James Ainsworth

Hi Tina, In the next Service Manager update (3.23) there will be a new Service Manager BPM operation for "Suspend and Wait for Closure Category". This will not make the selection of the closure category mandatory, but it will prevent the workflow from continuing until the Closure Category has been provided. I know that this may not fulfil exactly what you are looking for but you may find that it helps. Until a mandatory option is available you may also consider a check in the BPM once the request has been closed to see if the closure category has been populated and if not take it from closed back to resolved and notify the request owner or assign them a task to set it.

I agree that information about how you are doing on the response and resolution timers are needed, but also optional for those that don't wish to publish it. One thing that I want to consider when this is added is how to best display this to a customer/user. We could start simple and just show the target times as a support person would see it. However, when we start to take the on-hold option into consideration, the customer may also see these times change and I think it would be important for the customer to understand why it has changed. Throw in operational hours, something that everyone on the desk may understand but an end user may not know anything about and you get the confusion of why the 3 day fix is set to be completed in 5 days. Longer term plans are to extend the Heads Up display in the portals to help represent the targets in a more visual way.

Hi Tina, As far as I am aware, the enforcing of the closure category is not currently available in Service Manager. I will see what I can find out about the plans for introducing this. Regards, James

Hi Ben, As Trevor suggests this is something that is commonly discussed. We do have some plans for introducing some functionality help with the status updates between linked requests but this is not currently scheduled. Would there be concerns with the automatic resolving or closing of requests when some of these may have outstanding activities or requirements within a BPM Workflow that still need to be completed? The other consideration is that some requests may be linked for reasons other than just being something that will be fixed when the parent is closed. There is also the risk factor of mistakenly resolving one type of request that in turn resolves all the linked requests which may send out resolution confirmations for something that isn't actually fixed or prematurely stop resolution timers (speaking from a personal experience). What we do currently have is a BPM Automated task to update the timeline of the linked requests. This has some great options such as selecting the linked request types that you want to update. For example if you are working on a problem record that has both incidents and changes linked, you can set it to update the incidents only. Providing updates to the requests, rather than closing them, give the owner of the updated requests the opportunity to communicate to customers or fulfil any remaining tasks or BPM requirements.

You should be able to perform many actions such as setting the status as part of the BPM workflow that is associated to the request once it has been raised from the routing rules. You can use the condition node in your BPM workflow to check the source (email) and other details that may lead to other BPM Nodes that sets the appropriate information that you need. We are looking at other options that can be applied as part of the routing rules, but until this is available you may find that the BPM Workflows facilitates some of this.

Hi Martyn, This may help you in some of your scenarios. As of the Service Manager 2.22 update, there is a now a "Wait for Off Hold" BPM Automated Task option. When setting your automated task if you select the Scope labelled "Entity", then the Type as "Suspend", you will then see under the Task option the task "Wait for Off Hold"

Something that you can try is when setting up the Human Task in BPM, assign it to the team that manages those requests instead of assigning to an individual. As a request is passed around, provided someone else hasn't accepted the task, the task will be available for any member of that team to accept and complete. At any point if the task has already been assigned to an individual either the assignee or the owner can reassign it back to the team. Also, when setting up the Human Task in BPM you can make sure that the owner of the task (not assignee) is set to a team lead or line manager to give them that option to reassign any of these tasks that have been assigned or accepted by an individual.

Hi Kelvin, At the moment you must be either the owner or the assignee of a task in order to reassign it. There isn't a particular permission or right that can be applied to override this. I'll do some investigation to see if there are any plans to extend this functionality.

Hi Nasim, One of the features we have spoken about in the past is the ability to hide or show the different action icons on each request based on the BPM process or possibly by setting some conditions. For example, hide the resolution option completely until you are either at a certain point in the process or certain conditions on the request have been met (like being assigned). This is not in our current short term plans but I would be interested to here if you and other customers would find this useful. Regards, James

Hi Kelvin, If a priority is changed automatically through the Service Level escalations, you can at the same time include notifications and adding to boards. The manual changing of a priority doesn't currently trigger any events to allow for a notification or other action to be applied. You may have noticed that the name of the icon where the priority is manually changed is labelled "Escalate" on the tool tip when you hover over it. The reason for this is that we plan on extending this area to include more options to support the manual escalation of requests by including options for both hierarchical and functional escalations. Possibly this is what you are looking for?

Hi Ben, Document Manager is a separate app that you would need to install. This app is currently free for existing customers and under our 'Priced for life' policy, existing customers will be protected if it does become a chargeable app in the future. Document Manager is a fantastic app. I'm sure that you will quickly see that this extends way beyond just being a place for knowledge documents. It is also great on the mobile app for accessing your documents on the go. Have a look at some of our videos that describe some of the features of Document Manager. Creating and Editing Documents in Document Manager Document Manager Collections Mobile Documents Creating Document Libraries Uploading, Sharing, and Publishing Documents

Hi Ben, The Service Manager 2.22.x update has a feature called Request Catalogs. This allows you to configure the use of more than one Progressive Capture per service or share a single progressive capture between multiple Services. Prior to the 2.22 update you could only configure a single progressive capture for all services from the portals. The update would have taken the name of the progressive capture that you configured in your settings as your default progressive capture. Information and a link to a video describing how to set up and use the Request Catalogs can be seen here. Let us know if this helps with setting up your progressive capture scripts or if you have any questions. Regards, James

Hi Nasim, Thanks for your post. There are two actions that you can currently do when you select multiple requests in the request list. These are assign and add to a board. We have considered adding more multi-select options in the request list. Resolving multiple requests is an interesting challenge. If you had 10 requests selected in the request list, each of these may be running different workflows or be in different stages of the same workflow. Some requests may be waiting for more information, or there are outstanding activities that need to be done. We would need to make sure that the resolving of a request from the list does not override the desired process or workflow. As a result, of the 10 requests selected, you may find only some of them are in a position to be resolved. I'm interested to hear more about this requirement, in particular the ability to resolve multiple requests at the same time. Are there concerns with overriding process?

Hi Andy, In a few places you can see the on-line status of a user which is commonly represented by a green dot. One of the places you can see this is if you go to a workspace and click on the "Members" tab, you will see that each user has either a green dot or a red circle to indicate if they are on-line or not. There is also a more personalized status that each user can set in their profile. There are many places, including in Service Manager where we have yet to take advantage of these statuses. You are likely to start to see the use of these statuses rolled out in more places over time. Regards, James

Hi Ben, Thanks for your post. The approach for knowledge may depend on the types of articles that you are looking to create. For detailed knowledge you may desire a full document such as PDF. These documents can be added or created using Document Manager. In Document Manager you can create different Knowledge Libraries and share these with the appropriate staff. You can then add documents to these libraries and include search tags and then easily search for this using the Global Search option. The Workspaces are a great way to capture smaller snippets of knowledge. If you create some workspaces that have a focus on a particular topics, as the discussions build in the workspaces, your knowledge will also build. Again, you can search the workspaces for knowledge using the Global Search. Both the Global Search and the filters on the Request List also lets you search for information within existing Requests that may also act as knowledge. Regards, James

Hi Chris, On the timeline of each request the user's picture should be displayed next to their post or comment. By hovering the mouse over their image you should see more details of that user.

Hi Lee, Thanks for your suggestion. This type of feature would required some consideration with the collaborative environment where you may have multiple people updating a request in short succession while they have a conversation in the timeline. In order for this feature to maintain its value, I feel that it would be important that this is accurately displaying the name of the last person that updated the request in the list for all the Service Manager users who may have this currently in their view. At the moment, without either a refresh or moving from one view or filter to another, this will not be updated. Despite having this available at a glance, you may not know if it is up to date unless the list is refreshed. Kind Regards, James

Hi Kelvin, I can confirm that we have identified an issue with the "Wait for New Request Owner" not allowing the BPM to proceed. This is currently with our development team and we will look to provide a fix in one of the upcoming updates.

Hi Andy, The release containing the fix for your issue should now be available in the App Store.

Hi Kelvin, The Views and the criteria have grown over time and they have become a popular feature. With the Charts it nicely extends out the functionality to a personal dashboard. With this in mind we want to extend the use of the Views even further. We are looking to provide an updated version of the Criteria builder and once this has been done you will start to see the use of the Views extended even further. Over the next few months you should start to see these additions appearing. This will include more operands to give you more flexibility with your criteria.

Hi Andy, This issue has been addressed and is currently in our release process. I'll see if I can find out when it will be published to the live environment.

Hi Chris, You have a decision node following the "Get Request Information". This decision node has an option to go "To Second Line" which I'm assuming is that path that you are referring to. If this takes you to the second stage, Facilities, then you could have the "Add Request to Board" task as one of the first nodes of that Facilities stage. Using this automated task you should be able to add the request to the appropriate board and list. There is a also a "Remove Request from Board" Task as well if you have a board that it was previously added to which you now want to remove it from.

Hi Martyn, There is an option on the email action when adding attachments titled "Show Associated Files". This will let you include attachments that are currently associated with the request. However, this will not be in-line attachments. We are currently investigating a new option to enable HTML emails from the email action. Our goal will be to enable more editing options including the ability to add in-line images.

The list provided to select the subscribers of a service is a dynamic list and will only show group types that have been used in the Organisational structure. This is to prevent selecting an option that is not being used, and therefore no subscribers would be added. There is an "Company" option for subscriptions but it requires one of the organisation entries to be of type "Company". This would then include any users belonging to sub-groups of this company.

Hi Kelvin, There is a slight variation between the tasks "Wait for New Request Owner" and the "Wait for Request Owner". The "Wait for Request Owner" is used when the owner has not been assigned and this field is currently blank. This is useful for when a request is first raised against a team and you want the assignment of an support person to be the next step. The "Wait for New Request Owner" is used when the request already has an owner assigned and you need to wait for it to be re-assigned to someone else. This can be used where a request is already assigned to someone but it as reached a stage in the process where someone else needs to manage it, but you don't want to remove the original owner while it is waiting to be re-assigned. As you are using the "Wait for New Request Owner" can you confirm if there is already someone assigned to the request when it reaches this task in the BPM?