Impact values

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 impact values, which you configure here, map the four levels of impact to numerical impact weights. You can set the impact weight for each of the four levels of impact. A complete set of global values are installed with Incident Management.

To configure impact values

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 - Impact Values, and then click Open.
   The Incident Impact form appears.

3. To modify a global impact value, search for the impact value, and then open it.
   
   Example of an incident impact value
   

   Note

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

4. To create a new value for a specific company perform the following tasks.
   1. Select the company to which this impact value applies.
   2. Select the appropriate impact. For example, if the incident is causing major disruptions to the infrastructure for your entire company you might select 1-Extensive/Widespread. If the incident is affecting one person and that person is still able to work, you might select 4-Minor/Localized.
5. Type or select the appropriate impact weight. If the Impact is 1-Extensive/Widespread, you will give it a higher impact number than if the Impact is 4-Minor/Localized.
6. In the Description field, you can enter a descriptive note.
7. Click Save.