Activity feed overview
Activity feeds are the record of updates made to any ticket, asset, or knowledge article in BMC Helix ITSM. The activity feed displays the type of activity that was performed, the name of the user who made the update, and the time when the update was done. Every ticket and resource has its own activity feed. Activity feeds provide a quick view of all the actions that have been done to tickets and resources. You cannot edit an existing activity note. By using Activity feeds, you can track how the ticket progressed, and also add your notes to it.
The Activity tab displays the events or activities related to the ticket. There are two types of events:
- System generated
- Ticket creation feed
- Status updates made to the ticket
- SLA alerts
- Changes in ticket assignment
- Priority updates
- Approval/rejection/on-hold updates
- User generated
- A note added to the ticket
- Email sent from the ticket
- Status reason when the status of a ticket is changed
By default, all the feeds are displayed in the relative date and time display format, such as 6 hours ago or 3 days ago. In the Centralized configuration, the administrator can specify the Absolute value for the property dateTimeStyleProperty to display the date and time in the absolute format, such as Sep 15, 2016, 6:00 PM.
The browser spell check is enabled for the activity notes by default. The incorrect spellings are highlighted and you can rectify them easily. To enter notes in a foreign language, in your browser, you must enable the dictionary for the foreign language. If you don't enable the dictionary, the system considers the words in a foreign language as incorrect spellings.
On the BMC Helix ITSM Dashboard, you can access the Updates feed. The system provides details of events related to the tickets, including the resources assigned to you or followed by you. Activity feeds are specific to tickets and resources, whereas update feeds are specific to the user. You can search for Activity on the Dashboard by the contents of the tickets. By using the ActivityHotkeySearchesByPeopleAsset parameter in Centralized configuration, you can run the search in the activity note on the people and asset records or only on the people records. You can also search for the assets by using the + hotkey.
Activity feed when the name is updated
If you update the logged-in user's name in the CTM:People form, or in My Profile, the updated name is reflected in the following activity feeds:
- Status change
- Priority change
- Assignment change
- Adding a note
The Activity tab displays text, which is more than 2000 characters, as plain. The html link or @mention is also displayed as plain text. The @mention users can see the assigned ticket on their dashboard. When you reply to an email notification that has embedded URL, the URL is displayed on the Activity tab, because of the removal of MongoDB. If you add or edit the asset owner after creating an asset, the user of the asset does not become the implicit follower of the asset.
Important
In Progressive Web App screens, when you mention a person by typing the email id in the activity notes, the search results might not be display the correct person as the hotkey to trigger mention is @, and the email id also contains @. So only the text after the latest @ in email id is considered. For example, if you type @pbunyon@petramco.com, the first part of the query, that is, @pbunyon gets ignored. The search results appear only for the second part of the query @petramco.com.
To fetch email IDs in the @mention options, you must use a different hotkey in the Developer Studio instead of @ in the Hotkey column to avoid errors. For more information, see Adding @mention for fields in Progressive Web Applications.- In Progressive Web App screens, when you search for a person in the activity notes with rich text enabled, the search results are independent of the position of the cursor. For example, if you type @Peter, a list of suggestions with Peter is shown. When you move the cursor backward and position it next to the letter t, the list of suggestions does not change to show suggestions with only Pet. The same list of suggestions for Peter is shown. However, when you add a space to search with full name, no suggestions are shown.
Activity feed when created from scratch
In a Release ticket, when you create an activity by using the Activity From Scratch option, Summary , Description , Priority and Location fields are automatically filled based on the information given in the Release ticket:
Activity feed when a ticket needs attention
In Progressive Web App screens for work order and incidents, to flag or unflag a ticket manually, click the flag icon in the ticket header. You must mention the reason for flagging or unflagging a ticket in the activity note.
If you need to flag or unflag tickets from Ticket Console, select the tickets and click the flag icon. Enter the justification in the pop-up that appears when you flag or unflag.
Assignment updates on the work order and incident screens
Assignment updates are displayed in the following format on the Activity tab for Progressive Web App work order and incident screens. The activity feed shows both assignee and support group details.
The activity timeline displays entries in the following formats after ticket reassignment:
- If the ticket is assigned to a different agent within the same support group, the activity timeline entry displays that the ticket was assigned to that agent.
- If the ticket is assigned to a no agent with different support group, the activity timeline entry displays that the ticket was assigned to the support group.
- If the ticket is assigned to a different agent and a different support group, the activity timeline entry displays both the agent and support group.
- If the ticket is assigned to the same user but with different support group, the activity timeline entry displays both the agent and support group.
Supported special characters
In Progressive Web App screens, you can view a user profile by clicking the name link in activity notes. If you mention a person in the activity notes by using @, the name link is added. The following special characters can be used in a name without the name link breaking in activity notes:
` | ~ | ! | @ | # | % | ^ | . | & |
- | _ | = | + | ; | : | ' | " | , |
/ | ? | < | > | [ | ] | { | } | * |
All accented characters, such as, ä and ß, are also supported.
Activity feed preset filters
You can apply filters to display relevant activity notes in the feed. Once you have applied the necessary filters, you can save the applied filters as presets. Next time, you can directly apply the saved preset filter, instead of manually selecting each filter.
Important
The activity note preset filters saved for a ticket type is visible from all other ticket types. But, when you apply a preset created for a specific ticket type in other ticket types, the filters may not fetch results. For example, create a major incidents preset filter from a incident ticket. Open a work order ticket and check activity notes preset filters. You can see the major incidents preset filter. When you apply the preset, you can not see any results as major incidents is specific to incident ticket type.
Instructions for classic interfaces
View instructions for classic Smart IT
You can access activity feeds on the Universal Client (UC), Apple iOS, and Google Android devices. In classic Smart IT, an assignment update is shown in the activity timeline in the following format:
When the administrator disables the Enable-Progressive-Views parameter, assignment updates that were done in the Progressive Web App screens show as incorrect links as shown in the following graphic:
Once this parameter is disabled, any new assignment updates would be shown in the classic Smart IT format.
Activity feed when a ticket needs attention
You need to add an activity note while flagging or unflagging tickets manually. If you do it in the Ticket view, you need to add it in the Activity tab. If you add or remove flags from Ticket Console, you need to put the activity note in a pop-up which appears on your screen after selecting the flag.
