Configuring service outages and monitoring service health

Service outages might affect work in your organization and lead to increased downtime of business services. For example, generating invoices might take longer time. If you provide information about such outages to your users in advance, you can minimize the business impact.  Business users can plan to avoid working at the scheduled downtime or find other alternatives. Sometimes, service outages are not planned but a service might be degraded. 

Before you begin

You must consider the following points before you begin configuring service outage records on Remedyforce Console > Service Outages:

• Profiles that are assigned the service outage permission can create and modify service outage records on Remedyforce Console > Service Outages. Make sure that your profile has the service outage permission. If it is not available, contact your administrator. For more information, see Enabling staff and other users to specify service outages.
• You can view, create, and modify service outage records from Remedyforce Console > Service Outages. 
  
• You can perform the following actions on Remedyforce Console > Service Outages for service outage records:
  
  • Pin a view
  • Display multiple views
  • Sort multiple columns
  • Filter multiple columns
  • Add or remove fields in the service outage list view
• As the Service Outage creation form does not have a fieldset, you cannot add or remove any fields from it.

To create a service outage

Use case: Emailing and messaging service will not be available over the weekend due to a maintenance activity. You want to create a service outage for the email service so that all employees can plan their work accordingly.

Perform the following steps to create a service outage:

1. Navigate to Remedyforce Console > Service Outage.
2. Click New.

3. Fill in the following information on the service outage form:
   
   
   

   Field	Description
   Service Outage Details section
   Name	The name of a service record is automatically generated when you save the record. If you want to give a name, consider the following points: You must give an alphanumeric name. A service outage name consisting of numbers only is not supported. Two outage records with the same name can exist only if they have different start and end dates.
   Affected Service	Enter the name of the service that is affected by the outage. Alternatively, click Search and select the service. This window displays CIs of the Business Service class only.
   Description	Enter the description of the service outage, such as the reasons for creating the blackout period or planning the maintenance.
   Blackout period. Do not allow any changes to be scheduled during this period.	Select this check box if you want to prevent change requests from being created between the outage start and end dates. If any open change requests exist during the blackout period specified by the Start Date and End Date fields, you cannot save the record.
   Outage Status	Select the status of the service outage. Degraded—The service has degraded performance, however, the service is available. Disrupted—There is a total outage on the service, making it unavailable to users. Maintenance—The outage is planned for system maintenance, such as installation of patches or code deployment. This field is mandatory only when you select any Affected Service and do not select the Blackout period check box. Service outage records can also be created to inform when a service has a degraded performance or has stopped working. In this case, you can use the outage status value as degraded or disrupted.
   Root Cause	Enter the reason of the service outage if it is known.
   Date and Time Details section
   Start Date	Select the date when the service outage starts.
   Created Date	This field is automatically filled after you save the record.
   Last Modified Date	This field is automatically filled after you save the record.
   End Date	Select the date when the service outage is planned to end.
   Created By	This field is automatically filled after you save the record.
   Display Service Outage section
   Display in Self Service	Select this check box if you want this service outage and its related services to be displayed in Service Health in Self Service.

4. Click Save. 
   

To clone a service outage

Use case: You created a service outage for emailing and messaging services. Another service outage is planned for the same service after a month. Instead of filling all the fields, you can clone the existing service outage and modify the required details. 

1. Navigate to Remedyforce Console > Service Outage.
2. In the Service Outages list view, click the service outage that you want to copy.
3. From the Actions menu, click Clone.
   
   A copy of the service outage is opened in a new Service Outage form.
4. In the new Service Outage form, make the required modifications.
5. Click Save.

To delete a service outage

You can delete a service outage that is no longer available in your company. When you delete a service outage, it is not be seen in the change schedule as well in Service Health. Although the service outage is deleted, services associated with it might be seen in Service Health because they might be associated with other service outages.

1. Navigate to Remedyforce Console > Service Outage.
2. In the Service Outages list view, select the required service outage and click Delete.

To deactivate a service outage

If you want to allow change managers to create change requests during a service outage, you can deactivate the corresponding service outage. 

1. Navigate to Remedyforce Console > Service Outage.
2. In the Service Outages list view, click the required service outage. 
3. On the service outage form, select Inactive.
   
   
4. Click Save.

To add actions to a service outage

You can perform the following actions on a service outage.

1. Navigate to Remedyforce Console > Service Outage.
2. In the Service Outages list view, select the required service outage.

3. On the service outage form, click Actions and perform the following actions:
   
   

   Action	Goal	Description/Instructions
   Add Note	To add notes to a record.	In the Add Note window, perform the following actions: Enter the note details. Click Add.
   New Action	To add user-defined or system-defined actions to a record.	In the Actions window, perform the following steps: Select the action that you want to add to the record. A new browser window is displayed. Enter the description and additional notes.You can also select the date and time and Client ID. Click Save. Note: By default, only Notes and Service Health Update are available as out-of-the-box actions to be added to a service outage.
   View Action History	To view the history of all actions that are performed on a record.	In the Service Outage History window, view the list of actions that are performed for the record.
   Clone	To clone a service outage.	See To clone a service outage.

4. Click Save.
   
   

Viewing the health of a service

The Remedyforce Service Health tab displays the health of each business service. The displayed services are linked to a client or a client's account. 

The following video (2:40) provides an overview of BMC Remedyforce Service Health.

https://youtu.be/rk6OjJs1eeo

Before you begin

Before viewing the health of a service, you must consider the following points:

• You must first create a service outage before you can view it in Service Health. 
• System administrators, change managers, or staff members can view the health of each business service at a glance on the Remedyforce Service Health tab.
• The auto-refresh feature is not available for service health. If you want to see the latest status of the services, you must reload the Service Health page.
• If you are not able to see services on the Remedyforce Service Health tab, the services might not be linked to a client or a client’s account. For this, contact your system administrator.

Tabs displayed on Remedyforce Service Health 

The following tabs are displayed: