Service Portal - Customers logging incidents instead of requests

[Shamaila.Yousaf]

Apologies if this is a basic question, I am relatively new to Service Manager.

Our Service Portal is due be opened to our users sometime soon, at present we will only be making 2 services available - both of which are incidents.  If our users log an incident call which is in actual fact a request, what would be the best way forward for the Service Desk? 

 

Any advice would be mostly appreciated.

Regards

 

[Gerry]

Hi Shamaila,

I am not sure I understand your question? You have two services, both of which will log an incident and presumably assign to your support team?

Can you expand on this?  

 

Quote

"If our users log an incident call which is in actual fact a request, what would be the best way forward for the Service Desk?"

 

[Shamaila.Yousaf]

Just to clarify, if a call is logged on the portal as an incident by the customer.  How does the Service Desk amend from an incident to a request?

Hope this makes sense.

[Guest Chaz]

@shamaila.yousaf when you say request, I believe you're referring to the 'Service Request' request type? If that's the case, then this was addressed as part of the latest version of Service Manager which was made available in the app store this morning (2.37).

[Shamaila.Yousaf]

Thanks @cchana that is the version we have installed. Apologies but I am not sure what you mean by addressed.

[Steve Giller]

We have Service Requests defined on the system - they appear to have been switched to Draft.
Assuming this is deliberate, then the expectation can only be to treat everything as an incident for the initial deployment phase, and there is neither a need nor an option to change from one to the other.

[Steven Boardman]

Hi @Shamaila Yousaf

I believe Chaz was referring to an issue where the request type for a ticket was incorrectly being set, and this has now been resolved. 

Service Manager provides you with the options on a service by service basis, to configure the Request Catalog options which will be presented to the customers on the portal.  You can decide what request type you want the Request Catalog Item to be raised as (An Incident or a Service Request) this removes the need for the customer to have to make any such decision, they can simply choose to select the assistance they need, and the system will take care of raising this as an Incident, or a Service Request as you have configured it in the Service record > Request configuration section. 

It looks like @DeadMeatGF has indicated that you have Service Request options configured, but these are set to draft which means they will not be visible to the customers on the portal. 

With the required request catalog items defined there should be no need to switch the request types, as they will always be logged based on the configuration choices you have made.  

In my example below i have a Service Request Catalog item defined against my Mac Support service which will allow my customers to make a request to have their Mac deep cleaned, and this will come through as a SR, if i want to offer more catalog options i simply create them under either the Incident or SR tabs on the Services form.

I hope that helps

Steve

[Ralf Peters]

Hi  @steven boardman  think what @shamaila.yousaf was asking was.

if the user has the option to select either an incident or service request catalogue item , when they select the  incident  catalogue item , but in ITIL terms it should have been a service request , what the best  way to convert one to the other ?

Thanks

 

Ralf

[Steven Boardman]

Hi @Ralf Peters

There isn't an option to convert a request type once logged, due to all the differences which may exist (business process aspects most importantly - this drives assignment, notifications, tasks, Service Levels etc).  the idea is that the end user should not care nor be aware of the ITIL type request they are making, they should just be presented with a list of non technical catalog items which have been configured in the backend to raise the relevant type of ticket (Incident or Service Request).  

If the user has chosen the wrong catalog item, then the request type will only be one concern, i suspect the fulfilment Business process will not be correct either, as it will be specific to the catalog item they choose - therefore the only option would be to raise a linked request of the correct type and correct catalog item against the original request. 

Hope that helps

Steve

[Steve Giller]

To clarify - pretty much everyone is correct!

@Shamaila Yousaf was asking how to convert a call logged as an incident to a service request - but only because our Helpdesk management team have decided to launch with just Incidents, and add Service Requests as phase 2. You can't, for two reasons: 1. It "doesn't work that way" as @steven boardman  points out, and 2. we don't have any active services to convert it into!

 

 

[Shamaila.Yousaf]

Thanks all very much for your input & contributions.

@steven boardmanwe found the linked request option useful for this, it allows us to amend the correct type & correct catalogue item against the original request allowing the business process to be fulfilled. 

@DeadMeatGF thanks for your continued support (as well as Neil's) for continually making the configurations for us!