Logging Incidents


What is an Incident?

As per ITIL V3, an Incident is an unplanned interruption to an IT Service or a reduction in the Quality of an IT Service. Failure of a Configuration Item (CI) that has not yet impacted service is also an Incident. For example, unable to send mails using MS Outlook, slow systems, virus attack in the organization network, etc. You can log Incidents using the web application, mobile app (android and IOS), CINDE (Conversational Interface and Decisioning Engine), e-mail, and web services.



Various Ways to Log Incidents

  1. An Analyst can also log an Incident on your behalf.
  2. If the Mail to Incident option is enabled by the Administrator, when you send an e-mail with your issue to the Support team (team handling your organization's IT issues) from a configured e-mail id, an Incident is automatically logged for you. The Administrators can configure up to four such e-mail ids. The mail that you send is attached to the Incident automatically.
    Incident Raised Using E-mail

     Incident Raised Using E-mail
    1. For Analysts:

      Earlier, whenever the user drafts the mail body description and adds an image in the mail body to raise the ticket, the added Image in the mail body is displayed as an attachment in the ticket. Since it was shown as an attachment, we could not understand what the user intended to say and which image he is referring to.  

      Now the Image included in the mail body description while raising the mail-to-ticket is displayed in the description of the ticket, which gives the user more clarity to understand and visualize the problem.  

      Similarly, the HTML content in the mail body would be appearing in the description. 

      You can see the following screen Incident Management. You can use the Show More link next to the Description box that displays Description pop-up of the ticket with the Image attached in mail body.  

      Note:

      You can only have the Image in the Description pop-up or Description box of the ticket if the following key is added to the Web.config file and the value is true. 

      <add key="IncludeImageInMailBody" value="true" /> 

      • This Image in the Mail-To-Ticket is applicable only for Exchange Mailbox Server Type. 
  3. When you send a voice mail, an Incident is logged for you. The web services are used to integrate voice/IVR to receive voice-based issues and log Incidents. The appropriate option should be enabled by the Administrator for IVR. For more information, see SummitAI Platform Online Help.
  4. You can log Incidents using the SummitAI Mobile App. For more information about SummitAI Mobile Application, see SummitAI Mobile Application Help.

  5. CINDE (Conversational Interface and Decisioning Engine) can help you in logging Incidents. CINDE is a Conversational Virtual Agent which is available as a web chat that pops up by clicking ASK CINDE. For more information, see AI for ITSM

  6. If the SMS to Incident option is configured by the Administrator, you can log an incident by sending an SMS from your configured mobile number with the following format:
    • To log an Incident
      Format: Key Keyword Symptom
      Sample: SummitAI Log My Outlook is not working
    • To update an Incident
      Format: Key Keyword Incident ID Additional Information

      Sample: SummitAI Update 10143 My outlook version is 2016
    • To check the status of Incident
      Format: Key Keyword Incident ID

      Sample: SummitAI status 14514

To log Incidents:

  1. On the USER DASHBOARD page (Dashboard menu), click NEW INCIDENT under INCIDENT. Alternatively, select Incident > User > New Incident.

    USER DASHBOARD page
    Figure: USER DASHBOARD page

    Note:

    The Analysts can also log Incidents for you (see: Logging Incidents for Users). The Analysts can log an Incident for themselves by clicking Incident > New Incident.

  2. On the NEW INCIDENT page, select the Tenant for which you want to log the Incident. Type in the required details for the new Incident under the DETAILS section.
    • The last 5 incidents logged by you are displayed on the Recent 5 Incidents pop-up page. Click  the Incident ID to view the incident details. Click the  icon to copy the Incident details. 

      NEW INCIDENT page - Recent 5 Incidents pop-up page
      Figure: NEW INCIDENT page - Recent 5 Incidents pop-up page

    • While typing in the symptom of the Incident in the Symptom text box, the list of Templates relevant to the symptom is displayed in the pop-up list. If you select a Template from the pop-up list the other details, such as Classification and Category are auto-populated for the Incident. As you start typing in the symptom in the Symptom text box, the list of Knowledge Records relevant to the symptom is displayed in the Recommended Solution(s) Found pop-up page. Click the Knowledge Record to view the details.

       See Screenshot


      Figure: New Incident: Recommended Solution(s) Found pop-up page


    • To clear the symptom field, click Clear. The link appears only when the symptom is selected from the list displayed while typing the symptom. The link is not displayed when you type in the symptom manually. 

      NEW INCIDENT page
      Figure: NEW INCIDENT page: Clearing symptom

    • You can select the Incident Follow-up check box. If selected, the respective Incident is displayed to all the other users mapped to the same (to which the Caller is mapped) Customer and/or Location. Those Users can only view and update the Additional Information of the Incident. This check box is displayed only when it is configured from Incident management TENANT configuration and LOG INCIDENT PAGE.

      NEW INCIDENT page
      Figure: NEW INCIDENT page: Follow-up

    • You can upload multiple attachments for the Incident by clicking the upload icon in the Attachment 1 and Attachment 2 fields if attachment fields are configured for the NEW INCIDENT page.
  3. Provide the required details and click SUBMIT. A confirmation message is displayed along with a unique Incident ID and USER DASHBOARD, MY INCIDENTS and NEW INCIDENT buttons. Based on the selection of a particular button, the end user is re-directed to the respective page. You can use this Incident ID to view the Incidents details or look for updates about the Incident (see: Viewing/ Updating My Incidents). The details that you receive in the confirmation message depend upon the confirmation message configuration by your Administrator (see: Configuring Incident Management Module).

    Confirmation message
    Figure: Confirmation message

    Note:

    • The fields that you see on this page are configured by the Administrators. For information about configuring fields on the NEW INCIDENT page, see Configuring Log Incident Page.
    • You can also specify the Assets for which you want to log Incidents. For more information, see Logging Incident for an Asset.
     Tenant Search

    The search option for Tenant selection is introduced in all Incident configuration pages, wherever Tenant selection is applicable.

    To view this new enhancement, perform the following steps:

    1. Navigate to Incident > User > New Incident. On the left panel where Tenants are listed, Search option is added.

      Figure: Search option bar on left panel for Tenant selection
    2. To clear the search selection, click in search option. This resets the entered characters.

      Figure: Clear option to reset the search

      Note

      • If the entered characters do not match any Tenant, then No Results Found is displayed.
      • The Search Bar for Tenant selection is configurable. This can be configured in web.config page. Example: If the Search Bar must be there if only there are more than 10 Tenants in the Tenant list, this can be specified and configured in web.config file.




ACTIONS

This section explains the various icons on the ACTIONS panel of the NEW INCIDENT page. 

COPY INCIDENT

Click the COPY INCIDENT icon to copy details from an existing Incident to this Incident. On the COPY INCIDENT pop-up page, type in the Incident ID from which you want to copy information, and then click SUBMIT. The details from the Incident are copied to the new Incident. Alternately, select the Incident ID from the drop-down list of last 50 Incidents.


Figure: COPY INCIDENT pop-up page

References