Apply the "Divide and Conquer" strategy to deal with ticket backlogs
Before we get started with our report, let's quickly skim through the basics. Ticket backlogs refer to tickets that remain unresolved even after a said period of time. These tickets usually include unassigned tickets, tickets unresolved after the first response, or tickets that are assigned but haven't been resolved by the technicians due to a number of reasons such as overflowing ticket volumes, dependencies, or other complexities that require extra time.
An effective way to stay on top of ticket backlogs is by separating open tickets into different tiers (0-30 days, 31-45 days, 46-60 days, over 60 days, and so on) based on how long they have been pending. This will give the help desk managers get a clear picture of how unresolved tickets are distributed. The age tier report breaks backlogs into smaller chunks and makes it easy for the help desk to handle.
Help desk managers can come up with different strategies to resolve requests in each tier. For example, highly experienced technicians can be assigned to requests in older tiers (46-60 days or over 60 days), whereas, L1 or less experienced technicians can attack backlogs in smaller tiers (0-30 days).
The report for 'Open request ageing tier chart' is available by default for out-of-the-box ServiceDesk Plus integrations, but if you wish to create this report from scratch, please follow the steps given below.
To create a tickets ageing report, you need the below custom formula:
if("Days Since Created">=0 and "Days Since Created"<=30,' 0 - 30 Days',if("Days Since Created">30 and "Days Since Created"<=45,'31 - 45 Days',if("Days Since Created">45 and "Days Since Created"<=60,'46 - 60 Days',if("Days Since Created">60,'Over 60 Days','Invalid Age'))))
Once you've created the custom field, populate your axes as given below:
X-axis: Request age tier (actual)
Y-axis: Request ID (Distinct)
Filters:
Request pending status (Actual) - Include 'Yes'
Note: You can tweak the custom formula given above to look at ticket age tier for any time frame.
If you wish to look at more interesting reports and dashboards, check out our demo page.