Service Desk Interaction Management form details

Interaction ID

Service Manager populates this field with a unique ID when a Service Desk Agent registers a new interaction.

Status

The options in this field have been revised to align with our new best practices.

These statuses are available out-of-box:

• Open — The interaction has been initially logged. For example, when the Service Desk Agent is still on the phone with the customer.
• Categorize — The interaction has been logged and saved by Service Desk Agent, or a request has been created by a self-service user. The categorization details will be provided with this status.
• Assign — The status is manually set by Service Desk Agent, or a service catalog request will stay in this status when it is created by self-service user or Service Desk Agent. The assignment will be made with this status.
• Suspended — The interaction can be suspended for a predefined duration at categorization or fulfillment. It will be worked upon only after it is unsuspended either manually or automatically.
• In Progress — The interaction has no incidents, changes, or other records related to it. It is fulfilled by Service Desk.
• Dispatched — The interaction has been escalated or the catalog request approved and the interaction is now related to another record, such as an incident, change, or request.

• Resolved — The interaction has been resolved with solution filled.

• Callback — There is an action pending for the interaction. The Service Desk Agent must now call the contact. If the Notify By field for that user is set to Telephone, the interaction is automatically set to Callback when the related record is closed.
• Closed — The interaction was closed by the help desk or automatically after the related record was closed.

• Withdrawal Requested — The user contacts the Service Desk Agent and ask for the interaction to be withdrawn on their behalf by providing appropriate information.

• Logging - The interaction has been initially logged. For example, when the Service Desk Agent is still on the phone with the customer.
• Categorization – The interaction is categorized and prioritized in this phase. Assignment is also made in this phase.
• Work In Progress – The interaction is under investigation, either by Service Desk or by other process, such as incident, change, or request.
• Review – The proposed solution of the interaction is reviewed in this phase.
• Closure – The interaction was closed by the help desk or automatically after the related record was closed.
• Withdrawal – The interaction is in this phase where the user contacts the Service Desk Agent and ask for the interaction to be withdrawn on their behalf by providing appropriate information.

Contact

The Service Desk Agent populates this field with the person from which the call was received. The contact person is not necessarily the same person as the service recipient. This field ensures that the correct person will be notified about updates to the interaction.

After filling in the contact name, the Service Desk Agent can use the Smart Indicator positioned at the end of the field to view open or closed interactions for this contact. This field includes a hover-over form that displays full name, telephone, and email address if available for the contact.

This is a required field.

Service Recipient

The person who has the problem and needs it resolved. It is not necessarily the person who is calling to report the problem. Filling in this field automatically fills in the contact name from the contact record of who should be notified of the resolution.

The Service Desk Agent populates this field with the person this issue is registered for. This field includes a hover-over form that displays full name, telephone, and email address if available for the service recipient.

After filling in the service recipient, the Service Desk Agent can use the Smart Indicator positioned at the end of the field to view open or closed interactions for the service recipient.

This is a required field.

Location

The location for which the interaction has been reported. The field is for informational purposes only.

Location data is customer and implementation specific.

The source from which the record is created.

The following out-of-box sources are available:

• 1 - User
• 2 - Group
• 3 - Event
• 4 - Chat
• 5 - Email
• 6 - Telephone

Notify By

To notify the customer when the issue has been resolved, Service Manager prepopulates this field with Email for user. User or the Service Desk Agent can change it to None or Telephone, if applicable.

When the related incident or change is closed:

• Selecting Email sends email to the contact and closes the interaction
• Selecting None closes the interaction without notifying the contact
• Selecting Telephone sets the interaction to the status Callback, which tells the Service Desk Agent to call the contact. The Service Desk Agent asks the contact whether the solution is satisfactory and indicates the answer on the Required Actions tab. If the solution works for the customer, you close the interaction. If it does not work, then you must open a new incident.

This is a required field.

Affected Service

The Service Desk Agent populates this field with the business service affected by the registered issue. Only business services the service recipient has a subscription for can be selected. As a best practice, users should select the affected service before selecting the Affected CI because the Affected CI selection is limited by the service selected by a user. Selecting the service first prevents a mismatch between the service and the CI. ITIL 2011 is centered around services, so a service construct should always be defined for best practices. If you have not yet created a service construct, start with a catch-all service, such as My Devices.

These business services are available out-of-box:

• Applications
• E-mail/Webmail
• Handheld PDA & Telephony
• Intranet
• Internet
• My Devices (The My Devices service represents all personal devices that the user would use.)
• Printing

Selecting the service:

• May limit the list of affected CIs.
• Validates that it is a valid service.

An end user is more likely to know that the e-mail service does not work than what part of the e-mail service does not work.

This is a required field.

Affected CI

The Service Desk Agent populates this field with the configuration item (CI). Click Fill to select from a list of the physical CIs that relate to the service. Other CIs can be entered manually.

If the business service does not contain any CIs, then the list shows only the CIs that the service recipient is subscribed to and the CIs that are assigned to the service recipient. If you choose an Applications service, you are presented with a list of CIs in the service, as well as those that you own. This field includes a hover-over form that displays Critical CI and Pending Change check boxes to indicate whether or not these attributes apply to the CI.

After filling in the affected CI, the Service Desk Agent can use the Smart Indicator positioned at the end of the field to search for open and closed incidents for this CI, and to view the details.

Title

The Service Desk Agent populates this field with a brief description that identifies the interaction.

This is a required field.

Description

The Service Desk Agent populates this field with a detailed description of the interaction. When the location and telephone number differ from the contact details, the Service Desk Agent can record the correct information in the description field.

Clicking Search Knowledge searches description fields across multiple Service Manager knowledgebases for the text entered. Depending on the permissions of the user, Service Manager may look in interactions, incidents, problems, known errors, and knowledge documents. The Service Desk Agent can use the solution from any returned document as the solution for the interaction.

This is a required field.

Completion Code

This field contains a predefined completion code, describing the way this issue has been solved. The out-of-box options in this field are based on Service Manager customer reference data.

These completion codes are available out-of-box:

• Automatically Closed

• Cancelled

• Fulfilled

• Invalid

• Not Reproducible
• Out of Scope
• Request Rejected
• Solved by Change/Service Request
• Solved by User Instruction
• Solved by Workaround
• Unable to solve
• Withdrawn by User

Knowledge Source

This field contains the reference number of the document from the knowledge base document used to solve the issue.

If you find a knowledge article by using Search Knowledge, and then click Use Solution in that article to provide the solution to your customer, this field is populated with the Document ID of the document you used.

If you do not use a knowledge document or if you do not click Use Solution in the knowledge document, this field is left blank.

Solution

This field contains a description of the solution used for this interaction.

Category

This field describes the type of interaction. The interaction type determines the process to escalate to when the interaction cannot be solved on first intake.

The categories are based on ITIL service-centric processes, and therefore focus on enabling assignment, reporting, and operational analysis for knowledge management purposes.

From the category list:

• Complaint/Incident/Request for Information/Request for Administration > Escalate — You can relate the interaction to an existing incident, an existing known error, an existing problem, or create a new incident.
• Request for Change > Escalate — Service Manager creates a new change request.
• More or More Actions icon > Order From Catalog — Service Catalog opens, allowing you to place an order. The interaction is given the category service catalog. Service Catalog interactions are not escalated. When you approve the interaction, it opens the related record as defined in the service catalog connector.

For more information on categories and the subcategories and areas associated with them, see Interaction categories.

This is a required field.

Subcategory

The Service Desk Agent populates this field with the subcategory of concern.

Service Manager displays different lists of subcategories, depending on the category you selected. For more information on categories and the subcategories and areas associated with them, see Interaction categories.

This is a required field.

Area

The third level of classifying an interaction, mainly used for reporting purposes.

Service Manager displays different lists of areas, depending on the subcategory you selected. For more information on categories and the subcategories and areas associated with them, see Interaction categories.

This is a required field.

The group assigned to work on the interaction. For a description of this field see the Assignment Group field description in the Incident Management form details section as this field functions similarly. The out-of-box data consists of default assignment groups for use as examples of types of assignment groups.

You may want to change the sample assignment groups to meet your own needs.

These assignment groups are available out-of-box:

• Application
• Email / Webmail
• Field Support
• Hardware
• Incident Managers
• Intranet / Internet Support
• Network
• Office Supplies
• Office Support
• Operating System Support
• Problem Coordinators
• Problem Managers
• SAP Support
• Service Desk
• Service Desk Analysts
• Service Manager

Impact

The Service Desk Agent populates this field with the impact the interaction has on the business. The impact and the urgency are used to calculate the priority. The impact is based on how much of the business is affected by the issue.

The stored value can be 1-4, as follows.

• 1 - Enterprise
• 2 - Site/Dept
• 3 - Multiple Users
• 4 - User

This is a required field.

Urgency

The urgency indicates how pressing the issue is for the service recipient. The urgency and the impact are used to calculate the priority.

The stored value can be 1-4, as follows.

• 1 - Critical
• 2 - High
• 3 - Average
• 4 - Low

This is a required field.

Priority

This field describes the order in which to address this interaction in comparison to others. It contains a priority value calculated by (impact + urgency)/2. Decimals are truncated.

The stored value based on that calculation can be 1-4, as follows:

• 1 - Critical
• 2 - High
• 3 - Average
• 4 - Low

Approval Status

This field is only used when you request something from the catalog.

When you submit an order from the catalog, Service Manager automatically creates an interaction which, based on approval requirements, may have to be approved before it can be fulfilled. Service Manager populates this field with the current approval status for this interaction.

These approval statuses are available out-of-box:

• pending — The request has not been approved or a prior approval or denial has been retracted.
• approved — All approval requirements are approved, or no approval necessary.
• denied — The request has been denied.

Activities

The Activities section records information that the Service Desk Agent enters during the lifecycle of the Interaction. Every time you update an interaction, you can fill in an update on the Activities section (New Update). A log of all the updates is stored on the Journal Updates and activities list. Activities from related records that are flagged as customer visible also display here.

Related Records

The Related Records section contains a list of all related records for the interaction. These may include related incidents, known errors, problems, changes, and quotes.

SLA

The SLA (Service Level Agreement) section displays SLAs related to the interaction.

SLAs in interactions are customer-related and selected, based on the customer contact or department and service related to the issue. The Service Level Objective (SLO) defines the details, such as beginning and ending state, and time allowed between these states. SLA selection takes place when a Service Desk Agent escalates the interaction. The best practice is that the Service Desk Agent should communicate the time of the next breach to the customer at this point. If SLAs are configured to be handled in the background, the information in this section may not display immediately.

Escalate button

The Service Desk Agent clicks this button to create an incident or change from this interaction. The customer's issue could not be solved immediately.

When research time is required, the Interaction should be escalated to an incident or a change, not saved as an interaction. There is no monitoring on saved interactions, other than self-service interactions.

If the Service Desk has a role in the Incident Management process, this incident may be assigned to the Service Desk, and the Service Desk Agent can still work on it.

Clicking Escalate starts the Escalate Interaction solution matching.

For more information on the Escalate Interaction solution matching, see Escalate Interaction solution matching.

Close Interaction button

The Service Desk Agent clicks this button to close the interaction. The customer's issue was resolved and requires no further action.