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Use the Smart Indicator function

Applies to User Roles: All roles

Smart Indicators can be configured to display the following information:

  • Any other interactions and incidents that were open and closed for the same service user
  • Incidents associated with the same service
  • Incidents associated with the same configuration item (CI)

Smart Indicators can also be configured to show known errors for a service, which enables you to immediately communicate to a caller information that is related to the service.

The following steps provide an example of the Smart Indicator function in use. In this example, a user contacts Service Desk to report an issue with their printer. The issue is first created by a Service Desk Analyst as an interaction, escalated to an incident, and then analyzed by an Incident Analyst. During this process, the Smart Indicator is used to browse through other interactions and incidents to look for issues that are associated with the service and CI.

Service Desk Analyst

  1. Log on to Service Manager and open an interaction for the employee Aaron Caffrey.
  2. Click the Smart Indicator icon to the right of Aaron's name to check whether he is calling about an existing interaction.
  3. To identify this issue with the Printer service, click Fill.
  4. To see if this issue is already reported, click the Smart Indicator icon next to the service (image).

    A wizard opens to gather more information about this service. This wizard enables you to perform the following actions:

    • Double-click a line to browse through and drill down to a detailed overview of the open incidents, closed incidents, or possible workarounds for this service.

      To exit the related record, click Cancel, OK, or Close.

    • Click Next to return to the interaction record.
  5. Click Fill to identify the primary CI.
  6. Click the Smart Indicator for the affected CI.
  7. Type the title and a description of the incident.
  8. Categorize the interaction as: Incident, Failure, and Function or Feature not working.
  9. Fill out the Impact, Urgency, and then click Escalate.
  10. Select the Location, which helps determine how a new incident will be created and routed for assignment. An incident is created in the background and you are returned to your original interaction record. From here, you can let Aaron know what his Service Level Agreement (SLA) target time will be and that someone will be working to resolve his incident.

  11. Log out of Service Manager. An Incident Coordinator now assigns the new incident record to an Incident Analyst.

Incident Analyst 

  1. Log on to Service Manager, locate the incident record in your To Do queue, and then accept the incident record to begin your analysis.
  2. Mark the incident as a candidate for the Knowledge Base.
  3. Create an activity record to describe how you reproduced the issue and how much time you spent on the issue, and then log any other information.
  4. Click the Smart Indicator icon for the Service and Affected CI fields to display the visualization wizard that contains interaction and incident records with the same service and CI issue.
  5. Double-click a line to browse through the records, and then drill down to a specific record for details. Service Manager displays the record with information related to that field.

  6. To exit the related record, click Cancel, OK, or Close.

Related topics

Smart Indicator function
Editing records
Fields
Fill function
Find function
Use the Fill functionality