Custom Status for Updated Incidents
Filed under:
Helpdesk Solution
Customization
Submitted by DeborahAlbrecht on 2 June, 2008 - 11:02.
We found that there were many times that Workers did not realize an incident was updated via e-mail or another Worker and the incident would sit for hours or sometimes days before reviewed again.
To correct this we created a custom status called "Update." From there we built an incident rule that would process each time it was saved to change the status of the incident which allowed the Workers to see clearly in the Status field of their Worker Report which incidents had been updated that were assigned to them.
To create a new Status follow these instructions:
- Hover over Admin and wait for the options to appear
- Select Lookups
- Click on Status
- Either right click and choose "Edit" or click on the pencil edit icon
- Click on the asterisk to add a new Status
- Name your new Status
Once you have completed creating the new Status you will need to create an incident rule that will run each time the incident is saved to ensure that the status is changed when necessary.
I have copied the incident rule below and also attached it to this article for your reference.
Name: Any status to Update
Comment: Changes status to update when an incident is modified by a worker or e-mail
Set these properties: Set "Status" to "Update"
When: Every time incident is saved
And: When ALL of these are TRUE
"Modified on" changes
"Modified by worker" is not equal to "Assigned worker"
"Assigned to a queue" is equal to "false"
<end>
Status: Active
Is terminal: No
Comment: Changes status to update when an incident is modified by a worker or e-mail
Set these properties: Set "Status" to "Update"
When: Every time incident is saved
And: When ALL of these are TRUE
"Modified on" changes
"Modified by worker" is not equal to "Assigned worker"
"Assigned to a queue" is equal to "false"
<end>
Status: Active
Is terminal: No
Note: We have it set in the where clause of this (AND) "Assigned to a queue" is equal to "false." We set this because we do not want our Workers to edit incidents (other than just an FYI or helper) within the queue we want the Workers to assign the incident to themselves and work on them from their own personal Worker queue.
(54 votes)
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Any status to Update.doc | 42 KB |
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This is terrific
I've been wondering myself if there was a way to do this but of course like everyone else, there is so much going on one has little time to focus on it.
We send out a lot of e-mail through the helpdesk and users respond to those messages which update the ticket automatically, but you have no way of knowing that they did unless you actually went into the ticket. And if you have a lot of tickets, doing it manually can be a very tedious task.
I even took this one step further in that since I use the color coding of the fields in the worker table, I assigned a color to that status so it stands out as well.
Great find.
I use notification rules
For this issue I use notification rules that if an incident was updated by an email or guest to notify the assigned worker by email. Just another option.
How are you able to do color in the worker table?
changing color in worker table cells
Look at kb34253. Search for this kb on this site.
https://kb.altiris.com/display/1/index.asp?c=&cpc=...
Vinh Huynh
How to Color code the grid
Drew, there are lots of suggestions out there on how to do this.
One is KB article 34253 from the Altiris knowledgebase.
Another resource to go to is www.altirigos.com and do a search on color coding. There are some additional articles out there to help fine tune the basics of the Altiris KB article.
One other resource would be forums.altiris.com and again do a search on color coding.
If you do start to play around with this, remember to follow the best practices for helpdesk customizations in the helpdesk documentation.
Thanks!
You know it. Will do. Thanks again everyone for the suggestions.
Best Practices
Yes, I should have noted to PLEASE use Altiris' Best Practices for customizations. It is very important because when you go to do an update if you don't have custom folders and names for your files all of your customizations will be wiped and files will be overwritten when you update.
Now if you do regular backups you can recover fairly easily, however, just another headache!
-d
Nice...
Good topic. We do something a bit different in that as others have posted we send an e-mail to the assigned worker when a ticket is updated by the user. So far this has been working pretty good without issues. I was almost thinking of taking it a step further so that if a worker replied to that e-mail it would e-mail the user. This would basically allow Altiris to track the e-mail thread and all of it would be part of the ticket. So far we have just stopped with the worker notification though.
e-mails
We initially thought of using the notification to the assigned user to let them know there was an update, however, that being said we (being from a financial institution) have to retain all mail correspondence for a long time and did not want the extra storage to be utilized by exchange.
Also, we do all communication within the incident, so e-mails are sent to the Contacts (end users) via the incident and not any other mailboxes.
Good luck everyone!
-d