Response times

A promise on a queue: how fast a new ticket gets its first reply, and how fast it gets resolved. Set one or both targets and every conversation in the Inbox carries the clock — a countdown while there is time, Held while the clock waits on the customer, Late once a promise is missed. This is not a report you check later; it is the queue telling you what to pick up next. Two promises A policy makes up to two promises: a first reply within so many minutes or hours, and a resolution within so many. Either can be left untracked: a desk may care about resolution and not first touch — and an untracked target draws no badge rather than a green one. One policy per queue, on the table itself rather than a view. A view is a lens, and two people looking through different lenses must not be owed different answers. When the clock starts, and what counts as an answer The clock starts when the first message arrives. The first reply is the first message the customer could actually read. An internal note is not an answer, and neither is an email to a supplier or anyone else who isn't the customer; the queue's Needs reply state follows the same rule. Deadlines are stamped when the clock starts and never re-derived. Tightening a policy from eight hours to four applies to new tickets; it does not retroactively make last month's tickets late, and last quarter's numbers stay what they were. Pausing, and stopping Pick which of the status field's own option values pause the clock and which end it. Pausing values are things like Waiting on customer or Snoozed; ending ones are Solved or Closed. Both are matched from the field's own options, never a hard-coded list. A paused ticket shows Held and cannot go Late: the desk is legitimately waiting on somebody else. Time spent paused is added back to the deadline when the clock resumes, and the original promise stays on record. Business hours Each policy chooses whether its targets count around the clock or during business hours only. The weekly pattern and closed days live at Settings → Business hours; a closed day (a bank holiday, a shutdown week) is skipped entirely. A workspace that has stated no hours counts around the clock. That is deliberate: "4 hours" must not quietly mean "4 working hours" until you have said what working means. Late, and who hears about it Miss a promise and the conversation's chip turns Late, and a Late filter appears beside Needs reply, on exactly the queues that promise a response time and nowhere else. You can also name people to notify on a breach; they are told once per missed promise, not hourly, because an alert that repeats for a fortnight teaches people to ignore the one that matters. Naming nobody is fine: the badge is the whole notification, and that is a legitimate way to run a small desk. Tips • The chip is absent entirely on a queue with no policy: a table that promises nothing shows nothing rather than a fake countdown. • Switching a policy off stops new clocks but erases nothing: tickets that really were late stay late in the record. Good to know • Paused is not stopped. A ticket Held on Waiting on customer resumes the moment its status moves back; only a resolving status ends the clock. • A policy reads the status field — it never writes it, and it must not share a field a Lifecycle or posting policy governs. Who can do what • Admins set policies and business hours; every member sees the chips and the Late filter.