Multiple Issues, Request Management - Dependencies

[dchell]

Customer calls and has a request (we are working with HP Service Manager tool) and an incident(or in this case an interaction) is created. One task is dependent on the other - should we create another incident and link the tickets or should we create one incident and assign the task to a technical group and then they pass it to another group.

Does this make sense. I can figure how to do this in the tool - but more interested in the process.

Thanks

[Diarmid]

dchell,

could you speak a little slower for me please?

Are you saying that the caller asked for two things or asked for one thing and reported another or that the request made requires two separate actions or ...?

Are you saying that you regard a request as an "incident" (perhaps because of your software)?

In any event. Back to basics. In service management (ITIL) terms, an incident is an event that has occurred (possibly including the negative of that). You will only want to raise two incident records if two events have occurred.

On the other hand, if you are talking about a request and not incidents, then how you split down the management of a request into component work packages is a matter for your judgement and circumstances. It is not amenable to a correct answer for all. Except, perhaps, to say that tracking something down a daisy chain can be hard work unless your software helps a lot.

You can (and probably should) enshrine this in a policy which can also address whether you bother the user/customer with the details. This last point will answer whether you log things separately or not at the top level because you need to give the user/customer a reference for each if you do it that way.
_________________
"Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope."
William Penn 1644-1718

[dchell]

LOL

Are you saying that you regard a request as an "incident" (perhaps because of your software)?
Yes

and yes, the request that was made requires two separate actions.

We walked through our options thinking it could back OLAs, metrics and reporting - and we still could go either way on it. Thanks for the feedback - I didn't think of it from a user perspective - but I'll take that into consideration as well. Your information was helpful.

-Donna

[UKVIKING]

Donna

Under v2 incident and request were jumbled into the same defintion area for the service desk

one would be dealt differently once the SD has processed the information

NOTE: Until you answer the telephone and speak with the user, you do not know whether they are contacting you about a fault or issues( true incident ) or a a request / issue ( a service requests)

Further revision (v3) does define these differently .... as it should from a processed point of view but until the contact is processed. ya just dont know
_________________
John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)

Change Management is POWER & CONTROL. /....evil laughter

[Mark-OLoughlin]

Hi,

if you want to split out tasks that are required to complete the one request or Incident try reference the different individual tasks to the one service request or Incident record.

If you create multiple incident records for the same thing which one becomes your master record? What ticket reference do you give the user?
_________________
Mark O'Loughlin
ITSM / ITIL Consultant

[ChasingSleep]

Interesting...

We use here the same tool (HP SM) and people used to do exactly the same thing:

1 - Open a Service Request (aka service call)
2 - Open an Incident from the Service request
3 - Send the incident to the appropriate service desk analyst.

When I realised that, the following discussion took place:

Q: Why do you do that?
W: Because we want to be able to open as many incidents as necessary to address the issue.
Q: But why don't you just open an Incident and let it go through the necessary workflow?
W: Because we may have different actions that can be made separately.
Q: So you are talking about service requests and not incidents.
W: Kind of. But the system does not allow us to differentiate.
(...)

That moment I realized I had a lot of work to do...

[Mark-OLoughlin]

Hi,

does the system have the ability to create work orders as opposed to generating the Incident records?

Work orders are used to assign pieces of work that address an incident or service request.
_________________
Mark O'Loughlin
ITSM / ITIL Consultant

[dchell]

Problem Management has tasks in the workflow, but the Service Desk/Incident modules do not. There is a request mgmt module which would take care of it - but until then requests come in as "incidents". I think we are going to create one interaction with 2 different incidents if there are 2 separate issues. The interaction is not closed until both incidents are taken care of. Might not be ideal - but we have to work within the tool.

[ChasingSleep]

This is what happens when one chooses the TOOL before having the PROCESS !!

[inrepose]

I worked in an environment with HP service desk and we used the work order request module, which had approval workflow for service requests. It is such an expensive tool to use when you want to adapt to other service functions. Have you thought of a simple web service portal for service requests? There are lots around and reporting on the data could easily be combined with your incident data from HP SD.
_________________
Robin Fitton.