Applying categorization to tickets and resources

In Smart IT, categories help service desk agents to categorize issues. For example, system failure related issues are placed under the failure category, or laptop related issues are categorized under the Product category—Electronics. Though specifying categories is not mandatory, it is recommended that as a service desk agent you specify them in order to sort issues as per the operation or action that is needed to resolve the issue such as repair, install, maintenance, and so on, or as per the product type such as laptop, printer, mobile, and so on. When you specify right categories, the ticket can be assigned to the right resource to resolve it. On the Resources tab of the ticket, when you explicitly search for knowledge articles, by using the advanced search you can filter articles with operational and product category. You can refer articles displayed in the search result, relate your ticket with them, and also resolve tickets. 

Automatic categorization by BMC Helix Cognitive Automation

Smart IT offers the cognitive capability to automatically categorize tickets that you create if Setting up BMC Helix Cognitive Automation is configured on your system.

You can train the cognitive service to provide recommendations for categories that match the description entered by a service desk agent on the tickets. This feature reduces the chances of incorrect assignment of tickets and reduces time to resolve tickets.

BMC Helix Cognitive Automation has the following capabilities:

• The ticket form displays the Recommendations link below the category fields with the Brain icon. When a user enters text in the Summary field and then clicks the Recommendations link, the system automatically displays a relevant category. The following screenshot shows the Recommendations link with the Brain icon:

• In Smart Recorder, when a service desk agent enters text for the user name or company name, the cognitive service automatically populates a relevant category that matches the text. The following screenshot shows automatically populated categories and Recommendations link with the Brain icon:
  
  
  

For example, if you train the cognitive service with the training data so that if a user enters either of the following text in the Summary field related to a broken printer, the ticket is categorized in the Hardware category.

• Printer is broken.
• Printer is not working.

While submitting a ticket if a user enters this text, and clicks on the Recommendations link below the Category field, the category field is automatically populated as Hardware.

To manually categorize tickets

The following table lists the actions taken by the system depending on the method of categorization you choose.

Location company and global categories

Categories that you can access depends on the following:

• Location company (Service provider company)—Location company consists of categories created for the customer's company and the service provider's company. 
  • Customer's company—Categories created by the customer's company. The service desk agent must have access to this company in order to access these categories.
  • Service provider's company—Categories created by the service provider company. You as part of the service provider must have access to these categories.
• Global categories—These categories are generic in nature, and are accessible to Smart IT users who can create and edit tickets. When creating a category, the Administrator can specify Global as the company, and create a category. For example, the administrator creates an operational category with Tier 1—Reset, Tier 2—Password, and Tier 3—Laptop. This category will be available by default under operational category when you create a ticket. 

The following two scenarios will help you understand which categories you can access. The assumptions are:

• You are a service desk agent, and work for Petramco Service Provider.
• A customer issue is assigned to you. Bob Baxter, a customer, belongs to Calbro Services. Bob faces issues with the phone system.
• Categories related to phone system have been defined for Petramco Service Provider. 

Considering the assumptions, we can have two scenarios:

• Scenario 1—You get a customer issue and start to create an incident ticket. When creating the ticket, under Operational Category, you get a list of categories created for Petramco Service Provider and Global categories. You select an appropriate category, and then fill in rest of the ticket details.
• Scenario 2—In another scenario, the assumptions are same, except that Bob has system login issues. Bob's company, Calbro services has defined categories related to login issues. When creating the ticket, under Operational Category, you get a list of categories created for Calbro Services and Global categories. You select an appropriate category, and then fill in remaining ticket details.

Value specified in Incident type list—In case of incident tickets, the value in the Incident type list also decides which categories you can access. When you specify value in the Incident type list, the system filters options under each category depending on the incident type you selected. You can restrict category selection on the basis of incident type from the respective category configuration form.

Categories in templates—When creating tickets there are templates available as per the issue. Incident, work order, change request tickets, and tasks have templates. These templates have categories pre-defined in them. After applying the template, you can modify the values under categories, if needed. For more information, see Ticket Templates.

Using a different company to select categories

Incident and work orders have an additional option Use a different company from <company name> to select categories check box. This option allows you to change the company that drives the choices in the category fields. When creating incident or work order, depending on the customer name that you select, the company name is populated in the Affected Company field. If you want to select another company to select categories, you must edit the Category section of the ticket, select the Use a different company from <company name> to select categories checkbox, and select a different company from the Company list. The categories that you now select are created for the company you have selected. Note that even if you change the company through this option, the company associated with the affected customer does not change.

Categories when creating related tickets and items

When you create related tickets and items from a ticket or resource, along with other key fields, category specified on the ticket is copied to the related ticket or resource.

• The product category and operational category of the existing ticket is copied to the new related ticket. When a work order is created from a different ticket type, such as an incident, the product category is not copied but is populated based on the affected service. The product category from the asset is populated in the ticket created from an asset. 
• The operational category and product category values from incident, work order, problem investigation and known error tickets is copied to the operational category and product category fields of knowledge article metadata.

• When you create related tickets from the existing tickets, the product category and the operational category of the existing tickets is copied to the new related ticket.
•  When a work order is created from a different ticket type, such as an incident, the product category is not copied but is populated based on the affected service.
•  The product category of an asset is populated in the ticket that is created from that asset.