Overview of ticket creation
Creation of incidents and work orders with Smart Recorder
Smart Recorder uses a free form text entry field to help you focus on what the customer is saying, instead of filling out fields in a structured form. This way of creating a ticket helps you to capture information in real time, directly from the customer and in their own words. Smart Recorder helps you to create tickets of all kinds more quickly and with greater accuracy.
The following video (3:39) provides you a quick introduction to the Smart Recorder:
For information about using the Smart Recorder, see Handling-tickets-dynamically-with-Smart-Recorder.
Creation of a ticket in a quick way by using Smart Recorder
You can create a ticket faster and directly from the Smart Recorder Home page. You no longer need to use the draft screen, click the Confirm+Save button, and use the profile view screen of the ticket. After creating a ticket in this mode, the Smart Recorder home screen is displayed to create another ticket. The ticket ID of the previously created ticket is also displayed on this page. For you to use this feature, your administrator must set QuickTicketCreateEnabled parameter to true as described in Setting configuration parameters in BMC Helix ITSM.
Integration of Smart Recorder with phone systems
If your help desk phone system integrates with other web tools, you can configure it to start Smart Recorder directly from the phone system UI. In this case, the service desk agent can click a button in the phone system software to create a ticket using the Smart Recorder. If the Smart Recorder does not display customer information it means that the Smart Recorder was able to match more than one person in the system with the caller ID information. If this happens, the service desk agent must enter the customer information manually. The service desk agent can edit any of the information provided by the phone system, if needed. The Smart Recorder can open with the following information from the phone call already completed (depending on how the phone integration is configured):
- customer information, based on the caller ID.
- a description of the issue or the request, if one is provided.
- suggested resources, including templates and outages, if any are found.
After the Smart Recorder opens with information from the call, the service desk agent continues to create the ticket as described in Handling-tickets-dynamically-with-Smart-Recorder.
The Create New menu for ticket creation
Using BMC Helix ITSM, you can also create tickets from the Create New menu. The Create New menu uses a more traditional, forms-based way to create tickets.
Using the Create New menu, you can create the following items:
- Incidents
- Work orders
- Knowledge articles
- Change requests
- Problem investigations
- Known errors
- Release
- Broadcasts
- Assets
Related tickets and resources
Information from similar tickets and knowledge articles can help you to diagnose the ticket you are currently working on. Perhaps the ticket you are working was caused by another incident, or the incident that you are working on has caused another incident. When these types of relationships exist, you can create links among tickets and resources so that others who are working with you to resolve the issue are aware of the broader context in which they are working, or can view information that can be helpful to them.
On the Resources tab of tickets, you can refer the recommended tickets and resources to resolve tickets. You can also view events such as outages on the Resources tab. When you click an outage in the Progressive Web App screens, the full view of the outage is displayed, whereas, in classic Smart IT, a partial view of the outage is displayed.
The following list of options, available on the Resources tab, will help you manage recommended tickets and resources:
Option | Description |
|---|---|
View count | The number of times a knowledge article is opened from any ticket and viewed in the full mode increases the view count of the article. Articles accessed and viewed from the Knowledge Console, global search, Updates feed, and so on do not increase the view count of the article. When you click a knowledge article in the Progressive Web App screens, the full view of article is displayed. |
Pin an item | You can pin an article to relate the article to a ticket. Pinning an article increases its use count. |
Linked items | To resolve a ticket when you pin an article to a ticket and select the Save and Resolve option available on the article in preview mode, the count of the linked article increases. It also increases the reuse count of the article. Note that the reuse count impacts the Article Reuse report (generated in Smart Reporting) of the article. |
Save as Resource | To relate the recommended ticket with the current ticket, click the |
Mark as Duplicate Issue | From the list of recommended tickets, if you find that a recommended ticket is duplicating the current ticket that you have opened, you can click the When a ticket marked as duplicate is closed, the status of the current ticket is automatically updated to Resolved. If the status of the original ticket is set as Resolved or Cancelled, the status of the duplicate ticket is set to Resolved. For example, on the Ticket Console, you open incident 1, which is in Assigned status. On the Resources tab of incident 1, under the Recommended Tickets section, you mark incident 4, which is in In Progress status, as duplicate. The status of incident 1 changes to Pending. The incident 4 remains in the In Progress status and is added under the Duplicate of relationship type on the Related Items tab of incident 1. When incident 4 is moved to Closed status, the system automatically changes the status of incident 1 to Resolved. If you are using the Progressive Web App screens, in the list of recommended tickets, the tickets that are marked as duplicate are filtered. |
Thumb count | (On the Resources tab of knowledge articles) Thumb count is a measure of usefulness of knowledge articles represented in percentage. You must click Yes or No for the question Was this resource helpful? to derive the percentage of usefulness. By default, the usefulness set to 0%. When you click Yes, the use count of the article increases. For example, out of 3 users if 2 users click Yes, the percentage of usefulness is 67%. |
icon, and select the Save as Resource option.
For more information, see Relating-items-to-incident-requests and Resolving-tickets-with-the-help-of-knowledge-articles.
Ticket templates
Whenever possible, make sure you use a template to create the ticket, as suggested by the preceding example scenario. By using a template to create tickets, the help desk analyst can gather information relevant to the ticket quickly, accurately, and completely. With the necessary information collected quickly, the help desk analyst can then move on to the job of resolving the issue within the time limits imposed by the service level agreement. If an appropriate template is not available, however, you can still create the ticket as otherwise described in the following use case.
Capturing ticket information accurately ensures that the help desk analyst can match the current record with previous, similar records to help resolve the ticket. By capturing all of the details for each ticket, you can later perform more meaningful reporting and analysis of help desk activity.
When using a standard template to create a ticket, the layout of the UI lets you concentrate first on gathering relevant information about the customer and the nature of the request. By identifying the key issues up front, the system itself can begin to proactively suggest ways to solve the issue.
The template is a work aid that helps you to create common ticket types by automatically filling many of the ticket fields with standard information. While working with the ticket, however, you can change the information that was provided by the template. When you change the information, the system saves the information to the ticket when you click Save. Any information that you change on the ticket that was provided by the template does not change the template.
Service health and probable cause analysis by using AIOps
Probable cause analysis (PCA) is the ability to determine the most likely causes of service disruption by correlating millions of monitoring data points and analyzing the relationship between infrastructure nodes and services. By using the Top Probable Causes nodes card (PCA card), you reduce the mean time to identify or determine (MTTI) and mean time to resolve (MTTR) for incidents. For more information about PCA, see Performing causal analysis of impacted services. In BMC Helix ITSM, within in the Incident screen, the PCA card displays the health of an impacted service along with the probable causal nodes that have caused the failure in the service. Agents can use the PCA card to view, create, or associate the CIs, tasks, or change requests. For more information on how to use the PCA card in Incident screen, see Probable-cause-analysis-in-Incident-Management-by-using-BMC-Helix-Service-Monitoring.
Major incidents
As a major incident manager, you track specific information about a major incident that is beyond the information that of a standard incident. Major incidents impact multiple customers and generally have a widespread impact on business and its goals. By using Major Incident Management in BMC Helix ITSM, you don't need multiple systems for tracking the major incident, establishing teams, collaborating, and updating status. For more information about Major Incident Management process, see Managing-major-incidents.