Learning about Incident Management
The primary goal of the incident management process, according to ITIL standards, is "to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible with minimum disruption to the business, thus ensuring that the best achievable levels of availability and service are maintained." BMC Helix ITSM: Service Desk uses automated incident management processes to help IT organizations respond quickly and efficiently to conditions that disrupt critical services.
Incident Management supports the following categories of incident requests:
- Request for incident resolution
- Request for change
- Request for information
You use the following consoles to access the features in Incident Management:
The Incident Management Console
The Incident Management console is the main console for the application. It provides service desk workers with a single point from which they can generate incident requests, monitor the progress of incident requests as they move through their lifecycle, and record work that was performed while solving the incident request.
The Requester Console
From the Requester console, end users can submit incident requests directly to Incident Management.
The Overview Console
Using the Overview console, service desk workers who fulfill several different roles can view incident requests that are assigned to them through Incident Management, and additional work assignments that come to them through other BMC Helix ITSM applications with which Incident Management integrates.
Incident Management process overview
BMC Helix ITSM: Service Desk helps you manage incidents through the following stages:
| Stage | Description |
|---|---|
Incident registration | When users contact the service desk, as a service desk analyst, you register the incident request. You can use the incident templates, which help you register the incident request accurately and consistently. When a user contacts the service desk with an incident request, you first determine the nature of the request. For example:
|
Incident assignment | Administrators configure BMC Helix ITSM: Service Desk so that when you create a ticket, it is automatically assigned to a support group. When you create an incident, if it has a predefined assignment group, it is assigned to that group. Otherwise, the routing rules that Incident Management uses automatically assign the incident request to the most appropriate group when you save the incident request record. Check the Incident Console to see which incidents are assigned to you or to your support group. Service desk managers use the Incident Console to reassign incidents as needed to ensure that critical incidents can be addressed and resolved in a timely manner. |
Incident tracking | After you create a ticket, you can change the details or add new information to it. For example, you can update the ticket status, add Work Info notes, or change the customer and contact information. If you share a knowledge article with the end user, you can save the article to the ticket. Best practice: Keep the information in a ticket up to date. This helps you to make more informed decisions about how to manage the ticket, keeps your personal and group statistics up to date, and notifies the affected customer about the progress of the ticket. |
Incident resolution | When you're ready to resolve an incident, mark the incident as resolved, select the appropriate status reason, and add a resolution note. |
Incident closure | When you resolve the incident request, if you can verify the resolution from the customer, immediately set the request status to Closed. If you cannot verify the resolution from the customer, complete the incident request with the Resolved status, and set the Status Reason field to Customer Follow-up Required. The customer must verify the resolution within a specified time period, or Incident Management automatically moves the incident request status to Closed. The length of this period is configurable. Check with your system administrator to determine how much time your organization specifies. The default setting is 15 days. |
Watch the following video to learn about the basic flow of the Incident Management process.
Disclaimer
Although the concepts and procedures presented in this video are correct, the user interfaces shown are not current.
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Do you want to learn more?
For information about managing tickets, see Managing incident requests.
For information about managing problem investigations and known errors, see Managing problem investigations.
To learn about the roles and permissions required for Incident Management, see Incident Management roles and Incident Management permissions.
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