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IT & Service Desk · Internal tools

Service Request Priority Tool

A small utility that takes a service request’s impact and urgency, works out a priority and an estimated response timeframe, and produces a short status message the team can paste into the ticket.

Workplace context

The IT Coordinator (Priya Naidu) needs a simple utility that sorts service requests by priority and suggests a response timeframe. The specification, sample inputs, expected outputs, test cases and feedback are below. Build it to the spec, test it against every case, fix the known issue, then send a short handover note.

What it needs to do

  • Ask for (or read) the request ID, impact and urgency.
  • Work out the priority using the business rules.
  • Work out the estimated response timeframe for that priority.
  • Build a clear status message that includes the request ID, priority and timeframe.
  • Handle a list of requests, not just one (loop through them).
  • Cope with input entered in any case (e.g. "high" or "High").

Example output: Request SR-1043 logged as CRITICAL priority — target response within 1 hour.

Business rules

When Priority Response timeframe
Impact High and Urgency High Critical within 1 hour
Impact High or Urgency High (not both) High within 4 hours
Impact Medium and Urgency Medium Medium within 1 business day
Anything else Low within 2 business days

Sample inputs

Request Category Impact Urgency
SR-1042 Password reset Low Medium
SR-1043 POS outage High High
SR-1044 Printer fault Medium Low
SR-1045 Payroll access High Medium

Test cases

# Input Expected priority Expected timeframe
T1 SR-1042 · impact Low · urgency Medium Low within 2 business days
T2 SR-1043 · impact High · urgency High Critical within 1 hour
T3 SR-1044 · impact Medium · urgency Low Low within 2 business days
T4 SR-1045 · impact High · urgency Medium High within 4 hours
T5 SR-1043 · impact High · urgency "high" (lowercase) Critical within 1 hour

Known issue to fix — Lowercase urgency is treated as Low

When a request’s urgency is entered in lowercase (e.g. "high"), the tool doesn’t match it and falls through to Low priority.

Sample input
SR-1043 · impact High · urgency "high"
Expected
Critical — within 1 hour
Actual
Low — within 2 business days

Hint: The comparison is case-sensitive. Normalise impact and urgency (e.g. convert to a consistent case) before comparing, so test T5 passes.

Feedback from IT Coordinator (Priya Naidu)

  • Good start — the message format reads well.
  • Please confirm it returns the right answer for all five test cases, including the lowercase one.
  • Add a short comment explaining the priority rules so the next person can follow it.
  • When it’s working, send a one-line handover note confirming it meets the spec.