We are hoping to do a NU Service release on Tuesday 26th January to provide some system fixes and introduce some improvements as well as on-boarding the Faculty of Medical Sciences.
If our testing (this week) exposes something unexpected then we may need to postpone our release date.
Further information to follow.
If an analyst uses the search box in NU Service to search on free text then the following error is returned:
“There has been an unexpected error. Click Continue to return to the previous page.
Could not find file” <file path is then named here>
The workarounds are:
Use the search box for searching on exact ticket references (if known)
Use the Search Queries in the left hand pane of the analyst dashboard.
Apologies for any inconvenience. We are investigating the underlying problem.
Did you know….if you right click on the tickets within your analyst dashboard gadgets you will reveal a drop down menu of the available ticket actions. This allows you to carry out an action against a ticket using less clicks.
As an example: Right click a ticket from the dashboard and click ‘Assign to me’ or ‘Assign within Group’ from the drop down menu. This can be particularly helpful for Queue Managers.
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
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.
If you make significant and/or major changes to a service that underpins other services then it is always a good idea to communicate, especially with the relevant Service Owners and the Service Desk and CRS teams.
With this in mind, the Service Process team recommend that change owners send a short email to the NUIT-All mailing list in advance of implementing a significant or major change that carries the risk of other services suffering impact in the event that the change fails, allowing sufficient time for people to mitigate those risks.
NUIT-All is the most appropriate mailing list since it will reach all service owners, or in their absence a deputy and also reach the first-line service teams.
It is a good idea to standardise the subject line of your email by using the pre-fix “Change Notification: ” – this will facilitate quick identification of such messages for those interested yet also provide a common attribute for those that wish to filter out these messages by setting an appropriate Outlook rule.
Within your email, as well as including the change ticket reference, a brief summary of the change and the date and time of planned implementation, you could consider whether it is also appropriate to say: ‘while it is not anticipated that there will be any interruption to named services, they should be considered at risk during the stated period.’
Finally, please also consider whether there should be outward communications about your planned change (i.e. to customers) – if so, please log a SAMM* request to the IT Service Desk.
Please note that this email notification suggestion is in addition to an appropriate communication plan constructed by the change owner and/or those involved in the change.
*A SAMM is an IT Service Desk news headline that displays on the IT Service website: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/itservice/news/