Orientation
Quick overview
An organization must address immediate incidents to carry out its business. These incidents are the focus of the incident management process. In addition, it is essential to detect, analyze, and resolve problems in the infrastructure.
The following BMC Helix ITSM: Service Desk applications automate the incident and problem management processes to enable IT to respond quickly and efficiently to conditions that disrupt critical services:
Incident Management
—Gets users up and running after disruptions.
Problem Management
—Determines the root cause and corrects it by using BMC Helix ITSM: Change Management processes.
Product roles
BMC Helix ITSM: Service Desk aims to simplify the routine activities of the following roles:
- Service Desk Analysts—The interface between the service owner organization and its customers. Service desk analysts are usually first-line support staff.
- Specialists—Subject matter experts. Specialists are usually second-line and third-line support staff. Their main responsibility is to provide an accurate analysis and a diagnosis of their assigned incident requests to restore service to the affected users. Specialists also work on problem investigations and known errors as assigned.
- Group coordinators—Team members who coordinate the assignment of incident requests to support staff. Group coordinators are responsible for the quality and integrity of the incident management processes and for the work of their support group members.
- On-Duty managers—Team members who take over the responsibility from service owners when the owner is not available to perform the incident escalation handling procedure. In these situations, the on-duty manager decides whether an escalated incident must be resolved by implementing an emergency change, by recovering the affected service at its continuity site, or by continuing the resolution of the incident within the incident management process.
- Service owners—Team members who create and assign incident requests. Service owners also decide whether an escalated incident needs to be resolved by implementing an emergency change, by recovering the affected service at its continuity site, or by continuing the resolution of the incident within the incident management process.
- Problem coordinators—Team members who are responsible for the quality and integrity of the problem management process. Problem coordinators have full access to problem investigations and known errors assigned to their support groups.
- Users—Employees who need assistance from the IT support staff to resolve an incident or implement a change. Anyone in an organization can be a user.
Product features
BMC Helix ITSM: Service Desk provides the following key features:
Feature | Description |
|---|---|
The objective of the application is to resolve incident requests as quickly as possible by priority. 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." An incident is any event that is not part of the standard operation of a service and that causes an interruption to or a reduction in the quality of that service. An incident request is typically initiated in response to a customer call, a service request, or an automated event. The Incident Management process also handles customer requests for service. | |
The Problem Management process minimizes the number of incidents by proactively preventing incidents, errors, and other problems. Problem investigations are usually triggered by an incident review or by an application that generates events. After a problem investigation identifies the cause, this information can result in a known error, which describes the root cause as well as the proposed structural solution to remove the root cause. An important ITIL objective is investigating and resolving problems in a continuing effort to cut costs and improve services. A problem investigation helps an IT organization get to the root cause of incidents. The investigation initiates actions that help to improve or correct the situation, preventing the incident from recurring. |
Product documentation
Use these links to quickly find information that will help you get started working with BMC Helix ITSM: Service Desk. The links are organized by roles:
Role | Goal | Where to go |
|---|---|---|
Service Desk Analysts | To manage an incident request through its lifecycle—starting with registration, through assignment, resolution, and on to closure | |
To manage a problem investigation through its lifecycle | ||
Developer | To create or modify an incident, and query an incident or a list of incidents by using web services and interfaces | |
To create or modify problem investigations and known errors, and query a record or list of records by using web services and interfaces | ||
Administrators | To perform tasks to onboard users to BMC Helix ITSM: Service Desk | |
To configure Incident Management to suit your organization's business needs | ||
To manage configuration items, including creating and modifying CIs and managing inventory for bulk and nonbulk CIs | ||
To configure Problem Management with rules that best suit your organization's business needs | ||
End user | To learn how an incident request flows through different statuses in its lifecycle | |
To learn how a problem investigation flows through different statuses in its lifecycle |