Ticket Priority

Definition and computation of the ticket priority in relation to the QoS levels

Priority definition

If you plan to adjust the ticket priority from the default value ’less urgent' to ‘urgent’, ‘very urgent’ or ’top priority’, please make sure you add a justification for this change in the problem description field.

The following table will help you to find an appropriate priority value:

PriorityComment
top priorityservice interrupted; needs to be addressed as soon as possible
very urgentservice degraded; no workaround available
urgentservice degraded; workaround available
less urgentwishes and enhancements that are “nice to have”

In particular, be very economical when choosing ’top priority’. This value, when reaching the supporters via another ticketing system interface, might become a beep or phone alert even in the middle of the night. This level of support is ONLY committed by WLCG Tier0 and Tier1s and ONLY for ALARM tickets.

Finally, please be aware that the supporter who will try to solve your problem may change the value you have chosen to a more realistic one, putting their justification in the ticket’s public diary.

Priority colours

The purpose of the priority colours in GGUS

The priority colours in GGUS should help supporters getting an overview of the most important tickets. The priority colours have no impact on the metrics generated with the GGUS report generator or manually by the GGUS team.

The colours used

Currently the following colours are used for open states:

  • green
  • yellow
  • amber
  • red

For terminal states GGUS uses:

  • light blue for status “unsolved” and
  • blue for status “solved” and “verified”.

Fields affecting the priority colour algorithm

The priority colour algorithm is affected by the status value and the priority of a ticket. The priority colour calculation for tickets in status “assigned” is based on different values than for tickets in any other open status.

Office hours and weekends

Office hours and weekends are taken into consideration when calculating the priority colour. The system assumes usual office hours from 07:00 to 15:00 o’clock UTC from Monday to Friday for all support units. Different time zones are considered as far as possible.

Priority colour and status values

The priority colour calculation starts after a ticket gets assigned to any support unit. The support units should change the ticket status to “in progress” or any other open status after receiving the ticket. Thus the support unit has responded to the ticket (response time). After such a status change the priority is reset to “green” and the calculation of the priority colour starts again from scratch.

The priority colour for tickets dealing with middleware related problems is calculated according to the Quality of Support the PTs voted for. The priority colour changes after a dedicated amount of working hours as listed in the table below. The priority colour calculation is processed every 15 minutes.

QoS LevelTicket priorityColourWorking hoursColourWorking hoursColourWorking hours
Baseless urgentYellow20Amber30Red40
urgent203040
very urgent203040
top priority203040
Mediumless urgentYellow20Amber30Red40
urgent203040
very urgent468
top priority468
Advancedless urgentYellow20Amber30Red40
urgent468
very urgent468
top priority234

Algorithm for tickets other than middleware

The priority colour changes after a dedicated amount of working hours as listed in the table below. The priority colour calculation is running every 15 minutes.

Ticket priorityColourWorking hours
less urgentYellow20
Amber30
Red40
urgentYellow20
Amber30
Red40
very urgentYellow16
Amber24
Red32
top priorityYellow12
Amber18
Red24