NU Service quick tip – View Ticket History

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In the recent update to NU Service concerning Change Management, we added the ‘View Ticket History’ action that was already present on Incidents and Service Requests.

As with those tickets, this is an invaluable resource for seeing exactly what has been done on a ticket previously. We would recommend checking the history of a ticket as the first thing to do when a ticket hits your queue. Do this by selecting the action from the actions menu and reading through the entries before starting work on a ticket; this will help reduce duplication of effort in (for example) investigating something that has been considered prior to you receiving the ticket.

We welcome any feedback on the ticket history as well in terms of the information presented; if something doesn’t show up that you would expect to, for instance, let us know and we can take a look.

NU Service release – 31st July 2019

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The purpose of this release was to fix some minor issues and make quick improvements based on wishlist items.

Change – Addition of pipeline tickets to the self-service portal

Functionality has been added for analysts to see Pipeline tickets raised in their name on the Self-Service portal.

Change – Modification to ticket history

The Incident, Service Request and Change Management processes have had the entries for the ‘View Ticket History’ amended to correctly show line break formatting and no longer stretch the window. This change does not apply retroactively, but going forward all additions to the ticket history will no longer display as a single block of text or stretch the window.

Change – Addition to mark the parent/child relationship on change tickets

To assist analysts with identifying if a change ticket has a parent or child, the relationship has been added to the main change window in the ‘Change Attributes’ section.

Change – Addition of Component fields to ‘Standard Change’ and ‘Emergency Change’

In the same way as for a normal change, Standard changes and Emergency changes now have a component drop down that is populated based on the service selected, with an additional free text component field that will appear when an ‘Other’ component is selected.

Fix – Analysts can now delete a SOP template from any part of the SOP Template creation process

Previously the ability to delete a SOP template had been missed from some statuses of the SOP Template, this has been corrected so that a SOP can be deleted at any required time.

Change – Service Owners can now request further information be applied to a SOP Template at any approval stage

Previously this functionality was missing from a SOP Template that had been approved and subsequently reopened for editing, this has been corrected.

Change – Service Owners will now receive an email notification advising them that a SOP template is awaiting their attention

This is to aid Service Owners in understanding when a SOP Template sits with them for approval/rejection/more information requested.

Change – Add ability to add notes and attachments onto closed and cancelled changes

These actions were previously missing and have been added to all types of change (Normal, Standard and Emergency) at all closed and cancelled statuses.

Fix  – Pipeline tickets Associated Service field fixed

Previously the associated service field, populated using all requestable items in NU Service, this has been amended to populate using only the top-level services. This fix reduces the number of pages from 15 to 2 when selecting this field.

Fix  – Ticket action history corrections for Change Management

  • Starting Peer Review
  • Returning change to change the owner
  • End Peer Review
  • Submit For Approval

Previously both the ticket history for starting peer review and returning a change to the change ower showed as a note, both have been correctly labelled within the ticket history with appropriate information included. Ending Peer review would incorrectly label the person performing the action as the ‘Last Updated By’ user rather than the change owner; this has been corrected. Submit For Approval was simply missing any ticket history; this has been added.

Fix – CAB Review time now updates correctly

An issue where the ‘CAB Review’ action wasn’t populating the requested review time for the CAB meeting has been fixed.

Fix – Addition of character limit on SOP Template titles

A SOP template title can only contain 100 characters, any more and the SOP itself will not be able to be created due to a system limitation. This has been clarified on the window by explicitly stating the maximum character limit.

Fix – Incorrect time shown on actions ‘With Customer’ and ‘Back From Customer’ in Incident Management

The time zone for these action was incorrectly set to ignore Daylight Savings; this has now been corrected.

Fix – Amend text for Minor Changes in information box to remove reference to CAB approval

Minor changes in the ‘Approved’ status would have reference to CAB approval in the information box; this has been corrected.

Fix  -Transfer a minor change to the new process as awaiting change detail

When transferring a change ticket from the old process to new, Minor Changes at the ‘Approved’ status moved to a state where they couldn’t be revised.  This has been corrected and all now Minor changes can be amended/revised via the ‘Amend Change Detail/Date’ action.

Fix  – Start the clock on reopened incidents

An issue was identified and corrected when cancelling an Incident in the ‘With Customer’ status and then re-opening the ticket did not restart the clock, prohibiting further use of the ‘With Customer’ and ‘Back From Customer’ actions.

ITSM ‘top tips’

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1. NU Service triggers an email notification to change owners (of significant and major changes) when their change has been added to the CAB agenda for review. This email notification is to invite the change owner to attend the CAB meeting at a specified time slot. The subject of this email notification is: “NU Service Notification: Change {Id} has been accepted for CAB review, at time {CABReviewTime}”.

If you have an existing outlook rule set to filter out/re-direct notifications from NU Service then it is recommended that you modify/add a new rule to ensure you have visibility of any CAB invitation email notifications.

2. NUIT Analysts are advised to extend their change planning horizon to facilitate the timeliness of communications associated with their changes.

3. As a reminder ‘Peer Review’ is important to help both change owners and approvers know more about people’s views on the proposal, and is especially important for significant and major changes. Change owners can encourage their peers to submit a peer review within NU Service.

Examples of types of reviewer include:

  • Owners of potentially impacted services
  • People who can advise on business impact
  • Technical reviewers
  • Support teams

 

ITSM ‘top tips’

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In the recent inaugural CAB meeting, a few points came up that the group thought might be useful to share with others in NUIT – here are a few ‘top tips’:

  1. Add a note to change tickets to outline consultations that have taken place, including details of who was consulted, and the outcome
  2. Include the time it would take to roll back the change in the overall time requested to carry out the deployment.
  3. There is a need to show a summary implementation plan in the change detail document, but the technical detailed implementation plan (or work instruction) can be held elsewhere. Please make reference to this in the change detail document if it exists.
  4. Where a change is no longer required, the ticket should be cancelled using the ‘cancel’ action, rather than completed using the ‘record outcome’ action.

NU Service dashboard personalisation

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Following last night’s release, the Analyst Dashboard for all users was reset to a default state to allow an alteration to the dashboard to cascade correctly.

This will have reset any sort orders etc that an individual may have applied to the queries on the dashboard.

In order to make any future alterations ‘stick’, you have to perform an action that will force the system to recognise a dashboard update. For the Analyst Dashboard, the simplest way to do this is to make any sort order etc modifications, then move the thin vertical grey line between the queries by a small amount to the left or right:

This should force a notification to appear stating ‘Dashboard updated’; now you can reload the dashboard and your changes will have been saved.

NU Service release notes – Tuesday 30th April 2019

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Following the successful NU Service release, the re-designed Change Management process is now live. A new Pipeline process is also now available for use.

There have been some minor operational changes implemented for which we have communicated directly with those concerned.

 NUIT Change Management

The new process has been developed in collaboration with a Change Management Working Group comprising of members of NUIT, and agreed with the NUIT Leadership Team. It will address concerns about improving change planning, governance, related communications, and visibility of changes and change detail.

The new process introduces a physical Change Advisory Board (CAB) that will meet once a week (usually on a Tuesday) to approve all Significant and Major changes, and will review a selection of other changes and change-related issues.

The first CAB meeting is arranged for Tuesday 14th May, then weekly thereafter. This means that any significant or major changes not set to ‘approved’ in NU Service will have to wait until the first CAB meeting for approval, and should not be deployed before that date.

Any existing open change tickets must be transferred into the new process. To do this, the Change Owner should open the ticket then click the action ‘Transfer to new process’. These change tickets will then be handled under the new process.

Please see the following links for further information and guidance; the tabs on the page contain user guides, process and policy documentation and templates:

https://newcastle.sharepoint.com/hub/itservice/nuitstaffarea/Pages/NUIT-Change-Management.aspx

 

NUIT Pipeline Management

The new Pipeline process will enable teams to record any proposals or initiatives that are in the early stages of development which can be later progressed via Change management (within NU Service) or Project management (outside of NU Service).

Please see the following links to the SMO share point pages:

Process Document:

https://newcastle.sharepoint.com/hub/itservice/nuitstaffarea/Pages/NUIT-Pipeline-Management.aspx

NU Service User Guide and Tutorial video: https://newcastle.sharepoint.com/hub/itservice/nuitstaffarea/Pages/NU-Service-Pipeline-Management-UserGuide.aspx

 

Also included in this release:

Workaround – Non-Analyst staff users were previously able to log tickets on behalf of another user via NU Service Self Service. This functionality has been removed for the foreseeable future due to an underlying problem that the SMO will prioritise and investigate. If a staff user needs to log a ticket on behalf of another user, they should contact the IT Service Desk who will add the user on their behalf.

Analysts can still log tickets on behalf of in the normal manner via the analyst NU Service view.

NU Service – Upcoming Release

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We are planning to do a release on Tuesday 30th April 2019.

This is an extensive release culminating from a number of months of work, which entails a complete re-design of the Change Management process in the system. The new process has been a collaborative effort and we are grateful to the CM working group and others members of NUIT for their engagement.

The release also includes a new Pipeline process, some system fixes and some minor operational changes that have been pending within our team.

Further details will follow.