Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
This objective deals with Service Manager incidents, problems, and knowledge articles. This
includes how to configure priorities for incidents and problems, how priority relates to resolu-
tion time, how to create incidents manually, how to have incidents automatically created
using email messages sent to the service desk, and how to resolve incidents by resolving
problems.
This section covers the following topics:
■
Understanding problems and incidents
■
Managing incidents
■
Managing problems
■
Creating knowledge articles
A problem in Service Manager is a record that groups incidents that share a common cause.
Addressing the cause and solving the problem means that the incidents that are associated
with the problem also are resolved. For example, different users contact the service desk to
lodge the following tickets:
■
Oksana is unable to sign on to her computer.
■
Rooslan is unable to browse the Internet.
■
Kasia is unable to print.
These separate issues may have a common cause; such as the failure of the hardware
switch that each user's computer uses to connect to the network. Replacing the failed switch
will resolve each of these separate incident tickets.
IT professionals that work on the help desk constantly create and resolve Service Manager
incidents as a way of tracking their daily activity. Someone in the accounting department
may ring the service desk, reporting an issue that they are having. The IT professional on the
service desk instructs the caller to restart their computer, and the issue is resolved. During this
process the IT professional creates an incident related to the issue, and if the issue is resolved
by the restart, closes the incident. Incident templates allow you to pre-populate certain fields
for a specific type of incident.
