Is there a way to pause SLA/ due date timers?
Asked by Daniel:

Hi,

I was thinking about using trello to track my operations units work. As many other service providers we have strictly set SLAs. However if we are for example waiting for the customer to specify some information or if some customer request is waiting for some actions on their side our time SLAs pause. I am going to provide you with an example of what I would need:

First of all I create a card which in this case represents some customer request. I will set a due date on the card based on the urgency of this request. Lets say that the due date is 3 days and 4 hours from the time I created the card. If after lets say 1 day after working on the card I realize that I need some additional information from the customer I will write him an email and wait for him to respond. During this time I need the due date pause/prolong for the time until the customer replies, thus I need a list in which for the time being there the due date on the card will be moved forward. after I take the card out of the list the due date will then proceed as usual.

Is this butlerable/manageble?

Thank you,

Daniel


Answers:
author: Daniel
body: Hi all,

thank you very much for such a swift response. I pretty much like the button idea and if that could be implemented (a card having a due date "pause" and "unpause" button) I think I would not even need to have it automated. Would that make it easier?

Once again thank you,

BR,

Daniel

comments: author: milynnus
body: [@Daniel](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4984195)

Look for power up that allows you to clock them. It will allow you to display the clocked time and you can use the to adjust the due date since you do not need it to be automated. Gaining access to power up data is not always possible to use it for automation. It will depend on the design.


author: Brittany Joiner
body: [@Daniel](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4984195) welcome to the community! This definitely sounds butlerable.... but I'd have to think through it a bit more. Off the top of my head, I'm imagining a card button that creates a custom field with the timestamp of the "pause" date, but i don't know how to do the math between the difference of that timestamp vs the due date to see what time is remaining. if you could figure out that part, and say it's like "2" days remaining, then you could update another custom number field with that number, and then create another card button to "unpause" and set the due date to be x days (whatever the value of that custom field is).

Maybe a combination of Amazing Fields and Butler? (Amazing Fields can do calculations based on fields, but it doesn't work with automation, so you'd have to mirror those fields to Butler fields... but i haven't played with this yet enough to know for sure how that would work and if it can read due dates.)

Also would need to confirm you can put a variable in the set due in _ days action action, but I think you can.

cc [@milynnus](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3947182) what do you think?

comments: author: milynnus
body: [@Brittany Joiner](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1692248) [@Daniel](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4984195)

You can do {cardduedate + {{%Number}}d} but I have not figure out a way to get difference two two dates using Trello automation without using the http request to an endpoint.