Resetting "Hours Since" Timers

@justin13 / @justin federico (not sure which profile to tag lol)

I can't think of a way, but maybe you can provide more context. What's the problem you're trying to solve? 

@sphen11

Thanks for the response. I'll try to explain the best I can.

I am trying to implement a 3-stikes process for unresponsive customers. I have 3 automation rules that use "hours since pending" as a condition. Condition is set to business hours greater than 12, 24, and 36 hours. I have a schedule set for each region (Americas, EMEA, APAC). Each rule applies a tag to the ticket (strike 1, strike 2, strike 3).

I then have associated triggers that fire off each tag with the "within business hours" set to "yes" as I had an issue with the rule firing outside of business hours. Conceptually this works fine.

The issue is that there can be instances where the "hours since pending" value can satisfy more than one of the automation rules causing both, or even all three, to fire one after the other. This was the case on the first run of the automation rules. It might be that once the first run is completed this will no longer occur or may only be a rare occurrence.

I was thinking I could prevent this if I could reset the "hours since pending" timer on each strike. Perhaps I am overthinking and there is an easier way to do this.

Got it! Then yes, I should hope there is another way to do this. Maybe easier, maybe not - but either way I would be concerned about unintended side effects of resetting "hours since pending" as a workaround.

Are you doing any sort of nullifying conditions for the strikes? e.g.

Automation 1

• hours since pending greater than 12
• tags does not contain strike 1/2/3
• action: add strike 1

Automation 2

• hours since pending greater than 24
• tags contains strike 1
• tags does not contain strike 2/3
• action: add strike 2

Automation 3

• hours since pending greater than 36
• tags contains strike 2
• tags does not contain strike 3
• action: add strike 3

Trigger to reset strikes

• tags contains strike 1/2/3
• requester replies
• action: remove strike/1/2/3

@sphen11

This is exactly what I have from an automation standpoint save for some conditions that are specific to our system (affected forms and such). My automation rules only set a tag when the "hours since pending" are reached.

Along with the trigger to reset all strikes on a reply, I am using other triggers for each strike that sends the email to the user and solves the ticket (on 3rd strike). A trigger allows me to set the "within business hours" condition as I don't want to send these out on the weekend for example.

That's very curious. If they're set up in that way, I can't imagine how all three would possibly fire at once. 😕 Either way, what you're looking to do shouldn't require anything complex like resetting hours. Perhaps support can take a closer look with assuming into your account for a more granular look at what's happening. 

It could just be a "first-run" symptom where some tickets had an "hours since pending" value higher than 24/36. I just wanted to make sure it was not going to keep happening.

I will need to keep testing. Thanks for your input! 

Hi Justin, 

Were you able to get to the bottom of this issue? 

Thanks,
Ryan.