Using tasks to manage work on an incident request
The information in this section is for people who fulfill one or more of the following support roles:
- Service desk analysts
- Group coordinators
- Specialists
Topics include:
When working in BMC Helix ITSM: Service Desk, you access the Task Management system from Incident Management.
A task is a unit of work that needs to be completed as a step in resolving an incident request. If the solution to an incident request involves more than one action, procedure, or process, consider dividing the solution into separate tasks. Dividing the solution into separate tasks can help you manage and monitor the incident request as it moves toward resolution.
You can assign the tasks to the same person, several people, or a support group. The person or support group to whom the task is assigned is the task implementer.
When the group coordinator sets the task status to Work in Progress, the task implementers are notified of the tasks assigned to them by email or some other means. Then, they can log their progress as they complete each task.
You can use a task template to add a task to an incident request, or you can manually create an ad hoc task. Task templates are predefined tasks that you can quickly add to an incident request. When using task templates, you can also add tasks that are divided into subtasks. A task that has subtasks is called a task group. The subtasks are called "children" of the task group.
Although tasks and task groups are related to specific incident request records, information about the tasks and task groups is stored on a separate Task form. You can relate an unlimited number of tasks or task groups to an incident request.
After adding tasks to a request, if you do not save the request or, due to other issues, the request is not created, the tasks related to the request are not deleted. These tasks are saved as orphaned tasks. The escalation SYS:CLN:TA@00:05-StartCleanup, which runs every 24 hours, deletes any tasks that are in Inactive state longer than a defined retention period, and do not have any parent record associated with them.