Due to finding some issues during testing that require more time to be fixed, we are postponing the planned release (previously scheduled for Tuesday 8th December).

We will look to release in January. Apologies for any disappointment.

NU Service will be unavailable on Tuesday 8th December 2015 between 17:00 and 20:00 (GMT) for the purpose of releasing system fixes and improvements to functionality.
Please ensure that you are logged out of the system during this time period.

We are hoping to do a NU Service release on Tuesday 8th December to provide some system fixes and introduce some improvements. This will require planned system downtime which we will communicate in advance.

Further information to follow.

The purpose of this release was to fix a couple of minor issues and to make some quick improvements based on wish list items. We have kept the contents of the release light to ensure we could fit it in before the change freeze and also keep on top of other priorities.

Email content

• In response to the 5-digit telephone extension project where the number 8 was added as a pre-fix to internal extension numbers, we have updated the extension number on system generated emails and the internal major incident extension number in the major incident notification.
• We have improved the wording of the email template that is used for service request fulfilment and incident resolution emails, to make it clear to customers that they have 5 working days from the date of the email to reopen their ticket if required.

Wish – The Service Desk triage dashboard now displays tickets with a sort order of oldest first to support their prioritisation process.

Wish – The component field has been added to the ‘Search Changes’ query on the analyst dashboard.

Issue – The department field of the ‘Raise User’ and ‘On behalf of User’ within triage tickets (that are processed by the Service Desk) was not populating. This has now been fixed and will support the Service Desk response times where the department is a dependency.

Wish – The details boxes on some ticket windows (e.g. Add Note) were not consistent in size; we have amended those that we identified.

Wish – The ticket summary has been added to the resolution and fulfilment windows; we hope this serves as a useful reference when moving between the windows.

Wish – An automated report listing all active change tickets will be sent to team managers and the Directorate on a weekly basis. If this proves to be a useful report there may be demand for extending the recipient group.

We have also made improvements to some existing team specific functionality; those teams will be contacted directly.

NU Service will be unavailable on Wednesday 12th August 2015 between 17:00 and 20:00 (BST) for the purpose of planned system maintenance.
Please ensure that you are logged out of the system during this time period.

We are hoping to do a release on 12th August to provide some system fixes and introduce some improvements.
The contents of this release will be light due to timescales since we need to ensure that the downtime is scheduled before the change freeze over registration period etc.
This release will also give relevant team members exposure to our development and release process; thanks to John (our new Service Process team member) and Adam (from App support who is taking over from Steve).

We have upgraded to the latest version of the system; it includes new features that give us a platform on which to build future functionality. There are some enhancements in this version and some known issues that have been fixed which we want to make you aware of.

Enhancements

• Tab index is now supported in the analyst view (Web Desk); you should now be able to move around windows using the TAB key.

• Analysts can now use multiple browser tabs within Web Desk.
  Prior to the upgrade some users found that they were unable to work on different NU Service windows/tickets across multiple browser tabs.

Known issues that have been fixed

• Some (not all) analysts have been receiving an error message when initially opening NU Service or if the system had timed out. The error message was: “An item with the same key has already been added” – This should now be fixed.

• When we went live with a previous version in June 2014 we communicated two known issues for those using IE. See below for a reminder of these issues or alternatively visit the relevant blog post from last year. We believe these two issues have been fixed therefore there is no longer a need to use the associated workarounds. Please contact the Service Process team if you experience otherwise.

1. Using NU Service with Internet Explorer in compatibility view will present the self-service dashboard to analysts without the option to ‘Switch to Web Desk’ (the standard analyst view).
2. Using NU Service with Internet Explorer 8 gives a security warning that some of the content is not delivered securely and by default asks whether you want to view only the content that was delivered securely. This occurs when loading every page.

Please note that Chrome is the recommended browser for NU Service.

We will be upgrading to the current version of NU Service on Wednesday 10th June, the work will begin at 17:00 (GMT). This upgrade allows us to take advantage of system fixes and will provide us with the scope to introduce improvements using new features.

Please ensure that you save your work and are logged out of the system by 17:00 on Wednesday 10th June and do not log back in until you receive an email notification advising that you may log back in. We anticipate that the system will be available for normal use by 09:00 (GMT) on Thursday 11th June.

For the last release of the year (and my last before leaving the team), we wanted to put in a lot of good stuff that people have been asking for, as well as addressing the higher impact bugs that have been identified (or introduced) recently. We’ve focussed on really improving the user experience and made some changes that we hope will make your life easier and enhance the goodwill of the season.

Incidents and service requests

• You will now be able to see the ticket reference number and customer’s name when adding a note, sending a notification, putting a ticket with customer or resolving/fulfilling an incident/service request. This has been one of our most requested enhancements (which wasn’t possible before we upgraded in the summer). It’s worth noting that this information will only appear when working on new incident and service request tickets.
• Previously incident and service requests tickets could only be assigned to another group by analysts who were in the group to which the ticket was currently assigned. We know this caused a lot of headaches when tickets were accidentally assigned to the wrong team and couldn’t be recovered. To address this, any analyst can now assign any ticket to another group, as long as the ticket isn’t assigned to an individual.
• The size of the text areas on a few of the windows have been increased in response to specific requests.
• Some ‘quick open’ service requests have been added to help the CRS team deal with the pace of working with many students face-to-face.
• We’ve fixed a bug which meant that child tickets of major incidents weren’t being resolved automatically when the major incident ticket was resolved.
• There had been some (very few) cases of incident and service requests losing their assignment during an assignment action with the result that they ended up assigned to no-one. This should no longer occur. We’ve also taken this opportunity to tidy up the assign to another group window.

Dashboards and views

• The ‘Last Updated By’ and ‘Last Update’ fields on the main analyst dashboard were not working if tickets were updated by email. This has now been fixed.
• The ‘Current Queues by Team’ view now has an additional filter, ‘Current Assignee’, so you can see current tickets assigned to individual analysts.
• Some cancelled tickets were showing up in views of current queues; this should no longer happen.
• Some minor nomenclature issues have been fixed and tidied up.

Problems and changes

• It is now possible to import SOPs from a spreadsheet. If you have many SOPs to enter this is likely to save you a considerable amount of time. Talk to me or Lisa if you’re interested in using this functionality.
• Closed changes were appearing in the ‘Scheduled Active Changes’ gadget of the ‘Active Changes’ dashboard. This has been fixed.
• If someone (other than the problem or change owner) adds a note to a problem or change record the owner will now be notified.
• When an emergency change is submitted for approval the content of the email has now been changed so it can be easily identified as an emergency change (and therefore not requiring the usual CAB approval).
• Attachments can now be added to root causes in the problem management process.

Self-service

• End users reporting an incident through self-service can now add attachments at the time they log the ticket. Previously the end user had to wait until their ticket had been triaged by Service Desk to generate an incident or service request ticket. They could then go in to the new ticket to add the attachment.
• We’ve put in some behind-the-scenes functionality to enable future improvements and automation to the process for procuring software licences and requesting installation.

This purpose of this release was to make some quick improvements to the change and problem management processes which were introduced at the end of August, based on feedback received since then. We’ve also made some small enhancements to the service request functionalilty.

Service Requests

• It’s now possible to change the privacy of a note on a service request ticket after it has been saved. Previously this was only possible on incidents.
• Some ‘quick open’ templates have been added to enable the Service Desk and Cluster Room Support teams to record common requests more quickly.
• It is now possible to link service request tickets to change records. This can be achieved from within a service request ticket, by creating a new change or attaching an existing change.

Changes

• It is now possible to link change records to service request tickets. This can be achieved from within the change record, by creating a new service request or linking to an existing service request.
• A search facility has been added to the list of SOPs (standard operating procedures), accessed via the ‘Change Management’ shortcut group.
• Additional search options have been added to the ‘Search All Changes’ functionality. For example, you can now search on ‘Date Implemented’.
• It is now possible to cancel a change ticket (from the ‘open’ status).
• It is now possible to edit the attachment title field and remove an attachment from a change record.
• The ‘Service Affected’ field was not populating within the ‘Analyst Dashboard’ for change records. This has been fixed.
• It is now possible to create a child change throughout the change management process. Previously this action was not available on closed changes.
• A title is no longer required when adding ‘change detail’. This field had no value and created an unnecessary extra step.
• Names are now listed within the dropdown list on the ‘Assign within Group’ window. Previously only the analysts’ IDs were shown.
• There is a new dashboard for the members of CAB to show changes awaiting CAB approval and recently approved major changes.

Problems

• Previously problem records that were at a status of ‘Known Error’ or ‘Known Error with Workaround’ were not showing in dashboards. This has been fixed.
• It is now possible to reopen a problem ticket after it has been closed.
• In the problem management process, the size of the text boxes to add workarounds and possible cause details has been increased.
• Names are now listed within the dropdown list on the ‘Assign within Group’ window. Previously only the analysts’ IDs were shown.
• It is now possible to search on the ‘Related Reference’ attribute when using the ‘Search all Problems’ functionality.
• Attachments can now be added to possible causes in the problem management process.
• There is now an optional ‘Component’ field on the main problem record. This attribute is included in the search query.

Please continue to give us feedback.