Announcing an update to pausable SLAs

Announced on | Rollout starts | Rollout ends
December 17, 2025 | January 19, 2026 | January 30, 2026

We are changing how the pausable update time metric behaves when a ticket is paused and then unpaused, to  improve the accuracy of SLA reporting.

This announcement includes the following sections:

What is changing?

Why is Zendesk making this change?

How are my existing tickets impacted?

What do I need to do?

What is changing?

The way pausable update SLA metrics work is being updated so we can improve the accuracy of SLA reporting.

Today, when a ticket is unpaused, the SLA timer resets and starts a new instance. This can leave the previously paused instance in an incomplete state resulting in incorrect data in Explore reports.

With this change, when a ticket is unpaused, the same SLA instance will resume and the timer will continue from where it left off before the pause. So the SLA was truly paused and then resumed, instead of being restarted.

This makes SLA tracking more accurate for pausable update time.

Why is Zendesk making this change?

The change fixes an issue that caused inconsistent SLA data and aligns with what the metric is actually supposed to do.

How are my existing tickets impacted?

Existing tickets with pausable update metrics on them will not get updated but new tickets that have this metric will have the updated accuracy.

What do I need to do?

There is no action needed, the change will automatically be reflected in your reporting dashboards, which will be more accurate moving forward.

If you have feedback or questions related to this announcement, visit our community forum where we collect and manage customer product feedback. For general assistance with your Zendesk products, contact Zendesk Customer Support.