Creating an incident

Service Manager allows you to create an incident via several ways.

You can directly create a new incident in the In the Incident Management module by clicking Incident Management > Create New Incident.

You can also create an incident by escalating an interaction. For example, if a user cannot print to the network printer, the user calls the Service Desk for help. The Service Desk Agent creates a service desk interaction record to capture the service request. If the agent discovers that he or she cannot resolve the issue during the phone call, the agent escalates the interaction into an incident.

The Incident Coordinator reviews the information and verifies that it is assigned to the correct group. An Incident Analyst resolves the issue or escalates it to initiate a change. When the issue is resolved, the Service Desk Agent informs the user that the record is closed. All phases of this incident are tracked, from opening the service desk interaction record, escalating the incident, resolving the incident, and closing the record.

Activities section

The Activities section allows users to enter new updates for a record or to view journal updates and historic activities for a record.

New update

Field	Description
New Update Type	Specifies or categorizes the activity update (for example, communication with the customer)
Visible to Customer?	Makes the update visible to customers so they can view related interactions via self service Note This option can be bypassed by setting the Bypass Visibility Option flag to “true” in the activityactions table. When this flag is set to “true,” automatic activities are invisible to customers, whether the Customer Visible option is selected or not. When the flag is set to “false,” all activities are visible to customers if the Customer Visible option is selected.
New Update	Used to enter notes to explain and describe updates made for the record. If Journaling is enabled, the text entered here is displayed in Journal Updates. If Activities are enabled, the text entered in this field is displayed as an activity record for the selected activity type. Note The System Administrator is responsible for enabling Journaling and Activities.

Journal updates

Journal updates displays text entered in the New Update field together with a timestamp for the update. This field displays information when Journaling is enabled.

Activity type

To filter the list by the type of activity, select an activity type, and then click Filter. Service Manager opens a new record list that displays the records of that activity type.

The activities list displays activities for the current record. The activities are listed in order of occurrence, with the most recent activity displayed first. The following information is displayed for each activity:

• Date/Time
• Type
• Operator
• Description

Incident Details section

Use the following information as a guide when you add data to an incident.

Field	Description
Title	A short description summarizing the incident.
Description	A description of the incident in more detail.
Incident ID	The system-generated unique ID for this incident.
Status	Displays the status of the incident. These statuses are available in the out-of-box: Categorize means the incident is being categorized. Assign meas the incident is assigned. Work In Progress means work is underway to resolve this incident. Pending customer means awaiting action from the customer who reported the incident. Pending Evidence means that you need evidence from the customer or vendor. Pending Vendor/Supplier means awaiting action from a vendor/supplier. Pending Parent Incident menas tThe incident has been linked to a parent incident and is waiting for the resolution of the parent incident. This status is automatically set when an incident is linked to a parent incident. Pending Other means that you need something from an outside source other than customer or vendor. Resolved means there is a resolution, but it has not yet been verified by the customer. Suspended means the customer has agreed to suspend the incident for a period of time; the incident does not appear in your Inbox during this period.
	The current phase of this incident.
Primary Affected Service	The service affected by the registered issue. Only services the service recipient has a subscription for can be selected.
Affected CI	The configuration item (CI) the incident is registered for. Using Fill shows the CIs that are part the affected service. Other CIs can be entered manually.
CI is operational (no outage)	If selected (set to true), indicates the item is currently operational and there is no outage.
Outage Start Time	A date/time stamp for when the service outage started.
Outage End Time	A date/time stamp for when the service outage ended.
Requested By	The name of the operator who opens the incident.
Contact Person	The contact person for this incident.
Location	The service recipient's location
Major Incident	When this option is selected, the incident requires the Major Incident Review process.
Escalated	Select this option to mark the incident for escalation. When this option is selected, the Escalation Team section appears.
Incident Manager	An incident manager need be specified when the Major Incident or Escalated option is selected.
Parent Incident	This option indicates if the incident is a parent incident. You can link one or multiple child incidents to a parent incident if they are related in a certain way.
Link to Parent Incident	The parent incident of the current incident. This field is unavailable when the Parent Incident option is selected.
Category	The out-of-box system has four incident categories: Incident, Complaint, Request for Administration, and Request for Information. When you escalate an interaction into an incident, the new incident inherits the category from the interaction.
Subcategory	The subcategory of the incident.
Area	Depending on the selection of a category, a different list appears describing the area of concern for the incident.
Assignment Group	The support group assigned to work on this incident.
Assignee	The name of the person assigned to work on this incident. This person is a member of the assigned support group.
Impact	The impact the incident has on the business. The impact and urgency are used to calculate the priority.
Urgency	The urgency indicates how pressing the incident is for the organization.
Priority	The order in which to address this incident in comparison to others.
Source	The source of the incident.
Expected Solution Time	The expected time when the incident is resolved.

Note: When you view an existing incident, shaded fields are not available for more input. Incident Management populates these fields from information stored in associated records. You can update the associated record to increase the amount of information in these read-only fields.

Related Records in Incident Management

Service Manager lists all related records for the incident on the Related Records section. All information is read-only, but a user can click a record ID to view the related record. The related records are listed in alphabetic order by the module file name: Change (cm3r), Interaction (incidents), Incident (probsummary), Request (request), Problem (rootcause). Within each module the records are sorted by ID in ascending order.

The Related Records section contains the following fields.

Field	Description
ID	The related record number in the database.
Type	The link type between the related record and the incident.
Phase	The current phase of the related record.
Status	The current status of the related record.
Title	The title of the related record.

SLT section

Service Manager populates the information in the SLT section with one or more Service Level Agreement records associated with the asset. If no agreement exists, the section is blank. All the information is read-only.

The Next Expiration field displays the next immediate deadline from all matching SLTs. The SLT section contains the following subsections that list the details of the specific SLTs.

SLT type	Description
Process Targets	Lists all of the matching SLTs from all of the associated SLAs.
Uptime Targets	Lists the percentage of time that all SLTs are available.
Max Duration Targets	Lists the acceptable amount of time for an outage for all SLTs.
Upcoming Alerts	Lists the alerts for all of the SLTs.

Note: When you view an existing record, shaded fields are not available for more input. Incident Management populates these fields from information stored in associated records. You can update the associated record to increase the amount of information in these read-only fields.

Hover-over forms for incident records

In Incident Management, incident forms for open, update, and close include hover-over forms. A hover-over form opens for a field that supports hover-over forms when a user moves the mouse over the field. The hover-over form only opens when the field contains data. The data displayed on hover-over forms is read only.

The incident record forms (open, update, close) contain the following hover-over fields.

Field	Subform fields
Contact	Full Name, Telephone, Email
Affected CI	Critical CI, Pending Change

 

Related topics

Incident Management overview