Tracking incident requests
If BMC Service Level Management is installed, you receive a notification when the incident request is in danger of breaching the service terms, for example, when:
- The target response time has elapsed and the incident is still assigned.
- The target resolution time has elapsed and the incident is still open (not resolved, closed, or canceled).
You can configure BMC Service Level Management to send notifications to incident assignees, assignee group coordinators, incident owners, or owner group coordinators, by using templates included with Incident Management. For more information, see Configuring service targets and Configuring the Notification Engine.
When you receive an escalation, you determine the cause of the notification and act accordingly. For example, if the notification occurred because an SLA was breached, you escalate the incident request to the service owner of the affected service. If, however, the escalation notification occurred because an SLA threshold is approaching a breach, you determine whether the incident request needs to be reassigned to another specialist with different skills, greater experience, or with different access rights.
If you do not reassign the incident request, notify the assigned specialist that the incident request must be resolved quickly to avoid any service level objective (SLO) violations. You can place incident requests that require special monitoring on the Watch List. For more information see Monitoring specific incidents.
The following figure provides an overview of the tracking incident requests process:
To view incident service targets defined in BMC Service Level Management
From the Incident Request form, you can view incident service targets defined in BMC Service Level Management. Service targets can be defined in BMC Service Level Management for response time and resolution time. Service targets for an incident can be determined by related CIs, product and service categorization, and many additional criteria.
The service target response time applies when an incident request's reported source is one of the following choices:
- Fax
- Self Service
- Voice Mail
- Web
- BMC Impact Manager Event
- Other
In these cases, the Responded Date field is blank until someone indicates that the incident has been responded to by updating the Response field on the Incident Request form to Yes. When support staff respond to an incident request from one of the previously noted sources, the Responded Date is set to the date on which the incident was responded.
The service target resolution time is configurable, a typical scenario would be from when the incident is recorded until it is resolved. The following scenarios can affect the calculated resolution time:
- When an incident is in a pending state, it might not be included in BMC Service Level Management calculations if you select Client Hold for the status reason.
- When a resolved incident is reopened, the BMC Service Level Management calculations account for time spent in the Resolved state.