Intended audience: Anyone who has to use a ticket system to get end user IT support. Some links are specific to my employer.
When you are telling IT staff that something is wrong or broken, the more and relevant the information you give us, the faster we can help you. This template will help you give us the information we need to help solve your problem. (Note, this is only for when something is broken, it’s not for service requests, although it is hard to know the difference between an incident and a service request.)
Report template
- Given that my username is [user name] and I am using [the machine name I am sitting at] [and any other relevant information, like whether I am on campus at the time and the names of any other machines involved].
- When I [try to carry out a specific action].
- In order to [achieve an outcome].
- Then I get [the unexpected behaviour, including the text of any error messages].
- I expected [what should have happened instead].
- [add here anything else that you think might help, e.g. whether other computers or other people are having the same problem]
A completed example
- Given that my username is abc123 and I am using 14compsci113, which is a School of Computing managed linux machine in 2.019 of Urban Sciences Building.
- When I try to enter my username and password at the graphical login prompt.
- In order to login and use the PC.
- Then I get sent back to the graphical login prompt without any error message shown.
- I expected to log in and get a desktop session.
- I can login to Windows PCs and other Linux machines, it’s just this one Linux box that is not letting me in.
This template for creating Service Desk incident reports is adapted from the bug report template made by Leo Arnold on Github.