Implementing Sample Helpdesk Scenario in Incident Management - 2

First published on TECHNET on Nov 01, 2009

This post is the second in the series of implementing a sample helpdesk scenario in Service Manager.

Please refer to this earlier post for details on configuring Incident Management

Implementing Sample Helpdesk Scenario in Incident Management - 1

I’ll recap the sample scenario for reference

1.       Joe analyst is a member of the Tier2 staff that is responsible for resolving incidents in the SQL and Network services the Ops team offers.  There are 7 tier 2 analysts divided up handle incidents in each of the services the ops team offers.  There are also Tier 1 and 3 analysts responsible for ops team’s services.

2.       Joe analyst is associated with the SQL and network Queues. The SQL Queue has all incidents classified as SQL or the child SQL categories. Example: SQL parent classification category, SSRS, DB Management, Data replication are child categories.

3.       SERVERXYZ SQL reporting services stop and Sally with the Service Desk (Tier1) creates an incident ticket for the server and needs to route the incident ticket. The incident classification is SQL parent, SSRS as child. The ticket is automatically routed to the correct queue via a workflow.

4.       Joe analyst gets an email that a SQL incident 62 is created for SQL/SSRS and is unassigned. Joe analyst opens the console, looks at his SQL unassigned incidents view and assigns the ticket to himself.

In the prior post we did the basic customization of Incident Management, by creating custom category, templates and queues.  Now we will use those customizations in this post and cover these topics:

1.       Create Workflow so that all the incidents for SQL Issues are automatically assigned to Tier 2 Support Group (Optional step in this scenario)

2.       Add the user Joe to the “Incident Resolver” role so that he has appropriate access.

3.       Create a view for all “unassigned” incidents in the SQL Queue

4.       Create a notification workflow that notifies Joe whenever an incident is created in the SQL Queue

1.       Create workflow to route all the Incidents for SQL Issue to Support Group Tier 2 (Optional step)

In this scenario this step is optional, in the sense Sally could use the template that we created in the earlier post , and the template automatically sets the support group to Tier 2.  Note that SQL Queue created in the earlier post is based on Classification categories and not on support group, as the Tier 2 staff could be responsible for more than one queue.

Let’s assume Sally doesn’t use the template and just sets the appropriate classification category to SSRS i.e. SQL Server Reporting Services:

a.       Click on the Administration workspace

b.      Navigate to Workflows -> Configuration

c.       Select the Incident Event Workflow and Click on the Properties in the Task Pane

d.      Now click Add to add a new Incident Event Workflow

e.      Type in the name for Workflow and select the event “When incident is created”

f.        Go through the wizard and set the criteria – such that if the classification category is any of the SQL issues or a Networking issue

g.       Select the template SQL or Networking issue template that we created in the earlier post

h.      Do not check the notification in this case, as we are going to setup notification for Joe separately.

2.       Add the user Joe to the Incident Resolver role, so that he has appropriate access

a.       Click on the Administration workspace

b.      Navigate to Security -> User Roles

c.       Select the Incident Resolver Role and click on the Properties in the Task Pane

d.      Navigate to the “Users” in the left hand navigation pane of the property sheet

e.      Add the user Joe to the role

3.       Create a view for all “unassigned” incidents in the SQL queue

a.       Click on the Work Items workspace

b.      Select the Node Incident Management

c.       You can optionally create a folder Tier 2 Queues (by right click on Incident Management Node and select Create Folder)

d.      Select the Folder Tier 2 Queues

e.      Click on Create view

f.        Type in the name for the view (SQL Queue)

g.       For the class click on Browse

1.        In the class dialog, click on the drop down for classes and select All Combination classes

2.       Type in the search box “incident” and the click on search icon

3.       Select the “Incident (advanced)” class from the result set

h.      Now in the criteria window click on the small expander to the left of the Incident node, this should show all the related properties on the incident

1.       Select the property “Assigned to User”

2.       Check username from the fields in the right window and then click Add

3.       Now in the criteria box below select from the drop down “is empty”

i.         Now select the criteria for Incident classification category as shown in the picture below

1.       Go back to Incident node and then check the Classification Category property

j.        In addition you could also add a condition if Status is equal to Active so you only see “Active” incidents

Below are the screen shot of two views -- (All Active Incidents and SQL Queue)

4.       Create Notification Workflow for Joe

Before Joe can create his own notifications, you need to setup a Notification channel and a notification template.

a.       In the Administration workspace navigate to Notifications -> Channel

b.      Select the Email Notification channel and Click on Configure in the Task Pane

c.       Enter your smtp host for the email notifications

d.      Then Navigate to Notifications -> Template and create a notification template

1.       You can review details here on how to create notification templates using html

Now Joe should be able to setup notifications himself

Provide these instructions to Joe to create his own notifications

a.       Click on the Tools in the Menu bar

b.      Select My Notifications

c.       Type in the name for Workflow and select the event “When incident is created”

d.      Go through the wizard and set the criteria – such that if the classification category is any of the SQL issues or a Networking issue

e.      Select the template that was created in the earlier section

f.        Finish the wizard