This documentation supports the 21.3 version of BMC Helix ITSM: Smart IT.

To view an earlier version, select the version from the Product version menu.

Overview of ticket creation

By using Smart IT, you can create tickets to help record and track requests that are created through your help desk. As you work with the ticket, Smart IT suggests related tickets and knowledge articles related to other, similar tickets that can help you quickly resolve the current issue. The social component of ticket tracking also lets you work in real time with colleagues and people who are affected by the ticket to diagnose and resolve them.

After you create an ticket, you can also use Smart IT to keep the ticket information up-to-date by either changing the information that it contains or by adding new details about the work done or the resolution. For more information, see Viewing and updating tickets.

Creation of incidents and work orders with Smart Recorder

Best practice

Using the Smart Recorder is the recommended approach for creating incidents and work orders for everyone in your organization.
Smart Recorder uses a free form text entry field to help you focus on what the customer is saying, instead of filling out fields in a structured form. This way of creating a ticket helps you to capture information in real time, directly from the customer and in their own words. Smart Recorder helps you to create tickets of all kinds more quickly and with greater accuracy. 

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



https://youtu.be/FsFP6WmG_PA

For information about using the Smart Recorder, see Handling tickets dynamically with Smart Recorder.

Creation of a ticket in a quick way by using Smart Recorder

You can create a ticket faster and directly from the Smart Recorder Home page. You no longer need to use the draft screen, click the Confirm+Save button, and use the profile view screen of the ticket. After creating a ticket in this mode, the Smart Recorder home screen is displayed to create another ticket. The ticket ID of the previously created ticket is also displayed on this page. For you to use this feature, in Centralized configuration, your administrator must set QuickTicketCreateEnabled parameter to true.








Integration of Smart Recorder with phone systems

If your help desk phone system integrates with other web tools, you can configure it to start Smart Recorder directly from the phone system UI. In this case, the service desk agent can click a button in the phone system software to create a ticket using the Smart Recorder. If the Smart Recorder does not display customer information it means that the Smart Recorder was able to match more than one person in the system with the caller ID information. If this happens, the service desk agent must enter the customer information manually. The service desk agent can edit any of the information provided by the phone system, if needed. The Smart Recorder can open with the following information from the phone call already completed (depending on how the phone integration is configured):

  • customer information, based on the caller ID.

  • a description of the issue or the request, if one is provided.
  • suggested resources, including templates and outages, if any are found. 

After the Smart Recorder opens with information from the call, the service desk agent continues to create the ticket as described in Handling tickets dynamically with Smart Recorder

The Create New menu for ticket creation

Using Smart IT Universal client, you can also create tickets from the Create New menu. The Create New menu uses a more traditional, forms-based way to create tickets. 

If your organization has opted in for the Progressive Web Application (PWA) feature, you can use screens that are delivered by using the PWA technology. 

For more information about PWA, see Progressive web application development Open link  (Action Request System documentation).

Using the Create New menu, you can create the following items:

  • Incidents
  • Work orders
  • Knowledge articles
  • Change requests
  • Problem investigations
  • Known errors
  • Release
  • Broadcasts
  • Assets

Important

While creating a ticket, if you type %%% in a typeahead field that has a large number of values (such as Affected Asset or Affected Service in Smart IT view, and Service or CI in PWA) and then click anywhere on the ticket before the result list appears, the result list is not displayed as the field is not active.

Related tickets and resources

Information from similar tickets and knowledge articles can help you to diagnose the ticket you are currently working on. Perhaps the ticket you are working was caused by another incident, or the incident that you are working on has caused another incident. When these types of relationships exist, you can create links among tickets and resources so that others who are working with you to resolve the issue are aware of the broader context in which they are working, or can view information that can be helpful to them.

On the Resources tab of tickets, you can refer the recommended tickets and resources to resolve tickets. You can also view events such as outages on the Resources tab. When you click an outage in Smart IT, a partial view of the outage is displayed, whereas, in the Progressive Web App screens, the full view of the outage is displayed.

The following list of options, available on the Resources tab, will help you manage recommended tickets and resources:

OptionDescription
View count

The number of times a knowledge article is opened from any ticket and viewed in the full mode increases the view count of the article. Articles accessed and viewed from the Knowledge Console, global search, Updates feed, and so on do not increase the view count of the article.

When you click a knowledge article in the Progressive Web App screens, the full view of article is displayed.

Pin an item You can pin an article to relate that article with a ticket. Relating an article with tickets increases the thumb count of the article. Although it does not impact the reuse count of the article, it increase the use count of the article.
Linked items

To resolve a ticket when you pin an article to a ticket and select the Save and Resolve option available on the article in preview mode, the count of the linked article increases. It also increases the reuse count of the article. Note that the reuse count impacts the Article Reuse report (generated in Smart Reporting) of the article.

Save as ResourceTo relate the recommended ticket with the current ticket, click the icon, and select the Save as Resource option.
Mark as Duplicate Issue

From the list of recommended tickets, if you find that a recommended ticket is duplicating the current ticket that you have opened, you can click the icon near the recommended ticket and select the Mark as Duplicate Issue option. The system automatically changes the status of the current ticket to Pending. The duplicate ticket from the recommended ticket list is added under the Duplicate of relationship type on the Related Items tab of the current ticket. Note that the status of the duplicate ticket from the recommended ticket list does not change.

When a ticket marked as duplicate is closed, the status of the current ticket is automatically updated to Resolved. If the status of the original ticket is set as Resolved or Cancelled, the status of the duplicate ticket is set to Resolved.

For example, on the Ticket Console, you open incident 1, which is in Assigned status. On the Resources tab of incident 1, under the Recommended Tickets section, you mark incident 4, which is in In Progress status, as duplicate. The status of incident 1 changes to Pending. The incident 4 remains in the In Progress status and is added under the Duplicate of relationship type on the Related Items tab of incident 1. When incident 4 is moved to Closed status, the system automatically changes the status of incident 1 to Resolved.

If you are using the Progressive Web App screens, in the list of recommended tickets, the tickets that are marked as duplicate are filtered.

Thumb count (On the Resources tab of knowledge articles) Thumb count is a measure of usefulness of knowledge articles represented in percentage. You must click Yes or No for the question Was this resource helpful? to derive the percentage of usefulness. By default, the usefulness set to 0%. When you click Yes, the use count of the article increases. For example, out of 3 users if 2 users click Yes, the percentage of usefulness is 67%.

For more information, see Relating items to the current ticket and Resolving tickets with the help of Knowledge articles using Smart IT.

Ticket templates

Whenever possible, make sure you use a template to create the ticket, as suggested by the preceding example scenario. By using a template to create tickets, the help desk analyst can gather information relevant to the ticket quickly, accurately, and completely. With the necessary information collected quickly, the help desk analyst can then move on to the job of resolving the issue within the time limits imposed by the service level agreement. If an appropriate template is not available, however, you can still create the ticket as otherwise described in the following use case.

Capturing ticket information accurately ensures that the help desk analyst can match the current record with previous, similar records to help resolve the ticket. By capturing all of the details for each ticket, you can later perform more meaningful reporting and analysis of help desk activity.

When using a standard template to create a ticket, the layout of the UI lets you concentrate first on gathering relevant information about the customer and the nature of the request. By identifying the key issues up front, the system itself can begin to proactively suggest ways to solve the issue.

The template is a work aid that helps you to create common ticket types by automatically filling many of the ticket fields with standard information. While working with the ticket, however, you can change the information that was provided by the template. When you change the information, the system saves the information to the ticket when you click Save. Any information that you change on the ticket that was provided by the template does not change the template.

Service health and probable cause analysis by using AIOps

Probable cause analysis (PCA) is the ability to determine the most likely causes of service disruption by correlating millions of monitoring data points and analyzing the relationship between infrastructure nodes and services. By using the Top Probable Causes nodes card (PCA card), you reduce the mean time to identify or determine (MTTI) and mean time to resolve (MTTR) for incidents. For more information about PCA, see  Probable cause analysis (PCA) in BMC Helix AIOps documentation Open link . In BMC Helix ITSM, within in the Incident screen, the PCA card displays the health of an impacted service along with the probable causal nodes that have caused the failure in the service. Agents can use the PCA card to view, create, or associate the CIs, tasks, or change requests. For more information on how to use the PCA card in Incident screen, see Probable cause analysis in Incident Management by using BMC Helix Service Monitoring.

Major incidents

As a major incident manager, you track specific information about a major incident that is beyond the information that of a standard incident. Major incidents impact multiple customers and generally have a widespread impact on business and its goals. By using Major Incident Management in BMC Helix ITSM, you don't need multiple systems for tracking the major incident, establishing teams, collaborating, and updating status. For more information about Major Incident Management process, see Managing major incidents.

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