holiday, which has no direct bearing on request implementation.
   Freeze Period	A period of time in which Change requests may not be implemented.

2. Select a category.

   The New Time Period form opens, with certain field values automatically populated.

3. Complete the fields in the Details and Applies to sections as necessary. The following tables describe the two sections, and the Activities section.

   Details

   Attribute	Description	Notes
   Id	A system-generated unique ID for the time period definition.	The ID is generated based on the number file.
   Current Phase	The phase that the time period definition is currently in, depending on the pre-configured workflow.	The workflow is defined in the time period category.
   Approval Status	The approval status of the time period definition.	Same approval states as in Change Management.
   Type	The type of the selected category.	Read-only
   Category	The selected category.	Read-only
   Next Review Date	Enter the next review date of this time period definition.	Must be a future date.
   Scope	The acceptable scope of the time period. Note This field is available only for a time period of the Maintenance Window type.	A Global List with three values: No Impact Degradation Outage
   Owning Group	The assignment group that owns this time period.	Linked to the assignment table. Values must be a valid assignment group.
   Owner	The owner (person) of this time period.	Must be a member of the assignment group (Owning Group).
   Name	A display name of the time period definition.	Any name is acceptable.
   Description	A description of the time period definition.	Any textual description.

   Activities

   Attribute	Description
   New Update Type	The type of the new update. There are three OOB types: Update Communication with Stakeholders Communication with Service Owners
   New Update	The description of the new update for the activity log.
   Activity List	Lists all activities performed on the record.
   Activity Type Filter	Allows a filtered view of the activity list per Activity Type.

   Applies to

   Attribute	Description	Notes
   Environments	An attribute to classify the time period definition even further.
   Services	Services for which this time period definition is created.	Must be a Business Service configuration item from the device file.
   Locations	The locations this time period applies to.	Must be a valid record from the location file.
   Departments	The departments this time period applies to.	Must be a valid record from the department file.

   Note By default, the time period is valid for all Locations, Departments, Services, and Locations (these fields have a default value of <All>). When you specify a specific item, the <All> value is cleared and replaced with your specified value.

4. Click Save.

   Note Before you can add a rule, you need to save the time period.

   The time period is added.

5. In the Rules section, continue to add rules to the time period.

   1. Click New. The New Time Period form opens.

   2. In the Rule Name field, type a descriptive name. For example, My Rule 1.

      Note The rule is Active by default. If you want to add an inactive rule, deselect the Active option. Inactive rules will not create occurrences for the time period.

   3. In the Time period field, select a time zone. By default, the time zone defined in your operator record or the system time zone defined in the System Information Record is selected. If you are creating a time period definition for users located in another time zone, you may want to select their time zone. Occurrences will be generated based on the specified time zone.
   4. Select a Recurrence Type. For example, Monthly.

   5. Specify when the rule will start to take effect and when it will expire. For example, you can specify February 1, 2013 as the effective date, and the rule will expire after 10 occurrences.

      Note The maximum allowed value in the Expires after field is defined in the Time Period Settings. See Configure time period global settings. If you specify a value greater than the maximum, an error occurs.

   6. Select a recurrence pattern. For example, you can specify the rule recurs every 1 month, on every fourth of the month or on every first Monday of the month.

      Note The value of the recurrence pattern has the following limitations:

      • Daily: 1 to 1000
      • Weekly: 1 to 100
      • Monthly: 1 to 25
      • Yearly: 1 to 3
   7. Specify the start and end times of the rule. For example, you can specify the rule starts at 00:00 (hh:mm) and ends on the same day at 08:00 (hh:mm).
   8. If you want to set an arbitrary schedule for the rule, select the On an arbitrary schedule check box, and then specify the start day and end date for each individual occurrence.

   9. Click Save.

      The rule is added.

   10. Click Save & Exit.

       You are returned to the time period record. The new rule now displays in the Rules section, and its occurrences during the specified effective period are listed in the Occurrences section. When there are a large number of occurrences, you can use the filters (Rule ID, Start Time, End Time, Status, and Activate) at the top of this section to view specific rules.

       The maximum allowed value in the Expire after field and the number of months to calculate future occurrences are defined in the time period global settings. See Configure time period global settings.

       Note The occurrences are displayed in your time zone or the system time zone if yours is not available, instead of the time zone specified in the rule. You can change the occurrence display time zone only for this session by clicking the Change Time Zone button (if you log off and then log back in, the time zone change no longer takes effect). For details, see Change the time zone of a time period.

6. If needed, continue to add more rules as described above.

7. Click Save.

   The time period is created.

   The Workflow section shows the workflow linked with the time period category you selected previously, and the current phase of the time period is Planning.

   The Approvals section is now empty. Next, you can further update the time period or submit it for approval.

To create a time period from an existing one, follow these steps:

1. Click Time Period Management > Search Time Periods.
2. Open the existing time period through a search.

3. Click More or the More Actions menu, and select Copy.

   The new time period is created, populated with data from the original time period, except for the Impact and Current Phase field values. The new record always has an empty Scope and a Current Phase of planning.

4. Click Save.

   Note The Copy options for Rules and Occurrences setting specified in the Time Period Settings determines whether or not and how rules and occurrences are copied. When you click Save, rules and occurrences are copied regardless of their state (active or inactive).

5. Update the time period as needed, and click Save.