Resolving an incident with assignment to specialist

For some issues, service desk analysts might not be able resolve incidents on the call. These issues might require the expertise of a specialist. The service desk analyst can assign the incident to a specialist, who will take the necessary steps to resolve the incident.

Scenario

Francie Stafford receives another call from Joe Unser who, this time, cannot send documents to his local printer. Francie creates an incident request, but cannot resolve it herself. The incident request is automatically assigned to a specialist, Ian Plyment, who accepts the assignment and restores Joe's printer connection. Ian then closes the incident request.

Workflow

The following table describes the typical steps involved in this user scenario: 

To register an incident request record

1. On the Incident Management console, Francie clicks Create, to open a new incident request record.
2. Francie enters the first few letters of Joe's email address on the incident request form and then presses Enter.
   The application matches the email address and fills in part of the incident request record based on the contents of Joe's People record.
3. Francie selects the appropriate template to populate the new incident request record with basic information common to all requests of this type.
4. (Optional) Francie associates the CI with the incident request.
5. After Francie completes the incident request registration and saves it, the incident request is assigned to an assignment group as specified in the template.

To accept an assignment

Ian Plyment is a specialist who works for the support group to which Joe's incident request is assigned.

1. On the Incident Management console header, Ian selects his company in the Company field and his support group from the View By field.
2. From the Defined searches area, he runs All Open Unassigned - All Priorities, which returns all of the open, unassigned incident requests for his support group.
3. Ian selects Joe's incident request and opens it.
4. From the Quick Action pane, Ian selects Assign to Me and then changes the record's status to In Progress.
5. Ian clicks Save.

To resolve the incident by using Incident Matching

1. From the Quick Action pane on the incident request record, Ian opens the Incident Matching window.
2. Ian clicks Use Advanced Search.
3. By default, only Known Error and Solution check boxes are selected. Ian also selects the Incident and Problem Investigations check boxes to widen the search.
4. On the Search Criteria Page 1 tab, Ian types Printer in the Summary Keyword Search field and selects Connectivity from the Operational Categorization Tier 1 menu.
5. He clicks Search.
   Any matching incidents, problem investigations, known errors, and solutions appear in the tabs at the bottom half of the dialog box.
6. Ian views details of the matching records and finds information that helps him resolve the incident request.
7. From the Relationship Type list on the Incident Matching window, Ian selects Resolved By and then clicks Relate With Solution.
   This copies the solution from the matching record to the Resolution field of the incident request record.

To complete the incident request

1. On the incident request record, Ian makes sure that all other required fields on the incident request record are completed.
2. Ian then moves the incident request record's status to Resolved and provides a status reason of Customer Follow-Up Required.
3. Incident Management sends Joe an email asking him to contact the Service Desk to confirm that the incident is resolved. If Joe does not respond within a specific period of time, which is configurable for each installation, the auto close rule moves the incident request's status to Closed.

Result

Ian can restore the printer connection, and Joe can print the documents as required.

Benefit

• A knowledgeable specialist resolves a customer issue.
• The incident is recorded to help service desk analysts track the progress and follow up with specialists, if needed.
• The incident is recorded to help service desk analysts resolve similar incidents.