Admin Console - Object Definitions

Ticket Type provides a top-level classification for Tickets so that they can be grouped together based on the business purpose that they are serving.

It captures the nature of the ticket as opposed to the specific issue/request that needs to be addressed.

Note

Specifying a Ticket type is required when creating a Ticket.

The following types are provided by default:

• Incident

• Question

• Work Request

• OnlineBill

  Specifying different Ticket types is useful when organizations have different process flows or responsible groups depending on the nature of the ticket.

  The Ticket type acts as an indicator to the customer so they know what response they can expect from the organization.

  The Tickets module allows administrators to specify what categories are available for each type (i.e., escalation path, end-subscriber visibility, as well as default values for properties such as Assigned To, Title, Description, and Impact Urgency and Priority).

Ticket Categories provide classification for the request in order to aid initial support and ensure that the Ticket is properly routed through the organization. They also provide a quick way for users to understand the issue/request without needing to read the details of the description or journals.

Note

Ticket Categories are optional when creating a Ticket and no Categories are provided by default.

Classification schemes and their strategies for establishing types and categories will vary from organization to organization. However, they share some common goals:

• They should direct further analysis, evaluation and routing, not attempt to diagnose root cause.

• They should be as simple and easy to use as possible.

• They should view things from a user perspective, not from a service provider or technology viewpoint.

  The IDI platform allows up to three levels of Category classifications to be assigned to a Ticket.

  Typical classification schemes start with the type of service or product that the Ticket is in reference to, then identify the general nature of the issue/request and finally classify the specific issue or request.

  For example, Categories for a Ticket Type of Incident may look like:

• Dedicated Circuit > Connectivity Issue > Unable to connect

• Dedicated Circuit > Connectivity Issue > Degraded performance

• Dedicated Circuit > Connectivity Issue > Intermittent disconnects

  The Tickets module allows administrators to specify what combinations of categories and subcategories are available for each Ticket type.

  Each category combination allows the administrator to define Escalation paths, end-subscriber visibility, as well as default values for properties such as Assigned To, Title, Description, Impact Urgency, and Priority.

Priority is used to identify the relative importance of a Ticket and is often used as the main guidance to an organization of how quickly a Ticket should be resolved.

Specifying a Priority is required when creating a Ticket and the following Priorities are provided by default:

1 - High

2 - Medium

3 - Low

Each Priority must be mapped to a color indicator.

The color indicator is used by the IDI platform when displaying the Priority in order to give users a quick visual cue as to the importance of the Ticket.

Available color indicators are:

• Red

• Orange

• Yellow

• Green

• Blue

• Purple

• Black

• White

  Priorities also allow administrators to set a default Commit Date by specifying that the date will be x Hours from when the Ticket is opened.

Impact and Urgency are metrics used to assist users in determining the priority of a Ticket.

Users can input the Impact and Urgency of an issue/request based upon the information provided by the customer and have the system automatically assigns a priority based upon your organizations business rules.

• Impact of the Ticket is a measure of the effect it has on the customer. Commonly Impact is represented by a measure of how many users, services or systems are affected.

  Typically, Tickets affecting a single user would have a lower impact than one affecting an entire company.

• Urgency of the Ticket is a measure of the extent to which the Ticket’s resolution can bear delay. Urgency is often influenced by the service that is affected, the nature of the issue/request and commitments to customers on resolution times for certain types of issues.

  For example, a Ticket opened because an end-subscriber web portal is unavailable would have a higher urgency than a Ticket reporting an error with a single report within the portal.

  Users have the option of either directly specifying the Priority of Ticket when creating it or having Priority be calculated by the Impact and Urgency.

  The following Impact and Urgencies are listed by default:

  1 - High

  2 - Medium

  3 - Low

  In order to have Priority be calculated administrators must specify which combinations of Impact and Urgency map to what Priorities.

  A typical Priority matrix may look like this:

  		Impact
  		High	Medium	Low
  Urgency	High	1	2	3
  	Medium	2	2	3
  	Low	3	3	3

Note

The IDI platform allows a separate Priority matrix to be configured for each Ticket Type.

Journals entries allow users to record additional information, notes, communications and another other information that is relevant to a Ticket.

Journal Types allow organizations to provide classifications of the Journals that are being added.

Classification makes it easier to filter and search for particular types of Journal entries and also gives users an at-a-glance indication of the nature of a Journal without needing to read the details.

An example of a typical Journal Type classification scheme may look like this:

Administrators indicate for each Journal Type whether or not the Journals of that classification will be viewable externally (i.e., viewable to the customer via the OnlineBill subscriber portal).

Journal Types set to external viewing defaults the Journal to customer viewable however the user has the option to override this on an individual Journal basis.

Journal Types set to internal viewing do not allow users to set the viewable status and the Journal will automatically be set to internal only.

Type is required when adding a Journal and the following Journal Types are provided by default:

• Internal Note (Internal Viewing Only)

• Public Note (External Viewing by default)

Hold Reasons allow to specify why a Ticket is being placed on-hold. When a Ticket is on-hold the in progress time stops calculating.

Hold Reasons are required when placing a Ticket on-hold.

The following default on-hold reasons are provided:

• Customer action required

• Third-party action required

Resolution Types allow organizations to categorize the solution that was used to resolve a Ticket. Categorizing resolutions can be useful in reporting, analysis and standardization of Tickets.

Resolution Types are not required when resolving a Ticket and no codes are provided by default.