What is a Service Desk interaction?

Each time a user contacts the Service Desk, the Service Desk Agent uses Service Manager to create an interaction record. The Service Desk Agent records the user name, the name of the component about which the user is calling, and a description of the user request. After the Service Desk Agent collects this information, the Service Desk Agent performs the actions that are required to resolve the user request.

• If the user request is a complaint or compliment, the Service Desk manager can handle the interaction and close it.

• If the user request can be resolved by the Service Desk agent on first contact, the Service Desk agent will use the interaction to trigger an incident or a service request, and then close the incident or service request directly with the solution provided. Then, the interaction will be closed automatically.

• If the user request cannot be resolved without escalation, the Service Desk agent can register a new record in a fulfillment process (such as the incident, service request, problem, or change fulfillment process) based on the Service Desk interaction. Service Desk copies information from the interaction record into the newly created fulfillment record.

For example, consider a user who cannot print to a network printer:

• The user contacts the service desk for assistance.
• The Service Desk agent populates an interaction record with the relevant information.
• The Service Desk agent opens an incident from the interaction, and the incident is assigned to a technician.
• The technician discovers that the printer network connection is broken.
• The technician fixes the connection and closes the incident. The interaction is automatically closed accordingly.
• The Service Desk agent contacts the user and instructs the user to attempt printing to the network printer.
• If the user can successfully print, the Service Desk agent can send out survey based on the closed interaction. If the user still cannot print, the Service Desk agent may register a new interaction and then trigger the interaction to a new incident.
• If the user wishes to report a related or new issue, the Service Desk agent opens a new interaction detailing the new issue that the user needs to report.

What is a category?

Service Manager uses the category to which a record is assigned to determine what work needs to be performed in order to close an interaction. For example, a service interruption logged in the incident category could have a different workflow than a service catalog request category interaction. The steps to manage and resolve the incident category interaction may differ from the steps for a service catalog request category interaction.

The category of the interaction determines which Process Designer workflow the interaction uses, and the workflow determines which forms and required fields are displayed. In addition, the category of the interaction determines which Service Manager process is invoked when you escalate an interaction. Categories of the complaint or compliment type are handled entirely as other types of interactions; however, you cannot escalate these interactions.

Out-of-box Service Desk categories

The following table lists the out-of-box Service Desk categories. Depending on the category that you select, Service Manager may require you to further categorize the interaction record by selecting a Subcategory and Area.

Categories can be created and revised by the System Administrator. Therefore, additional categories may be available to you.

Notify By field

The Notify By field specifies how to contact the person or customer who initiated an interaction. If the interaction record is associated with another record, the information in the Notify By field affects how the interaction record is closed. For example, if you associate an incident record to an interaction record, the related interaction record closes according to the information in the Notify By field when the incident record is closed.

Related topics

Service Desk overview
Working with Service Desk interaction records
Associating a Service Desk interaction with another application record

Create a streamlined interaction