Traktip: Using Substatus to Pause the System Clock

 
 
 

It’s time for another Traktip!

This month we’ll talk the substatus feature and how to use it to pause the system clock.

Issuetrak has a feature called Substatus that allows you to give an issue a status beyond Open or Closed. This list of values you create can be associated to any issue at any time.

Know Where Your Issues Stand

When Substatus is enabled, one of the available metrics on your Dashboard is “Open Issues by Substatus.” This lets you see a snapshot of all open issues by their substatus value. Additionally, the Issue Hub allows you to customize your views by substatus.

If you manage a team, you may have a high volume of issues in process at any given time. Rather than just knowing you have 10 issues open, it helps to know that you have five pending acknowledgement, three waiting on user input, and two waiting for budget approvals. Because you define the actual substatus values, the list can be customized to include anything your business requires.

Using Substatus to Pause the System Clock

You’ll always have “Total Time” as a value on your issue that tells you how long the issue has been open. With substatuses activated, you get a second value called “Adjusted Time,” which is the total time minus any time the clock was paused.

The only way to pause the system clock is to set up rules based on a particular substatus value being set. This allows you to turn off the clock when issues are out of your hands or are on hold.

To pause the clock on a particular substatus:

  1. Navigate to the gear icon in the top right corner of your Issuetrak site.
  2. Select Substatus Rules under Automation
  3. At the bottom of the page is a section that says Define Pause Clock Rules
  4. Select the substatus to pause the clock
  5. Click Save
  6. (Optional) Repeat steps 2-3 for any additional substatuses that should pause the clock

Users with the permission “Can Select Substatus when submitting and maintaining issues” can update substatus values on an issue.

Because not everyone at your organization will have this permission, you'll also want to know how to set up workflows to automatically change your substatus values based on issue events.

As always, if you have any questions or would like to see this in action via a quick demo, please contact our Product Experts!

Topics from this blog: Traktips

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