Handling tickets dynamically with Smart Recorder

With the Smart Recorder, you can create incidents, work orders, and service requests, and manage all needed information on the fly. When you receive a call from a customer, you can immediately identify the people, assets, tickets, services, outages, and knowledge articles related to the current issue.

See the following video for a quick introduction to the Smart Recorder:

https://youtu.be/FsFP6WmG_PA

Before you begin

• Before you use the Smart Recorder to initiate a ticket, an administrator must configure it to to exclude customer and contact names from ticket title and description. For more information, see Configuring Smart Recorder to exclude customer and contact names from ticket title and description .
• Some values such as the Profile Status are populated with default values from the People form. To update or delete a customer profile, you must do so from the People form in BMC Helix ITSM. For more information, see Synchronizing people information for BMC Helix ITSM . 
  

• Smart Recorder returns a maximum of 20 matching people, assets, or templates from a search. If you cannot find a customer, try an alternate search method. For example, if you cannot locate the customer by name, try searching by the customer's email, login ID, or corporate ID. 

  If no matching customer is found, service desk agents with Contact People Admin or Contact People User permissions can create a new customer profile from the universal client. For more information, see Creating a new customer profile from Smart Recorder.

To gather information and initiate a ticket with Smart Recorder

When you open the Smart Recorder first time, the guidance text prompts you on  how to begin.

1. Beginning with the @ symbol, start identifying a customer by name, email, corporate ID, or login ID. The Smart Recorder searches for matching People records. 

   When the Smart Recorder searches for people, assets, and templates, the search might be case-sensitive, depending on settings defined by your administrator. For example, a case-sensitive search for Bob will return records that start with "Bob," but not records that start with "bob."

   Select the customer from the list of possible matches.

2. When the customer is matched, the customer preview area populates with the customer's contact information.  Under the customer's contact information, you can also see the existing open tickets that involve the current customer or asset, as well as the Service Rating and Escalations in Last Month.    

   When you select a customer name, the customer name is automatically included in the customer field of the ticket. Additionally, depending on the configuration, the name is either included in or excluded from the ticket title and description.
   

3. (Optional) Identify additional people by using the @ symbol again.

   When you select additional people by using the @ symbol, the first person you added becomes the customer and the second person becomes the contact. Using the menu next to each person's name, be sure to identify one person as the customer, and the others as contacts or persons mentioned in the issue.

   When you select contact names, the contact names are automatically included in the contact fields of the ticket. Additionally, depending on the configuration, the names are either included in or excluded from the ticket title and description.
   To set the second user as customer in Smart Recorder, the administrator must configure the smartRecorderSetSecondPersonAsCustomer parameter in Centralized configuration.   

4. Start describing the issue by entering an issue type, term, or phrase, and the system searches for suggested resources. Use the keyword search symbols to identify assets and templates.

   The asset you identify with @assetName becomes the Affected Asset on an incident ticket. If you reference a service, the  system searches for related services — cross-referenced with previously  referenced people, locations, issues, or  assets.
   If BMC Cognitive Service Management is configured, categories are auto-populated as you enter the text while describing the issue. 
   

5. (Optional) Select, preview, and use suggested resources such as, existing ticket templates, knowledge articles, similar tickets, and outages.

   On the universal client and iPads, suggested resources appear on the right side of the screen. On Android tablets, tap the expand icon () to show suggested resources. 
   On phones, tap one of the icons to view templates (), or similar tickets, recommended knowledge articles, and outages () . 

   Only one template can be applied at a time. 

   (Universal client and Android devices) If you click Full Details to open the previewed resource in full screen mode, the unsaved ticket will be lost.

   Retired articles are not listed under Recommended Knowledge. You can search for Retired articles only through the global search or advanced search using the Search for knowledge resources option. 

6. (Optional, universal client) Filter the suggested resources by clicking the menu (three dots symbol).
   
   

7. (Optional) Pin knowledge articles to the ticket by tapping or clicking the circle in front of each article.
8. ( Optional, for incidents only ) Save tickets to be used for resolving the ticket by selecting Save As Resource.
9. (Optional, for incidents only) Mark the current ticket as a duplicate of an existing ticket by selecting Mark as Duplicate Issue. The tickets become linked and are resolved similarly.
10. (Optional) You can search for a template or a Digital Workplace Catalog by using '!<your text>'. Select a template or a catalog from the suggested resources.
11. Create the ticket as an incident or work order or submit a service request. If the PWA screens have been enabled, the PWA screen for incident or work order is displayed in the edit mode. 
12. Make sure that all required fields are filled in.
    
13. Save the ticket.

Smart Recorder keyword search symbols

To help the Smart Recorder recognize keywords on which it will run searches, you need to type a special character in front of the keyword. Smart Recorder keyword searches might be case-sensitive, depending on settings defined by your administrator . A maximum of 20 matching records is returned.

To create a new customer profile from Smart Recorder

When using Smart Recorder in the universal client, if the "@ person" search does not return a matching customer profile, and you have Contact People Admin permission, you can create a new customer profile. You provide the most essential information, such as the customer's name, location, contact information, login ID, and corporate ID, and the record is stored in the CTM:People form (People form) in BMC Helix ITSM.

Some values (such as the Profile Status) are not visible from Smart IT but are populated with default values in the People form. For example, when you create a new customer profile from Smart Recorder, it is stored with a profile status of Proposed. To update or delete a customer profile, you must do so from the People form in BMC Helix ITSM.

Since Smart Recorder returns a maximum of 20 matching customers from a search, before creating a new customer, try an alternate search method to locate the customer. For example, if you could not find the customer by name, try searching by the customer's email, login ID, or corporate ID.

Smart IT checks for duplicate records based on the login ID. If you try to create a new customer with the same login ID as an existing customer, Smart IT displays an error message. 

1. Log on to the universal client.
2. In Smart Recorder, look up existing customer records by entering the @ symbol followed by a name, email, login ID, or corporate ID.
3. If no matching records are found, click Create New Customer.
   This link appears for users with any of the following permissions: Contact People User (minimum requirement), Contact People Admin, Contact Organization Admin, or Contact Support Admin. 
4. Complete the required fields and save the profile.
   The new customer profile is added as a record in the People form.

Example: Creating a ticket from the Smart Recorder

In this scenario, you see how a first level service desk agent uses the Smart Recorder to create an incident ticket.

1. Greg Johnson, the Director of HR, gets the Blue Screen of Death after rebooting his laptop. He calls the Service Desk and Jenny Tennyson, a Level 1 Service Agent, receives his call. 
2. As she answers the call, Jenny clicks Smart Recorder in the Smart IT tool bar open the Smart Recorder. 
3. Jenny clicks or taps in the Smart Recorder text field and types the "at" symbol (@) followed by Greg’s name. As she continues to type, the system suggests matching customer names. 
   As soon as the Smart Recorder detects the @ character, it begins searching the Foundation data for matching records and returns suggestions for Jenny to select.
4. Jenny selects Greg’s name from the list of suggestions and the system displays his customer profile. 
   Greg's profile information is now captured in the Smart Recorder. Later, when Jenny applies an incident template to create a ticket, the Smart Recorder will automatically pull Greg's name, location, organization information, and so on, into the ticket.
5. From the list of assigned assets, Jenny clicks or taps the circle beside the entry for Greg’s laptop. The system displays a thumbtack symbol and adds the asset to the Smart Recorder.
6. As Greg describes his problem, Jenny types the description into the Smart Recorder.

7. Smart Recorder evaluates what Jenny types and suggests templates and similar tickets and knowledge articles that she can use to create the ticket and resolve it. Also, Smart Recorder with BMC Cognitive Service Management applies categories, automatically.

8. Jenny selects one of the suggested incident templates and clicks or taps Create Ticket.
   If the system could not match a template with keywords that Jenny typed in Smart Recorder, Jenny could still create the ticket using Smart Recorder. By clicking or tapping Create Ticket , the system asks Jenny to confirm the type of ticket to create. When she selects Create Incident, the screen transforms into the incident detail view. Any information that Jenny had already entered in Smart Recorder would be preserved in the incident detail view. Jenny could still use any of the resources suggested by the system to resolve the issue and can continue to create the incident ticket as described in this use case. Smart Recorder takes all of the information that Jenny entered and moves it to an incident form along with information from the template that she selected.

9. Smart IT displays the incident request in draft mode. Jenny reviews the details to confirm that they are correct, then clicks Confirm + Save or taps Submit.

   If Jenny needs to review the information in an incident ticket after she creates it, or if she must add work notes, or update the status; she can open the ticket from the Ticket Console and work on it from there.

The following graphic demonstrates how to use Smart Recorder to create an incident: