On September 20, 2021, the WiscIT team will implement an automated process to close aging incidents. An aging incident is defined as an incident that has not been actioned for one week and is not in a status indicating it is a long-term, pending incident.

The WiscIT team collected feedback from service teams and worked across DoIT to develop a simple solution that we believe will be broadly applicable to the diverse set of processes that exist within the organization.

This process will:

• Provide a better customer experience by ensuring incidents dont linger in an unactioned state for long periods of time
• Enable service teams and managers to identify areas in need of attention due to an accumulation of pending incidents
• Provide a more accurate picture of our long-term incidents at the organizational level, reflected in the metrics for the DoIT Operations report

The Process

WiscIT will automatically resolve incidents that are open for two weeks without action being taken. WiscIT will send notifications to both the incident owner and customer after the first week of inactivity, and resolve the incident after a second week of inactivity . Once resolved, an incident can still be reopened until it closes automatically two weeks later.

Incidents set to a long-term, pending status will be exempt from this process and remain open indefinitely. See WiscIT - Exempting individual incidents from the aging incidents process for instructions. For all other incidents, the following timeline will apply:

One week without activity

After one week has passed from the last modified date of an incident, WiscIT will automatically set the status of the incident to Pending - Autoresolution. WiscIT will notify both the owner and the customer that the incident has been inactive for one week and will automatically resolve in one week unless the status of the incident changes.

One week in the status,Pending - Autoresolution

When an incident has been in the status of Pending - Autoresolution for one week, WiscIT will resolve the incident automatically. WiscIT will send a notification email to both the owner and the customer of this action. The incident can be reopened until it closes automatically two weeks later.

Implementation

Prior to September 20th

Before this process is enabled on September 20th, service teams should review their aging incidents using the instructions available in WiscIT - Reviewing aging incidents.

Initial rollout on September 20th

On September 20th, the WiscIT team will resolve all incidents that:

• Have not been modified in over one month and
• Are not in a long-term pending status, see WiscIT - Exempting individual incidents from the aging incidents process

Incidents resolved in this initial event will not send notifications to the owner or the customer.

Enabling the ongoing process on September 21st

After the initial resolution of aging incidents on September 20th, the auto resolution process will begin to run each morning at 9:00 a.m., starting September 21st. Because of the one-off resolution event described in the above section, this means that all open incidents will be set to a status of "Pending - Autoresolution" (with notification to customer and technologist) if they meet the following criteria:

• Not modified in over one week (effectively between one week and one month due to the initial rollout on September 20th)
• Are not in a long-term pending status