Promises About Time¶
If you have agreed a response time with a customer, Desk Center can hold you to it: count down to it on the board, say when it is close, and record it when it is missed.
Desk Center → Promises (administrators only)
None of this is required
Desk Center works exactly the same with no policies at all — no badge appears on any card, no mail is sent, and nothing is marked. Write one when you have agreed a time with somebody, not because the screen is empty.
What a policy is¶
A policy answers two questions, per priority:
| Clock | Starts | Stops |
|---|---|---|
| First answer | when the work arrives | the first note the customer can read |
| Resolution | when the work arrives | the work reaches a Done or Cancelled column |
An internal note between agents does not keep the first-answer promise. That is the whole distinction: a desk that counted its own notes could meet every response time it sells by talking to itself.
Writing one¶
A policy covers a board (or every board) and optionally a type, and then promises something for each priority:
| Priority | First answer | Resolution |
|---|---|---|
| Urgent | 15m | 1h |
| High | 1h | 4h |
| Medium | 4h | 1d |
| Low | — | 3d |
Write a number and a unit: 15m, 4h, 2d. A bare number is refused — "4" could mean four minutes, four hours or four days, and a promise is the wrong place to guess. Leave a box empty to promise nothing of that kind; "resolve in a day, nothing about the first reply" is an ordinary policy.
Hours of clock time, counted day and night
Desk Center does not know your working hours. A promise of 4h made at five on a Friday afternoon is due at nine that evening, not on Monday morning.
If you sell support in business hours, say so in the number: an 8-hour working day is roughly 3d of clock time for a next-working-day promise.
The order decides which one applies¶
Policies are a list, and the first one that covers an item is the one that applies. Nothing adds up and nothing is combined. Put the specific policies first and the catch-all last; move them with the arrows.
A policy that covers an item but says nothing about that priority still stops the search. It matched; it simply made no promise about work of that kind.
Stopping the clock¶
Two things can stop it, and they are configured separately because they are different shapes.
Columns, by what they mean — Open, In progress, In review — not by their name. An account that renames "In review" to "Con el supervisor" keeps its promises working; one that changes what that column means changes them with it. Finished columns are not offered: they end the clock rather than pausing it.
Waiting on the customer, which is a flag on the item rather than a column — the work stays where it is.
Waiting on a colleague never stops the clock
That delay is yours, not the customer's. A policy that paused while a ticket sat with somebody internally would let the desk stop its own clock by passing the work around.
When the clock restarts, the deadline moves forward by exactly how long it was stopped. A ticket that waited three days on the customer has three more days before the same promise is broken.
What the board shows¶
The card's time badge becomes the promise, when there is one:
| Badge | Means |
|---|---|
2h 14m left |
running, with room |
18m left, amber |
inside the last quarter of what was promised |
overdue 3h, red |
the deadline has passed |
on hold, grey |
the clock is stopped |
met |
finished, and the promise was kept |
never answered |
finished, and the customer never was |
A card shows one time badge. Where there is a promise it is the promise; otherwise it is the ordinary "days in this column" badge, exactly as before.
The warning band is a proportion, not a fixed time — a quarter of what was promised. That means fifteen minutes of warning on a one-hour promise and a full day on a four-day one, which is the right way round: a longer commitment deserves more notice, not less.
Finding the work at risk¶
The board's Attention filter gains two options, Breaching soon and Overdue. They appear once anything on the board carries a promise.
Work under no policy never matches either — it has no deadline to be over.
When a promise is broken¶
The instant is recorded on the item, which matters more than it sounds. Pausing moves the deadline forward, so without a record a ticket that was late, then waited a week on the customer, would quietly look on time again. The record is what keeps that honest.
Desk Center does not then move the work, close it, reassign it or escalate it. A board that rearranged itself because a deadline passed is one people stop trusting. If you want something to happen, write it as an automation.
Whoever holds or follows the work can be emailed — see Notifications, where that kind of mail is off until somebody asks for it.
It runs unless your provider turned it off
Recording a breach is done by a job on the server, and it is on by default. A deployment that does not sell response times can switch it off; without it the board still counts down and still shows work as overdue, but the record is not kept and no mail is sent.
What this does not do yet¶
- No compliance report. "87% met this month" needs history this does not keep.
- No working-hours calendars, as above.
- No automatic escalation, as above.
- Nothing about the second reply. Only the first answer and the resolution are measured.