Miscellaneous tasks

You can also perform the following tasks in the Incident module.

Open an incident

Applies to User Roles: Configuration Auditor, Incident Coordinator, Incident Manager

You can open incident records as part of many Service Management processes, including interaction management, event management, configuration verification and audit, and incident management.

To open an incident record:

1. Click Incident Management > Create New Incident. The incident record quick form opens.
2. Click Fill to select an Assignment Group. 
3. Click Fill to select the applicable Affected Service. 

4. Click Fill to select the Affected CI.

   Note The Default Impact and Priority values of the affected CI are automatically populated to the Impact and Urgency fields of the incident record. You can manually change these auto-populated values if needed.

   Caution If you specify the Impact and Urgency values first and then specify an Affected CI with an empty Default Impact or Priority value, the Impact or Urgency value you selected for the incident record will be cleared.

5. Type a Title for the incident.
6. Type a Description of the incident.
7. Click Search Knowledge icon to see if the issue is already logged in the knowledgebase.
8. Complete the required fields in the Incident Details section.
9. Complete the form with any other relevant information.

10. Click Save & Exit. 

View clocks

Applies to User Roles: Incident Analyst, Incident Coordinator, Incident Manager

Clocks are background processes that track the duration of specific conditions in Service Manager.

To view the clocks that are tracking an incident:

1. Click Incident Management > Search Incidents.
2. Use search or advanced search to find one or more records.
   
3. Click More or the More actions icon and select Show Clocks.
4. Click Exit to exit the clocks display and return to the incident record.
   
   Note: If you receive a message that states the named clock record is no longer in the set, right-click the record, and then click Exit to exit the clocks display and return to the incident record.

View a list of services potentially affected by an outage

Applies to User Roles: Incident Coordinator, Incident Manager

The View Affected Services menu option enables you to view a list of services that are potentially affected by an outage relating to CIs that are specified in an incident or change record. By viewing the affected services list, you can determine the potential impact of an outage related to critical, dependent services when you open an incident. You can also use the affected services list for planning when opening a change.

To view a list of affected services:

1. Perform one of the following actions.
   • Open an existing incident or change record. Use search or advanced search to find one or more records.
   • Proceed as if you are going to add a new incident or change record.
2. If you are in the process of adding a new record, fill in the Affected CI.
3. Click More or the More actions icon and select View Affected Services. The CI Identifier record opens.

4. Open the Affected Services section. A list of affected services opens or a message, stating that there are no services affected by the outage.

   Note For change records, a list of all affected business services is returned in all cases, whether the record has one primary CI or multiple CIs.
   

5. Select a CI from the list for detailed information from the Configuration Management record.
6. When you finish viewing the affected services, click Cancel.

Apply a template to complete an incident

Applies to User Roles: Incident Analyst, Incident Coordinator, Incident Manager

Templates enable users to quickly complete an incident record by automatically populating fields with the applicable information.

Note: Make sure that the user profile is enabled to use templates. For additional information on enabling a profile to use templates, see the related topics.

To apply a template to complete an incident:

1. Click Incident Management > Incident Queue or view your To Do queue.
2. Select an incident record.
3. Click Apply Template. The Select Incident Template wizard opens.
4. Double-click the template that you want to apply to the selected incident. You are returned to the selected incident record and the fields are automatically filled in with the values set in the template.
5. Modify other fields, as needed.
6. Click Save & Exit.
   Note: Users authorized to use this template can also modify the template to meet their needs.

Access Incident Management views

Applies to User Roles: Incident Analyst, Incident Coordinator, Incident Manager

Incident Management views contained in the Favorites and Dashboards navigation pane enable you to easily and quickly access specific types of records. When the database changes, the dashboard contents change to reflect current activity.

To view your favorites, click Favorites and Dashboards > Incident Management. Service Manager provides the following default Incident Management views:

• (1) Monitor OLA-UC Incident - Breached
• (2) Monitor OLA-UC Incident - Breach within 1 hour
• (3) Monitor OLA-UC Incident - Breach within 4 hours
• (4) Monitor OLA-UC Incident - Breach within 1 day
• All Open Incidents
• Incidents by Assignment Group
• Open Incidents Assigned to Me
• Open Incidents I Own

Note: The Monitor OLA-UC breached views contain incident records that measure the performance of individual support groups and applicable vendors. The records that are close to breaching an agreement or that already have breached an agreement can be seen in these views.

Relate a record to an incident record

Applies to User Roles: Incident Analyst, Incident Coordinator, Incident Manager

As part of incident processing, you can relate or associate an existing interaction, incident, change, quote, or problem to an incident. Use related records to associate an incident with any applicable interactions, changes, quotes, or problems so that status changes or updates that you make will also be made to associated records.

To relate a record to an incident record:

1. Click Incident Management > Incident Queue or view your To Do queue.
2. Select a target record.
3. Click More or the More Actions icon for the detail record.
4. Click Related, and then choose one of the following:
   • Interactions > Associate
   • Incidents > Associate
   • Changes > Associate
   • Quotes > Associate
   • Problems > Associate
5. When the Associating Records dialog box opens, type the ID number of the record.
6. You can also use Search in the Associating Records dialog box to locate the applicable ID number.
7. Click OK.

Update an incident

Applies to User Roles: Incident Analyst, Incident Coordinator, Incident Manager

Sometimes you need to update an existing incident record for reasons, such as reassigning the incident to another group or changing the priority of the incident record. When you update the incident record, you can also include helpful information in the Update field of the Activities section.

To update an incident:

1. Click Incident Management > Search Incidents.
2. Use search or advanced search to find one or more records.
3. Select a record to display it.
4. Make any necessary changes. For example, if you want to reassign the incident record to another group:
   • Clear the assignment group in the Assignment Group field, and then click Fill. A list of assignment groups is displayed.
   • Select the new assignment group from the list.
5. Open the Activities section to do the following:
   • Add notes in the Update field with the reason why the incident has been updated or to add other helpful information.
   • If necessary, click the New Update Type list to categorize the activity update.
6. When you are finished with your updates, click Save & Exit.

Note: When you view an existing incident, shaded fields are read-only fields. Incident Management populates these fields from information stored in associated records. You can update the associated record to increase the amount of information in this incident record.

Resolve an incident

Applies to User Roles: Incident Analyst, Incident Coordinator, Incident Manager

When you find an existing solution that resolves an incident, you can attach the solution to the incident record and close the record. You can also save the resolution as a candidate for the knowledgebase.

To resolve an incident:

1. Click Incident Management > Search Incidents.
2. Use search or advanced search to find one or more records.
3. Double-click a record to display it in the Incident form.
   
4. Document the solution:
   • If the solution or workaround is from a knowledgebase document, click Use Solution to add the solution to the Solution field of the incident record. The Use Solution button only appears if the selected knowledgebase record or document contains a solution or workaround.
     
     Note: If the knowledge document is a working copy of a published document, no Use Solution display option appears.
   • If the solution or workaround is from a related record, type the solution in the Solution field on the Incident section.
5. Select the Activities section and do the following:
   1. In the New Update Type field list, select an update type.
   2. In the New Update field, type a note to explain how you resolved the incident.
6. If the resolution should be saved to the Service Manager Knowledge Database, check Knowledge Candidate.
7. Click Fill in the Closure Code field to select a closure code.
8. Click Close Incident. The status changes to Resolved.
9. Update or accept the specified outage start and end times.
10. Click Save & Exit.

Access Incident Management reports

The Reporting tool in Service Manager provides a number of out-of-box reports on the incident data in your system. You can view these reports through a dashboard named Incident Overview (Global). You can also create your own dashboards to display other reports of your interest.

To access Incident Management reports, follow these steps:

1. Click Incident Management > Incident Overview.

   By default, the Incident Overview (Global) dashboard is displayed.

2. View the reports on the dashboard. For descriptions of these reports, see Report descriptions and usage.

3. Add your own dashboards as needed. For details, see Update a dashboard.

   Your custom dashboards are added to the dashboard list on the toolbar of the dashboard page.

   Tip You can click Export to export the reports on a dashboard to PDF format.

4. Click the Open dashboard settings icon on a dashboard to set its properties, or click the Set as Default Dashboard button to set it as your default one.

Close multiple incident records

Applies to User Roles: System Administrator

You can close multiple incident records or a set of incident records using mass close. For example, you may want to close multiple incident records that have been rejected.

To close multiple incident records:

1. Click Incident Management > Search Incidents.
2. Use search or advanced search to find one or more records. Select the View list of incident records you want to close. For example, select Rejected Incidents to close multiple incident records that have been rejected.
3. Using the scroll bar and the ctrl key, click the individual records that you want to include in the mass close. Each record you select remains highlighted.
4. Click Mass Close. The Mass Close Incidents form opens.
5. Provide resolution information in the following fields:
   • Fix Type: select permanent or temporary.
   • If the service delivery units were unable to fix the issue, select SDU unable to fix.
   • Click Fill in the Resolution Code field to generate a record list of possible resolutions and choose one.
   • Click Fill in the Resolution Analysis Code field and choose one.
   • Click Next.
   • Type an explanation in the Solution field.
6. Click Finish. The mass close process starts, and then displays each incident number as it is closed. A message also states that related interactions will be processed normally.