Extending a deadline

Where your statute permits it, Govflo can extend a request's deadline and tell the requester the new date. This article covers how to do it, and what the product will not let you do.

How to extend a deadline

1. Open the request.
2. In SLA Details on the right rail, click Extend deadline.
3. Enter the number of days. The line beside the field states the unit and what your statute still allows, for example "business days, no statutory limit".
4. Enter a Reason. It is required, and the form will not submit without one.
5. Click Extend.

Extension days are business days

The days you enter are counted against your agency calendar rather than as 24-hour days, so weekends and any holiday your agency has entered are skipped.

Three business days added to a Tuesday deadline lands on the Friday. Five added to that same date lands on the following Tuesday. Read the resulting date rather than counting in your head, particularly around a public holiday.

What your statute allows

Whether you may extend at all is set per statutory profile, under Settings, then Workflows, then SLA Policies, by Extensions allowed. Some jurisdictions permit no extension. Some permit an unlimited one, which Govflo records as a blank maximum meaning lawful but uncapped.

Where a maximum exists, it applies to the total extension across the whole request rather than to each individual extension. Several small extensions cannot add up past the ceiling.

Which clocks can be extended

An extension applies to one clock, and in practice that is the resolution clock.

A clock that has already been met cannot be extended, because it is finished. That is why extending a deadline usually leaves the first response date untouched: your first reply satisfied it, and it can no longer move.

A clock that is paused, or already missed, can be extended. Extending a missed clock clears the miss where the added time covers it.

The requester is told automatically

When the resolution deadline actually moves, Govflo emails the requester with the new date. The notice goes out only when the date changed.

Its wording is the Response deadline extended template, under Settings, then Agent Productivity, then Email Templates.

Write the reason for a reader you have not met

The reason is required, and it is worth more than one word.

An extension is a legal communication about a statutory deadline. If the handling of this request is ever challenged, the reason you typed is part of the record. "Busy" reads very differently from a sentence naming the volume of records found and the review still outstanding.