Closing Resolved Status Incidents after a Defined Period of Inactivity
To close, or not to close, that is the question many of us face while staring at an aging list of help desk tickets. Here's the process one Juice reader recently implemented to save his staff a couple hours a week and (you're way ahead of me) get some closure. :)
The Eminent Problem
When an Incident is resolved our Helpdesk workers place the Incident into "Resolved" status (in our previous system this was "Resolved: Pending Follow-up"). All of our reporting metrics and notifications have been altered to count "Resolved" status Incidents in much the same way as "Closed" status. However, due to the intrinsic differences between the two statuses we still have need for the "Closed" status and to pull separate metrics on Closed verses Resolved Incidents. When an Incident is placed in Resolved status the requestor (contact_name/contact_email) receives an e-mail letting them know that the Incident has been resolved and to let the Incident Worker (assigned_to_worker_name/assigned_to_worker_email) know if there are any further challenges related to the Incident. Keeping it in "Resolved" status for a time allows the Requestor to re-open the Incident for continued work if required. If no follow-up or further work is required after five days, the worker(s) can then go and fully close the Incident. Unfortunately, because of low staffing levels our workers cannot always perform the proper follow-up or go back through their Resolved Incidents for closure on a daily basis.
The New and Improved Process
We decided to automate the transition from Incident Resolution to Incident Closure. We wanted the system to automatically scan for Incidents in "Resolved" status for more than 10 days without change (this gives both Worker and Contact a grace period to confirm Incident Resolution and perform in person follow-up, if possible) and change the status of the selected Incidents from "Resolved" to "Closed." We achieved this through an automated notification task in the Notification Server.
The Payoff
By automating Incident Closure and follow-up after a period of inactivity our Helpdesk workers have been able to focus on current and upcoming tasks rather than having to worry about past and Resolved tasks. It is a recent change in our system but we are estimating that it will save each worker about 4-6 hours per week in follow-up time.
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ITIL opinion
ITIL says that you may close resolved incident after 21 days of inactivity from user. In some cases you better call-back to user that issued incident and make sure you resolved an incident.
During the past IT Audits
During the past IT Audits (according to Sox/Cobit process) , internal and external auditors requested that all HD tickets remains open witing a user feedback. After 30 days before for any closure we have to contact user for the feedback input on HD systems, only in this case we can force the closere.
Good Practice
I think it is great to automate this. I think it is just simply the way it should be. Being able to set the number of days is a bonus and should just be the way it is!
Need Help with the Steps
Hello
Could you help me with the steps i would require to set this up?
Need Help with the Steps
What are the steps?
Need Help with the Steps
Can you post the steps?
Sorry for the delay
I haven't been on the Juice Forums for a while.
Here are the steps I took to enable this automation:
NOTE: By changing the "10" at the end of the argument, you will change the the required period of inactivity for the rule to work.
Thank you
Appreciate The Steps Provided...