In the event that you require a change to be planned and implemented by another team within NUIT, the best practice is to submit a service request to that team who can then create and own the change ticket as appropriate.
ITSM ‘top tips’
Reply
Category Archives: Hints and tips
ITSM ‘top tips’
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’
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’:
- Add a note to change tickets to outline consultations that have taken place, including details of who was consulted, and the outcome
- Include the time it would take to roll back the change in the overall time requested to carry out the deployment.
- 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.
- Where a change is no longer required, the ticket should be cancelled using the ‘cancel’ action, rather than completed using the ‘record outcome’ action.
Adding attributes and filters to search queries in NU Service
It’s possible to add additional fields in any query in NU Service (such as ‘Search All Tickets’), both to the list of result but also to filters used to pare down the results list.
A couple of notes before we get started:
- The way that NU Service works means that not every attribute is available to every process. As an example, only Service Requests will have a ‘Service Item Requested’ attribute, so looking for this attribute in the list when trying to filter an Incident won’t get you very far!
- Any time you add attribute to the results list or filters, you can save the URL of the query as a bookmark in your browser and it will keep all the amendments you’ve made, perfect for quickly returning to a specific view of a query.
Adding fields to the results list
By adding an attribute to the results list, you can quickly get a view of tickets falling into a certain area by attribute.
Start by picking a query, then select the asterisk (*) at the end of the column headers:
In the pop up box that appears, look for the attribute you want to add, select it, then click ‘Ok’. This list is a bit unwieldy and it’s not always obvious what the attribute will display, here are a few useful attributes:
- Customer (shows the School that the Raise User is a member of)
- Last Updated By (shows the ID of the last person to update the ticket)
- Ticket Source (shows the origin of the ticket, eg Self-Service, Telephone etc)
- Type of User (shows if the Raise User is a member of staff or a student)
Some of these attributes can be further broken down with the small arrow, but this can be a bit of a rabbit hole when looking for a specific attribute – if in doubt, get in touch with the SMO and we can help.
Adding filters to the filter list
By adding a filter into a query, you can reduce the overall number of results by restricting the entries for certain attributes.
As before, start by picking a query, remembering point 1 of the notes above. Against the filters already in place, right click on one and select ‘Insert Filter after…’:
In the pop up box that appears, look for the attribute you want to add as a filter. As before, this list is a bit unwieldy and it’s not always obvious what the attribute will display, here are a few useful attributes:
- Customer (shows the School that the Raise User is a member of)
- Last Updated By (shows the ID of the last person to update the ticket)
- Ticket Source (shows the origin of the ticket, eg Self-Service, Telephone etc)
- Type of User (shows if the Raise User is a member of staff or a student)
Once you’ve selected the attribute, a different window will appear. From here, I’d suggest first selecting the ‘Show filter as prompt?’ box, which will make the attribute appear in the filter list, and consider changing the ‘Condition type:’ depending on what you’re searching for:
For the ‘Condition type:’, there are a few options available. For many attributes you’re able to pick from (not an exhaustive list):
- Equals (the input must match exactly to display a result)
- Contains (the input can from any part of the result)
- Is Null (will only return where there is a blank result)
- Is One Of (can select multiple separate inputs, and will show where any are a result)
For dates, we can select ranges as well (not an exhaustive list):
- Is Between Dates (results between a specified start and end date)
- Is Within The Previous (results within the previous specified number of minutes/hours/days/weeks/months/years)
- Is Older Than (results from prior to a specified date)
Once you’ve picked your condition and ‘Show filter as prompt?’, click OK and the attribute will be entered onto the filter list to help pare down your results.
Some of this isn’t super-intuitive, if you need any assistance with making queries easier to use or understand then please get in touch.
Switching off IE Compatiblity View
Internet Explorer’s compatability view can stop NU Service analysts from accessing Web Desk. The screenshot below illustrates this scenario – the analyst is taken straight to self-service and the ‘Switch to Web Desk’ link is not present in the top right corner.
Please note that clicking on this image (and all other images in this post) will display a larger version of the same image.
To switch off compatibility view, follow these simple steps:
1. Go to Tools and then ‘Compatibility View Settings’. (It may be necessary to press the ‘Alt’ key in order to bring up the menubar containing ‘Tools’.)
2. Uncheck the ‘Display intranet sites in Compatibility View’ checkbox (and make sure that the ‘Display all websites in Compatibility View’ checkbox is also not ticked) and click ‘Close’.
3. The ‘Switch to Web Desk’ link should now be visible. (You might need to reload the page first.)
If you later require compatibility view to be on, you can follow the same steps as above but check the checkbox that you previously unchecked.
New Functionality – Add Attachments and send via email
You can now add attachments and send via emails. Please see the instructions below.
Scenario 1 (Sending an attachment to a Support Group)
- From within the ticket select “Add Attachment” within Actions
- Give the attachment a title
- Browse the file that you would like to attach
- Select Save and Close
- Select the Attachments tab at the bottom of the screen and click on the attachment
- Select Send from within Actions
- Select the Support Group
- Tick box Send to selected group or user
- Then enter details into the Email Body box
- Select Save and Close
- Then select Save and Close again to come out of the attachments option
Scenario 2 (Sending an attachment to a Selected User)
- From within the ticket select “Add Attachment” within Actions
- Give the attachment a title
- Browse the file that you would like to attach
- Select Save and Close
- Select the Attachments tab at the bottom of the screen and click on the attachment
- Select Send from within Actions
- Enter the users ID
- Tick box Send to selected group or user
- Then enter details into the Email Body box
- Select Save and Close
- Then select Save and Close again to come out of the attachments option
Scenario 3 (Sending an attachment to the Raise User)
- From within the ticket select “Add Attachment” within Actions
- Give the attachment a title
- Browse the file that you would like to attach
- Select Save and Close
- Select the Attachments tab at the bottom of the screen and click on the attachment
- Select Send from within Actions
- Leave the Group and User blank
- Tick box Send to Raise User
- Then enter details into the Email Body box
- Select Save and Close
- Then select Save and Close again to come out of the attachments option
Scenario 4 (Sending an attachment to the Group and Raise User)
- From within the ticket select “Add Attachment” within Actions
- Give the attachment a title
- Browse the file that you would like to attach
- Select Save and Close
- Select the Attachments tab at the bottom of the screen and click on the attachment
- Select Send from within Actions
- Select the Group from the drop down
- Tick box Send to selected group or user
- Tick box Send to Raise User
- Then enter details into the Email Body box
- Select Save and Close
- Then select Save and Close again to come out of the attachments option
Scenario 5 (Sending an attachment to the Selected User and Raise User)
- From within the ticket select “Add Attachment” within Actions
- Give the attachment a title
- Browse the file that you would like to attach
- Select Save and Close
- Select the Attachments tab at the bottom of the screen and click on the attachment
- Select Send from within Actions
- Enter the user ID
- Tick box Send to selected group or user
- Tick box Send to Raise User
- Then enter details into the Email Body box
- Select Save and Close
- Then select Save and Close again to come out of the attachments option
PLEASE NOTE:
1. The ticket reference number will not automatically be included in the email so it is important to include a meaningful description of the file and why you’re sending it.
2. You cannot send an attachment to Support Group, Selected User and Raise User at once.