Monthly Archives: February 2016

NU Service performance and database server move

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Many of you will be aware of ongoing issues with the performance of NU Service.  We wanted to update you as to progress in the work to try to address this issue.

We’re currently working to move NU Service from the current shared database server to its own database server. The move will take all components of NU Service, including our Test and Development databases, and put them onto a new virtual server.  We are hoping that once this is achieved, that performance will improve as a direct result, however if it doesn’t we should be in a better position to better diagnose the issue, for example we could alter settings on the new server which isn’t an option on a server that is shared with other services.

This work is being led by Application Support, in collaboration with Service Process and Infrastructure, and input from LANDesk.  It’s already underway with some work done on the TEST and DEV systems, and we’re now in a testing phase.  Unfortunately we cannot predict how long this will take, but once we are happy that everything is working as it should we will be able to plan the next stage which will be the actual database move.

All updates will be posted on the blog, so please keep any eye out. In the meantime, the Service Process team is happy to field queries and comments on NU Service.

FMS IT Support are now analysts within NU Service

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FMS IT Support have now been successfully on-boarded as analysts within NU Service.

Please see as follows for some important notes regarding system handling/ticket assignments:

New support group
All of the FMS analysts have been on-boarded under the system support group: FMS IT SUPPORT.
Please make a mental note of that support group name in the event that you need to assign tickets to that group.

How ticket assignment works
Some of our existing ticket categories (as required) have a hidden flag to indicate if they are ‘Faculty/Service Specific’. This flag means that the system acknowledges (for those categories) that it must take the ‘Raise User’ or ‘Logged on Behalf of’ users Faculty/Service into consideration when assigning the ticket at the point of creation. For example: The request category to ‘Order New Hardware’ will automatically assign to FMS IT SUPPORT if the raise user or logged on behalf of user is within the Faculty of Medical Sciences; otherwise it will assign to the original default support group DESKTOP SUPPORT.

Considerations regarding assignments
If the Faculty/Service detail is blank for a ‘Raise User’ or ‘On behalf of User’ on a ticket that is using categories which have been flagged as Faculty/Service Specific then the fail safe is that the ticket will default to SERVICE DESK.
AND
If the Faculty/Service detail is blank for a ‘Raise User’ or ‘On behalf of User’ on a ticket that is NOT using Faculty/Service Specific categories then ticket will assign to the original default support group.

Known issue:
Upon incident ticket creation, on the incident window, there is a field showing the ‘Suggested Group’ which is populated based upon category selection. This will not dynamically update to reflect if the ticket is going to be assigned to FMS IT SUPPORT however the assignment rules will work as described above.
If analysts are in any doubt as to whether the ticket is going to assign as they expect then they can simply click ‘Save’ to keep the incident open on their screen after creation, then check the Assignment collection at the bottom of the window or alternatively click the new ‘View Ticket History’ action.

As always, please contact the Service Process team (nuit-service-process@ncl.ac.uk) if you uncover any system issues or have some feedback/potential improvement suggestions.