We will be upgrading to the current version of NU Service on Tuesday 17^th June between 17:00 and 20:00. 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 Tuesday 17th 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 on Wednesday 18th June.

The latest NU Service release includes the following changes and new features:

Changes/Fixes within Web Desk

• Change: The functionality to send a notification email from a ticket.

This ‘Notification’ action, which is only available to analysts, differs from the ‘Add Note’ functionality in that it allows messages to be sent to a support group or any individual user as well as the raise user (and CC recipients) of a ticket.

The send date/time of the notification defaults to the current time (so the email would be sent immediately) but it can be set to a future date/time to act as a reminder. (This could, of course, be used to remind you to do something at a point in the future.)

The construction of the email body is what is typed in the details field, whilst the subject line will be automatically generated with the appropriate key words and ticket number to allow the system to handle replies.

In the spirit of digital literacy and innovation we thought we’d try something new; here’s a little instructional video about using the notification action. Please let us know if this kind of thing is useful.

• Change: The functionality to allow analysts to cancel a ticket.

Service Desk analysts could already cancel service request tickets; this action is now available to all analysts. Incidents can be ‘cancelled’ by selecting certain relevant resolution categories. Additionally, it is now possible for a customer to cancel their own tickets in self-service, if they are no longer required.  When a ticket is cancelled, any outstanding tasks associated with the ticket will also be automatically cancelled. Notification emails will be sent to all relevant analysts and customers.

• Change: The functionality to include attachments as part of the service request fulfilment or incident resolution actions.

Previously, adding attachments to a ticket had to be done as a separate action, which sent a separate email to the user. This new feature should be particularly useful to Service Desk analysts who are resolving or fulfilling a ticket at first point of contact. The attachments will not be sent by email but the customer will receive an email containing a link to the fulfilment/resolution details and associated attachments.

• Change/fix: ’Back from Customer’ functionality

During the previous release, we introduced the functionality so that an email from the customer will bring a ticket ‘back from customer’ if it had been at the ‘with customer’ status.  In the service request process, the ‘back from customer’ email notification did not include the correct details and the customer’s response was not added to the ‘back from customer’ collection on the ticket (although it could still be seen in the notes collection). We have now fixed this so the functionality works correctly in both the incident and service request processes.

Changes within Self-Service

• Change: Obsolete search box in the self-service header has been removed.

For end users, this search box always returned no results. The equivalent search box in the Web Desk view (which is particularly useful when you know the number of a ticket you’re searching for) remains.

• Change: New icons in Self-Service

One is to indicate open tickets that are ‘awaiting initial assessment’ from the Service Desk and the other provides the new action for customers to cancel a ticket.  The new icons and explanations of their use have been added to the self-service help file.

The release includes the following changes and amendments

Changes/Bug Fixes within Web Desk

Analyst Dashboards:

• The attributes to show the date of the last update and who this was by have been added to the My Open Tickets gadget on the Analysts dashboard.
• The attributes ‘Customer ID’ and ‘Name’ have been added into the children collection that shows on Parent Tickets
• There is now a shortcut named ‘All Tickets I Am Watching’. This page contains both of the gadgets (which were previously displayed as separate shortcuts) ‘Requests I am Watching’ and ‘Incidents I Am Watching’. These gadgets now also have additional attributes: Description, Customer ID and Name.
• The ‘Service Affected’ attribute on Service Requests is now populated whereas previously this was displaying as a blank on some queries.
• The Analyst dashboard no longer updates automatically. This ensures that Analysts stop receiving Shibboleth timeout errors. The page will update after Analyst interaction or by pressing F5.

Searching:

• The functionality to search across incidents and service requests at the same time has been added.
• The functionality to search via the logged on behalf of user has been added.

Email:

• Alternative Email address and phone numbers can be added to a ticket. These are only stored against that ticket instance and the alternative emails are added as CC recipients.
• A warning line has been added to customer facing emails: “Please note that only replies from Newcastle University email addresses will be accepted; replies from any other email address will be rejected.”

User Friendliness:

• Some of the ticket windows (after being Saved) were overflowing off the screen width ways thus introducing the need to use a horizontal scroll bar. This has been fixed, ensuring that the window width fits to one page.
• All ‘Assign to Me’ actions (for the various stages of each of the processes) produce an “Are you sure you want to do this” confirmation pop up box.

Changes/Bug Fixes within Self-Service

Functionality:

• The carrying through of the on behalf of user from tickets logged in self-service has been fixed. Previously this was not pulling through to the ticket record as it should.
• If a user has a ticket logged on behalf of them then it now appears in their ‘My Open tickets’ gadget in self-service whereas previously it did not.
• When a customer adds a note whilst the ticket is at a status of ‘With Customer”, the ticket is automatically brought back from customer. This includes a customer replying to an email.
• For Service Requests submitted via self-service, the ‘Top Level Service Item’ attribute was not being populated. This has been fixed.

Read Only aspects:

• The graphs on the How We’re Doing page in Self Service now shows historic data providing more complete results.
• The Contact Us and Out of Hours Help gadgets on the Contact Us page have had text updates to inform customers that calls are being recorded.
• A read only gadget on the IT Support page of Self Service has been created to show tickets awaiting initial assessment. Gadget name: Awaiting Initial Assessment.

We will be deploying an update to NU Service that will include some fixes and wish-list items on Monday 17th March between 17:00 and 20:00

Please ensure that you save your work and are logged out of the system by 17:00 on Monday 17th March 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 on Tuesday 18th March.

Details of the release will be posted on the blog; a link will be included in the post-release email.  Please contact me or any member of the Service Process team if you have any questions about this release.