Setting a goal and deadline for an assignment

You can set a goal and deadline for an assignment to automatically enforce your service-level agreements. By default, goal and deadline times are measured from the time that an assignment is routed to a worklist or work queue to the time that the assignment is completed.

1. In the Explorer panel, click Cases, and then click the case type that you want to open.

2. On the Workflow tab, click Life cycle.

3. Click an assignment or approval step in a process.

4. Click Goal & deadline.

5. Select the Consider goal and deadline check box.

6. Define the criteria for the goal and deadline.

   To define custom criteria:

   1. In the Service-level agreement list, select Custom.

   2. In the Goal and Deadline sections, enter values in the fields to define the suggested and required completion times for the assignment.

      Options include:

      • Days — Enter a positive integer.

      • HH:MM:SS — Enter a formatted string of positive integers that represent hours and minutes.

        For example, enter 04:15:30 to indicate that the goal is 4 hours, 15 minutes, and 30 seconds.

      • Increase urgency by — Enter an integer to add to the current urgency of the assignment.

   To reuse criteria from an existing service-level agreement:

   1. In the Service-level agreement list, select Use existing.

   2. Press the Down Arrow key in the field that is displayed and select the name of a service-level agreement.

7. Click Save.

At run time, your application detects when the goal and deadline are unmet and adjusts the current urgency of the assignment. To see how much time you have left to complete an assignment, refer to the header of the form.

Define escalation actions to call attention to assignments that exceed the goal or deadline time.

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