20.16.01 enhancements

• Submit and edit service requests
• View their submitted tickets and service requests
• View their CIs and assets and submit tickets for the CIs and assets
• Copy, close, and reopen submitted tickets and service requests
• Add notes and attachments to tickets and service requests
• View an Activity Timeline for tickets and service requests
  This timeline displays the related notes and attachments in a chronological order.
• View common ticket templates
• Search for knowledge articles, service requests, and common templates
• View broadcasts and knowledge articles
• Chat with a staff member to resolve issues

For more information, see Configuring Self Service on Salesforce1 Mobile App.

If you are upgrading to BMC Remedyforce 20.16.01, you must perform some additional configurations. For more information, see Enabling new features in 20.16.01.

Note: Starting with the Summer 16 release, in the Self Service web portal (Remedyforce Self Service tab), when you copy a ticket, the Resolution field value from the original ticket is no longer copied to the new ticket. This behavior is also applicable when you copy tickets in the Self Service mobile app.

Depending on their assigned permissions, staff members can also perform the following actions in the Service Desk mobile app:

• Link more CIs or assets with a record.
• Edit a CI or asset that is linked to a record.

For more information, see Overview of Service Desk on Salesforce1 Mobile App.

Automated assignment of records to queues

You can configure the automated assignment of records to queues based on specific conditions. Automated assignment of records can be defined based on different conditions, such as category or priority of the records.

For example, you can configure a rule to automate assignment of records with the Hardware category to the Hardware queue.

For more information, see Configuring automated assignment of records to queues.

If you are upgrading to BMC Remedyforce 20.16.01 and are using BMC Remedyforce profiles or custom permission sets to manage permissions for your users, you must manually enable the display of the Queue field on the Suggested Owners & Queue Auto Assignment form. Performing this minimum post-upgrade procedure ensures that your existing functionality is not affected.

Remedyforce Administration > Configure Application > Suggested Owners & Queue Auto Assignment

Note: The Suggested Owners tile has been renamed as Suggested Owners & Queue Auto Assignment.

The following additional changes are also available in the Summer 16 release:

• The Suggested Owners & Queue Auto Assignment list view now includes a new Assigned Queue column.
• The Suggested Owner & Queue Assignment Rules form now includes a new Queue Auto Assignment section.

Automated assignment of records to staff members

You can configure the automated assignment of records to staff members when the records are assigned to specific queues. Records are automatically assigned in a round robin method to specific staff members who are part of the assigned queue.

If your staff members work in multiple shifts to resolve incidents and service requests, you can also configure the automated assignment of records based on business hours. The new Business Hours field, which can now be added to the custom Client form, enables system administrators to assign business hours to staff members. 

For more information, see Configuring automated assignment of records to staff members and Managing clients and staff members.

Remedyforce Administration > Application Settings > Record Assignment > Configure Staff Auto Assignment

Note: The new Configure Staff Auto Assignment button on the Record Assignment tab is displayed only if you select the Enable Queue and User Assignment check box.

System administrators can now enable and configure Smart Suggestions in Self Service 2.0. Smart Suggestions can provide clients with quick-and-easy access to relevant information before submitting a ticket in Self Service. If Smart Suggestions is enabled, the Smart Suggestions pane may display suggestions for knowledge articles, common tickets, broadcasts, and service requests that might be relevant to the issue for which the ticket is created. Users can browse the records available for each record type, and link relevant records to the ticket.

By default, the Smart Suggestions feature for Self Service is enabled in a new installation. In an upgrade, the system administrators must enable and configure Smart Suggestions in Self Service 2.0.

For more information, see Configuring Smart Suggestions for Self Service and Using Smart Suggestions in Self Service to create or edit tickets.

By default, incident matching for Smart Suggestions in the Remedyforce Console is enabled in a new installation, and disabled in an upgrade. Based on the organizational requirements, system administrators can enable incident matching for Smart Suggestions in the Remedyforce Console.

For more information, see Configuring Smart Suggestions for the Remedyforce Console.

Starting with the Summer 16 release, in a new installation of BMC Remedyforce, by default, you can access the change schedule from the View menu of the Remedyforce Console tab and from the Remedyforce CMDB tab toolbar. However, in an upgrade, the system administrator must configure the Console View for Change Schedule for your profile to make the change schedule accessible from the View menu of the Remedyforce Console tab, and from the Remedyforce CMDB tab toolbar.

For more information, see Enabling new features in 20.16.01.

Depending on the organizational requirements, system administrators can now manage the color displayed for a change type in the change schedule as follows:

• Update the default color assigned to the available out-of-the-box change types (such as, Emergency Change, Normal Change, and Standard Change) to a color of choice.
• Assign a color to any custom change type that you have added.

When you assign a custom color to a change type, that color is displayed on the change schedule calendar for the corresponding change type. Staff members can quickly identify the change types displayed on the change schedule based on the color assignment.

For more information, see Assigning a custom color to a change type.

Starting with the Summer 16 release, you can filter specific change requests or releases in the Change Calendar by defining and applying a filter criteria. You can create a maximum of 20 criteria for a filter. The filter criteria that you set up are not saved for future use. If you refresh the page, any existing filter criteria is cleared.

For more information, see Searching for records in the change schedule.

If you are upgrading to BMC Remedyforce 20.16.01 and are using BMC Remedyforce profiles or custom permission sets to manage permissions for your users, you must manually enable the search filter in the Change Schedule.

You can now manage approval requests using SmartViews(Beta). When you click on the Approvals node, the Approval Details window displays the following options:

• Reassign - Select the required approver from the Approver field and click Reassign.
• Approve/Reject - Add an appropriate comment and click Approve or Reject.
• Recall Approval Request - Add an appropriate comment and click Recall Approval Request.

For more information, see SmartViews - BETA.

You can view the lifecycle of an incident or service request record in the form of a stage progression bar using SmartViews(Beta). For more information, see SmartViews - BETA.

If staff members type at least two characters in the Staff or Queue field, a list of maximum 20 records that contain these characters is displayed in an alphabetically sorted order. For the Staff field, the search is performed on the First Name, Last Name, Name, and Username fields. For the Queue field, search is performed on the Label (queue name) field.

Also, if staff members select a queue and then type a value in the Staff field, only staff members who belong to the selected queue are displayed.

Note: Type ahead for the Staff field is also supported if the Staff field is added to any field set other than Assignment Details field set.

The enhanced UI to assign queue and staff to records enables staff members to more easily view and select queue members. In the following windows, a new View Queue Members column has been added:

• Suggested Owners
• Queue
• Change Owner

Staff members can click  in this column to view members of a queue.

The enhanced UI also includes a Search box that enables users to more easily locate specific queues. The search is performed on the Label (queue name) field.

This enhanced UI is available for all modules in the Remedyforce Console.

For information about viewing and selecting queue members for incident records, see Changing incident owner.

You can now upload attachments to a maximum of 25 MB for the following:

• Records (such as incidents, problems, tasks, and so on) from the Remedyforce Console tab.
• Supporting information for managing accounts from the Remedyforce Administration tab.
• Creating incidents by using email messages, or client chat.
• Submitting and viewing tickets and requests, requesting a service, and using Remedyforce Chat from Self Service 2.0.

Depending on your organizational requirements, system administrators can now enable Change Managers to create emergency change requests by overriding conflicting service outages, and create service outages by overriding conflicting change requests. For more information, see Enabling Change Managers to manage emergency change requests and service outages.

For more information, see Creating a change request by applying a template and Creating a change request without a template.

For a service request that must be fulfilled by using CIs or assets, system administrators can configure a criteria to show filtered CIs or assets to staff members. System administrators specify such criteria for each request definition. 

Showing of filtered CIs and assets enables staff members to quickly find the CIs and assets required to fulfill the service request. For this purpose, the Fulfill Request (CMDB) option is added to the Actions menu of service requests in the Remedyforce Console tab. To be able to fulfill CMDB requirements of a service request, service request must be approved and fulfill criteria is configured in Request Definition through which Service Request is created. Only then, the Fulfill Request (CMDB) option is enabled for the service request. For more information, see Configuring the fulfillment of service requests.

When staff members select CIs and assets in the Fulfill Request (CMDB) window, the Multiple Instance Editor window opens. When the staff member click Save, all the CIs and assets displayed in the Multiple Instance Editor window are linked to the service request. For more information, see Fulfilling a service request by assigning a CI or asset. 

If there are up to 20 incidents linked to a broadcast, the broadcast is closed first before closing the incidents. If there are more than 20 linked incidents, the broadcast is closed first and the incidents are closed after some time depending on the number of linked incidents.

Note: If there is any error when closing the broadcast, the state of the broadcast is rolled back to the state it was before closing. If there is an error when closing any linked incident, an error message is added to the corresponding incident's action history.

For more information, see Closing broadcasts.

You can enable alternate keyboard shortcuts for shortcuts that include number keys. For more information, see Keyboard shortcuts in the Remedyforce Console.

Note: If you enable alternate keyboard shortcuts, it will disable the keyboard shortcuts that use number keys for tab navigation in Self Service as these shortcuts use number keys.

Ability to create linked tasks to a record asynchronously

Linked tasks to a record are now created asynchronously when you perform one of the following actions on the corresponding record type:

• apply a template that has multiple linked task templates to any incident, change request, and release record, or
• apply a request definition that has multiple linked task templates to a service request record

The tasks are created in a separate process after the record is saved. It may take some time for the linked tasks to be displayed in the record details, or you may need to reload the record details.