Service Records - The "Priority Class" Field
The "Priority Class" is that part of a record's
priority that categorizes the
service in general terms that affect overall priority.
The possibilities are:
- Emergency
- An emergency causes other work to stop until it's resolved.
So of course it's at the top of the queue.
An emergency isn't expected to last very long.
And there aren't (or at least shouldn't be) very many of them.
An example would be the failure of a shared faculty server.
- Current
- These are what we're focusing on now.
There shouldn't be very many per person.
It's expected that there will be significant work done on
these at least every week.
Items with a status of "stalled"
can contribute to a greater than expected number of current items.
A stalled item is one for which we have to wait until
work out of the direct control of the owner is completed.
- Upcoming Requests
- These are the work explicitly requested by faculty and their staff.
The goal is to resolve all such work within 8 weeks.
Work older than that will have an explanation
(readable by the requester) of why it hasn't been completed.
When a request is first submitted, it's added to this part of the queue,
in a relative position influenced by the user-specified urgency,
unless of course it's been called an emergency,
in which case it's starts in the "emergency" part of the queue.
- Upcoming Projects
- These are work required by our ongoing commitments and future planning.
It's intended to be fairly obvious why these have to be resolved;
they aren't optional.
As they can be justified, they're moved
into the current projects list to be completed.
As with Upcoming Requests, we expect all of these to be resolved;
rather than remaining on the list forever.
- Uncommitted
- These describe work that we cannot (yet) commit to,
due to unavailable resources.
And they can also be work that would be nice to do,
but can't (yet) be justified (to faculty).
They're kept just in case there's time,
and/or as a repository of ideas that might be
relevant to future higher priority work.
When specifying this field in a customized sort or display, any of the names
"priority_class" or "Priority Class"
can be used.