Configuring incident rules

By using incident rules, you can change how the Incident Management component behaves when you work with it. For example, you can select whether certain dates on the Incident form can be changed, or you can choose to make the Service CI field mandatory. With these changes, you can make the Incident Management component conform to your organization's business rules and workflow.

Unlike the Incident Management settings, which apply globally, incident rules apply to specific companies. For example, you can create incident rules that determine how incident requests are assigned through the Assignment Engine on a company-by-company basis.

These incident rules are applied only to the user interfaces like the Mid Tier and Smart IT and not to the API forms.

To configure incident rules

1. From the Application Administration Console, click the Custom Configuration tab.
2. From the Application Settings list, select Incident Management > Advanced Options > Rules, and then click Open.
   
3. Select the company to which this rule applies, or select Global if the rule applies to all companies.
4. Select whether certain dates can be changed on the Incident form.
   The Changeable Reported Date, Changeable Responded Date, and Changeable Resolution Date fields indicate whether these dates on the Incident form can be modified after the incident has been resolved or closed. Only users with Incident Master permission can modify these dates.

5. In the Create Request On Submit field, select one of the following options to specify whether to create a request on submission of an incident:

   Option	Description
   In Service Request Management	When a user submits an Incident form, a corresponding request is created. The user can view this request (which indicates the incident status) through the Requester console. The Requester console uses the requester's BMC Helix ITSM login ID to determine who created the request and where to display it. Therefore, the requester must have a  BMC Helix ITSMlogin ID.
   In Digital Workplace	When a user submits an incident form, a corresponding request is created in BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog. The user do not receive any notification from BMC Helix ITSM. However, the user will receive a ticket creation notification from BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog. For more information, see Notifications.
   No	A regular incident submission notification created and no request is created. By default, this option is selected.

   Important

   This setting is not applicable if the incident is submitted by using BMC Digital Workplace. 

   When you use BMC Digital Workplace to submit a service request, it creates a fulfilment. As a result of this fulfilment, a service request will be created in the BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog. Refer to Setting up service requests through BMC Service Request Management for more information.

   
   

6. In the Description field, enter a descriptive note about the rule.

7. Select whether the Service CI field is a required field.
   By default, Require Service CI Related On Submit is set to No, which means the Service CI field is not a required field when an incident request record is created. If your organization's business rules require a Service CI to be associated with an incident request, select Yes.

   Important

   If you create an incident by using the HPD:IncidentInterface_Create web service and set the Require Service CI Related On Submit flag as Yes to indicate Service CI as a required field, the incident is created without any errors even when you do not enter any value in the Service CI field.

8. Select whether the CI field is a required field. 
   By default, Require CI Related On Resolved is set to No, which means that the CI field is not a required field when someone changes an incident request record's status to Resolved. If your organization's business rules require a CI to be associated with an incident request when it is resolved (or before it is closed), then select Yes.
9. To configure the number of days after which an incident request automatically moves to the Closed status, enter the number of days in the Auto Close Resolved (in Days) field.
   The number of days is calculated from the Last Resolved Date of the incident request record. The escalation runs daily at 2:00 A.M.
10. To use the Assignment Engine to automatically assign incidents to individuals, perform the following steps:
    1. Set Assignment Engine Integration to Yes.

    2. Select the appropriate Assignment Process.
       The following table describes the available assignment processes:

       Assignment Process	Description
       Capacity	The capacity for each person is specified in the Capacity Rating field on the People form. The capacity assignment process is a ratio-based method. For example, if person A has a capacity of 100 and person B has a capacity of 200, person B can handle twice as many tickets as person A. The assignment engine assigns two tickets to B, and then assigns one ticket to A.
       Number	The People form tracks the number of tickets assigned to the person. The number assignment process selects the person with the least number of tickets already assigned.
       Round Robin	The People form keeps track of the last time the person received an assignment. The round robin assignment process selects the person who was least recently assigned an incident.

       For information about configuring the assignment engine, see Configuring the Assignment Engine server settings.

11. To configure how Incident Management responds when you try to resolve an incident request that has open tasks, select one of the following selections:

    Message	Allowed?	Description
    Error Message (This is the default selection.)	No	An error message indicates that the user must close all open tasks before resolving the incident. The error stops all workflow processing.
    No Action (If the company is - Global -, this is the default selection.)	Yes	No error message appears and the user can resolve the incident even if an open task is associated with it. The task, however, remains open.
    Warning Message	Yes	A warning message tells the user that the incident still has an open task associated with it. The user can still resolve the incident. The task, however, remains open. If a user cancels an incident, all of the associated tasks are also canceled.

12. Select whether you want Incident Management to automatically create impacted area information based on the selected customer's location. The default selection is No.

13. In the Create Service Request for Event Incident field, select one of the following options to specify whether to create a request on submission of an incident:

    Option	Description
    In Service Request Management	When when a user submits an Incident form, a corresponding request is created. The user can view this request through the Requester console.
    In Digital Workplace	When a user submits an incident, a corresponding request is created in BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog. The user do not receive any notification from BMC Helix ITSM. However, the user will receive a ticket creation notification from BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog. For more information, see Notifications.
    No	A regular incident submission notification created and no request is created. By default, this option is selected.

14. Click Save.

To update incident rules

Open the Incident Rules form as described above, find the rule that you need to change, and make the required update. 

Infrastructure Event Incident rules

Use the  Infrastructure Event Incident rules area of the Incident Rules form  to configure how Incident Management behaves when it is integrated with BMC Service Resolution. From this area of the Incident Rules form, you can configure Incident Management to:

• Enable CI based routing (see Enabling CI-based routing )
• Consolidate multiple, related events for the same CI into one incident instead of creating several incidents (see Consolidating events)
• Consolidate incidents to avoid creating redundant incidents in your system  (see Consolidating incidents)
• Govern the status of incidents created by BMC TrueSight Operations Management / BMC ProactiveNet  (see Configuring incident governance)
• Allow incident routing by managed groups (see Incident routing based on Supported by or Managed By Group)

For information about integrating the Incident Management component and BMC Service Resolution, see:

• Incident-Management-SOAP-web-services
• Integrating directly with Remedy ITSM using web services