Understanding Issue Resolution Time Guidelines

The Issue Resolution Time Guidelines provide a breakdown of the levels of issue severity and the procedures to accompany each level.
  Issue Severity Level Response Time Resolution Time
  1: System Down Immediate Engagement until resolved
  2: System Degraded Immediate Engagement until resolved
  3: Urgent Within 30 minutes Engagement until resolved
  4: Normal Within four hours Within one business day
  5: Service Request Within one business day Within 2-3 business days

Issue Severity Levels

System Down: Level 1

  • Description:
    • Critical system is down
    • Many users affected
    • Critical applications are unavailable
  • Example: The connection to the internet is down
  • Actions: An immediate response is required
    • Top priority for all support employees
    • Incident manager engaged
    • Notify resources to initiate disaster recovery processes
    • Email notification every 60 minutes
  • Resolution: There will be immediate engagement until the incident is resolved

System Degraded: Level 2

  • Description:
    • Performance is very slow for all users
    • Certain functionality is not available
  • Example: The Blackboard operation is slow
  • Actions: An immediate response is required
    • Incident manager engaged
    • Email notification every 60 minutes
  • Resolution: There will be immediate engagement until the issue is resolved

Urgent: Level 3

  • Description:
    • Several users affected
    • No Workaround
    • One or more departments affected
  • Example: The wireless connection is down in a department
  • Actions: There will be a response within 30 minutes
  • Resolution: There will be engagement until resolved

Normal: Level 4

  • Description:
    • One or more users affected
    • Basic functionality available with some restriction
    • Workaround available
  • Example: A printer is down
  • Actions: There will be a response within four hours
  • Resolution: The issue will be resolved within one business day

Service Request: Level 5

  • Description:
    • Functionality unaffected
    • Service requests
    • Work orders
  • Example: A request for software
  • Actions: There will be a response within eight hours or one business day
  • Resolution: The issue will be resolved within two to three business days

More Information

A ticket's severity level is set by the IT Help Desk representative receiving the report or other IT agents reporting the issue in the Cherwell Client. Severity is set using the following table:

Uploaded Image (Thumbnail)

The severity can be changed by the IT Help Desk prior to assignment to a team or agent. All changes to a ticket are logged in the Journal for that ticket.

Print Article