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 service request can be resolved without escalating it to an incident, the Service Desk Agent can close the interaction record.
• If the service request cannot be resolved without escalating it to an incident, the Service Desk Agent searches for existing incidents that affect the same component or one of the parent assets of that component.
  • If an existing incident is found, the Service Desk Agent can associate the current interaction with the existing incident record.
  • If an existing incident record is not found, the Service Desk Agent can register a new incident based on the Service Desk interaction. Service Manager copies information from the interaction record into the newly created incident record.

For example, if a user 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. Because the issue cannot be resolved immediately, the Service Desk Agent opens an incident, 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 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 close the interaction. If the user still cannot print, the Service Desk Agent may reopen the related incident record.

Service Desk interaction list

The Service Desk interaction list provides general information about interaction records.

Column name	Description
Status	The status of the interaction record.
Description	A brief description of the reported interaction.
Interaction ID	The interaction record number.
Impact	The level of impact this issue has on the company and its end users. The impact can be classified as one of the following values: 1–Enterprise 2–Site/Department 3–Multiple Users 4–User
Urgency	The importance of the service request to the recipient. The urgency can be classified as one of the following values. The default value is 4–Low. 1–Critical (Severe business disruption) The business unit or subunit is unable to operate; a critical system component has failed or is severely impaired. 2–High (Major business disruption) A critical user or user group is unable to operate, or the business unit experiences a significant reduction in system performance. 3–Average (Minor business disruption) A single user is unable to operate with no available work around. 4–Low (Minor disruption) A single user or user group is experiencing incidents, but a workaround is available.
Priority	The priority value is calculated by using the initial impact and urgency values.

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 or incident record. For example, an interaction record that describes an email incident requires different work than an interaction record regarding a search for equipment for a new employee.

The Service Desk and Incident Management applications each provide the same list of categories from which to choose. When an interaction is escalated to an incident, the category in the new incident record is the same as the category assigned to the associated interaction record. The category you assign to a record determines the following information:

• Who is responsible for resolving a call report or incident record (the default assignment group)
• Which information you need to open the interaction record or incident record
• Which solutions to search for in the Knowledge base
• The applicable Service Level Agreements
• The default severity of the record
• The default priority of the record
• How quickly a record must be resolved
• The time interval for escalating a record to a higher alert stage
• Who must be notified as the record is escalated

The processing logic for each category is the same. However, Service Manager may use different record forms for each category. The sections displayed on the forms depend on the assigned category because each category has different information requirements. For example, the information that is required to fix a software error is different from the information that is required to solve an equipment failure.

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 an Area and Subarea.

Category	Use
Complaint	Interactions in which the user reports less than satisfactory service or performance. This is a Hybrid mode category, that is created by using your existing Classic mode category when you upgrade to Service Manager Hybrid.
Complaint codeless	Interactions in which the user reports less than satisfactory service or performance.
Compliment	Interactions that report exemplary service or performance.
Incident	Interactions that are opened specifically to start an incident management process. This is a Hybrid mode category, that is created by using your existing Classic mode category when you upgrade to Service Manager Hybrid.
Incident codeless	Interactions that are opened specifically to start an incident management process.
Problem Codeless	Interactions that are opened specifically to start the problem management process.
Request for Administration	Interactions that are opened specifically to request assistance from a system administrator, such as a password resets or rights to access a specific area.
Request for Change	Interactions that are opened specifically to start a change process. This is a Hybrid mode category, that is created by using your existing Classic mode category when you upgrade to Service Manager Hybrid.
Request for Change codeless	Interactions that are opened specifically to start a change process.
Request for Information	Call or incidents that request information only. This is a Hybrid mode category, that is created by using your existing Classic mode category when you upgrade to Service Manager Hybrid.
Request for Information codeless	Call or incidents that request information only.
Service catalog codeless	Interactions that are requests for items from the service catalog.
Service request	Interactions that are opened specifically to start the request management process.

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.

Notify By setting	Description
None	The interaction record closes.
Email	Service Manager sends an email to the contact who is listed in the interaction record to inform the contact that the related record is closed. Service Manager then closes the interaction record.
Telephone	Notification by telephone adds a required action to the interaction record. The required action explains why the customer needs to be called back. This setting also prevents the interaction record from being closed until all required actions are complete.

Affected CI field in Service Desk

The information that is available to populate the Affected CI field depends on the service recipient.

For example, if the recipient has individual or departmental subscriptions, a list of CIs associated with those subscriptions opens. If the recipient does not have any subscriptions and is a self-service user, no list is generated. However, if a recipient does not have any subscriptions and is not a self-service user, the following behavior occurs:

• If an interaction recipient is specified, a list of the CIs assigned to that recipient opens.
• If a location is specified, a list of the CIs assigned to that location opens.
• If a company is specified in a multi-company system, a list of the CIs assigned to that company opens.
• If a device type is specified, a list of the CIs of that type opens.

Required actions

The Required Actions function enables you to track the steps that are necessary to resolve an interaction record. You can view any required actions for an interaction record by opening the Required Actions section of the interaction form. The Required Actions section is available only for interaction records that have required actions. You can add a required action to existing interaction records that have related incident records only. You cannot close an interaction record that is associated to incomplete required actions.

For example, if you use the Full Help Desk model to close an interaction and the Notify By field is set to "telephone" a required action is automatically created and must be closed before the interaction can be closed. Therefore, the Service Desk Agent is required to call the customer and verify the issue is fixed, close the required action, and then close the interaction.