Q – Is there a way to retain visibility of incidents that need to be passed on to another team?
A – Yes, for ISS there is a ‘watch list’ facility which allows the analyst to monitor tickets regardless of which team they are assigned to. There are some restrictions on this, e.g. analysts will not be allowed to see some information security incidents.
Q – Will we have the ability to assign an incident to multiple teams (e.g. when it isn’t totally clear exactly where to route an incident or an incident may need input from more than one team and both could be investigating simultaneously)?
A – Yes, for ISS the incident management process will allow ‘tasks’ to be created against the incident ticket, where the original ticket is retained by the incident owner (or team) but the tasks can be assigned to other teams.
Q – Is there a recommended procedure for dealing with Changes logged as incidents or service requests in the interim until we get Change Management for ISS up and running?
A – Yes – we will have very simple Change and Problem ticket logging processes to allow creation of records. These processes will not have any real workflow behind them to begin with; Change Management is planned to be launched in full later in 2013.
Q – How long is it planned for the old system to be available?
A – That is still to be decided – we will retain it for as long as it’s needed for audit purposes, and it’s envisaged that there may be a requirement to use it as a look-up for a period after the new system goes live, however we no longer have support for the old system so we should be aware that if there are any major problems with it we may need to accept that it will no longer be useable.
Q – Can we add to and amend the categories over time, so that we can learn from and refine our initial set up once we have reporting analysis available?
A – The short answer is ‘yes’ – the longer answer is we would not want to amend the categories too much/too often as this will affect trend analysis, so it’s better to try to stick with the initial set-up if possible; however there is always the option to add something in that has been missed in the initial configuration
In preparation for populating the Locations drop down list for use on the tickets logged within the new ITSM System, I downloaded all of Newcastle University’s location data. When compiling this into one list (with attributes: Building Name, Floor Number, Room Number) there were 13242 records. As this entirely defeats the object of a ‘quick’ look up we have decided that it will be best to use only the building name for the drop down list and any other relevant data can be added to the ticket detail.
We’ve had Steve, our third consultant from LANDesk, with us for a week and a half now and in that time we’ve made really good progress with configuring the system.
So far, Steve has been doing the bulk of the work whilst Lisa, Dawn and I have been helping out and trying to learn from him (whenever we get time away from MIRs and software licensing issues). This dynamic will change over the next few weeks; we will be completing the config work ourselves.
We’ve been well supported by ISG, who have helped out with server access and database backups. Thanks for all your help (so far).
We had a significant moment in the project this morning when we moved from the OOB colour scheme to using the ISS palette, kindly provided by Jo. As everyone knows, with any new IT system, the colours are the most important thing.
Some planned dates that may be of interest:
Note: In phase 2 we will also be configuring the Change Management module for ISS to be released later in 2013
I realised when I was reviewing this blog that we’d made an assumption that everyone coming to the site would know what the project was all about. This piece is intended to give an idea of what the project is, and how it came about.
When Service Center was first implemented the requirements for system funtionality were quite different to what we need today. The system was configured and then subsequently heavily customised to meet the needs as they were interpreted at the time. Over the past 2 years, the system has been quite limiting in it’s ability to support our move towards a more controlled but transparent way of working.
The real deciding factor came about when HP announced that our version of Service Center was out of support. We’d need to upgrade to remain with HP, and this meant re-working the customisations in a newer version of the product – a costly exercise. We decided that if we were to do that, we may as well seek to replace the system with one that would support our emerging processes and give us a platform on which to build for the future.
We decided to plan to configure, not customise. That meant that we would need to be flexible about our processes, and bend the process to fit the solution wherever possible, not the other way around.
We went out to tender in August 2012, and with support from our group of stakeholders, procured the system we thought would represent best value for money as well as having the flexibility we need to allow us to move forward.
We need your help to come up with a suitable name for our shiny new IT Service Management system (it’s currently called ‘Service Desk’ which could get a bit confusing). Sensible suggestions would be appreciated with a small prize for the winner!
Leave a comment on the blog or email iss-service-process@ncl.ac.uk with suggestions.