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Configuring automated follow-ups for pending incidents

As an administrator, configure automated follow-ups to send automated reminders to requesters for information that is pending from them to resolve an incident. Automated follow-ups eliminate the need to manually follow up for pending information from requesters, reducing the time to resolve incidents. You can create automated follow-ups for incidents with the Pending status and the status reason as Client action required or Client Hold.

BMC HelixGPT analyzes why the incident is moved to the Pending status, summarizes the information,  and uses the analysis to send an email to the customer.

When you configure a rule to enable automated follow-ups, you can define the frequency of the emails to be sent, the template to be used for the email, and the post follow-up action. All follow-up rules, follow-up attempts, messages sent, and responses received are audited and tracked.

When the requester acknowledges a reminder, the requester is prompted to add a note. The note is displayed in the Activity notes of the incident and scanned in the background. If the note is found relevant for the incident, the status of the incident changes from Pending to the next status in the workflow. If the note is not found relevant, the incident is escalated. A notification is sent to the assigned service desk agent and supervisor. If a reminder is not acknowledged, the requester receives recurrent emails as defined in the rule. 

Scenario

Scenario
At Apex Global, the IT Service Desk team manages hundreds of employee requests daily.

Jordan, an administrator, enables the automated follow-up email to be sent for incidents that are pending for more than 48 hours.

Priya, an employee, submits a laptop repair request. It is assigned to Shirley, an IT technician. Shirley requires information from Priya to resolve the issue. She changes the status of the incident to Pending with the status reason as Client action required. When the incident is pending for more than 48 hours, an email reminder is sent to Priya. Recurrent emails are sent every 24 hours as per the configuration, untill Priya responds to the reminders.

When Priya acknowledges one of the reminders, she is prompted to add a note, which is displayed in the Activity notes. The answer is scanned and found relevant to the incident. The status of the incident changes to the next status. Shirley can now proceed to resolve the issue.  

The automated emails ensure that the incident is tracked without manual intervention from Shirley and resolved on time.

Before you begin

You must have the Administrator and Incident Config permissions to create automated follow-up rules. 

To configure an automated follow-up for pending incidents

  1. As an administrator, log in to BMC Helix ITSM.
  2. Select More > Configuration > Innovation Studio Settings.
  3. Select Incident Management > Follow-up Configuration.
    Follow-up configuration
  4. On the Automated Follow-up Configuration page, select the Company for which you want to create a follow-up, and click Add.
  5. In the Create rule for follow-up pane, specify a Rule name, and select the Active status for the rule.
  6. From the Status reason list, select one of the following options:
    • Client Action Required
    • Client Hold
  7. (Optional) To define additional conditions to filter incidents, click Build expression, and define the expression.
  8. In the Follow-up frequency section, specify the following options:
    • Number of follow-ups: Define up to 10 follow-ups.
    • Interval between follow-ups (hrs/days): Define the interval between two reminders in hours or days.
    • Reminder start after (hrs/days): Define the hours or days after which the first reminder is to be sent for a pending incident.
  9. In Template, select the template that you want to use to send the reminder email.
    The Incident Automated FollowUp template is available out of the box for the email notification.
  10. (Optional) From the Post follow-up action list, specify one of the following options:
    • Custom process: Select a process, or to create a new process, select Actions > Create.
    • Change status: Select the status that the incident changes to if no appropriate answer is received from the requester.
  11. Click Save.

Where to go from here

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BMC Helix ITSM 26.1