Incident prioritization

When configuring BMC Service Desk, the system administrator assigns numerical weights to each Impact category and each Urgency level.

When the person creating the incident ticket selects the Impact and the Urgency level for an incident, Incident Management adds the numerical weights together to calculate the Priority, such as Critical.

For example, consider the following system, which is configured as described below:

• The Impact category of Significant / Large is configured with a weight value of 5.
• The Impact category of Minor / Localized is configured with a weight value 1.
• The Urgency level of "Critical" is configured with a weight value of 20.
• The Priority of "Critical" is assigned to any combination of Impact and Urgency that equals 25.

In this system, any time that an incident ticket is created with an Impact of Significant / Large and an Urgency of Critical, the system automatically assigns the Priority of Critical, because the combined weight of Impact and Urgency equals 25. If, however, an incident ticket is created with an Impact of Minor / Localized and an Urgency of Critical, the Priority is not set to Critical, because the combined value of Impact and Urgency is 21. In this case, the Priority assigned to the incident depends on how the administrator configured the system to assign a Priority based on a calculated value of 21.

The Incident Prioritization form displays the prioritization formulas. A complete set of global prioritization formulas is installed with Incident Management.

To configure incident prioritization

1. From the Application Administration Console, click the Custom Configuration tab.
2. From the Application Settings list, choose Incident Management > Advanced Options > Priority and Weight Ranges - Prioritization, and then click Open.
   The Incident Prioritization form appears.

3. To modify a global prioritization formula, search for the appropriate prioritization, and then open it.
   
   Example of incident prioritization

   Note

   If you are creating new prioritization formulas for a specific company, you must first read this entire section, starting with Incident priority and weight ranges.

4. To create a new prioritization formula for a specific company, select the company to which this prioritization applies.
5. As appropriate, select or reselect the impact level from the Impact list.
   The value of the Impact Weight field is updated to the current value from the Configure Incident Impact form.
6. As appropriate, select or reselect the urgency level from the Urgency list.
   The value of the Urgency Weight field is updated to the current value from the Configure Incident Urgency form.
7. In the Description field, you can enter a descriptive note.
8. Click Save.
9. Repeat steps 3 through 8 for each prioritization formula that contains a changed impact weight or changed urgency weight.