Functionality & Process

Question: What is the goal of Incident Management?

Answer: The goal of Incident Management is to restore normal service operations at the earliest while minimizing the impact on business operations and ensuring to maintain the quality of service.

The Incident Management process of BigFix Service Management supports the following stages:

  • Incident Identification
  • Incident Logging
  • Incident Categorization
  • Incident Prioritization
  • Incident Assignment
  • Initial Diagnosis
  • Incident resolution and closure

Incident Management also ensures communication with the requester throughout the life of the incident.

Any user can record an incident and track it through the entire incident life cycle until the service is restored, post-resolution of the issue.

Question: How does Incident Management work in BigFix Service Management?

Answer: The incident management module in BigFix Service Management helps users in:

Creating incidents

Assigning incidents

Working on incidents

Closing incidents

The incident in BigFix Service Management can be created in multiple ways:

  • Users can raise incident tickets via the self-service portal.
  • IT support users can open an incident ticket in the incident module of the work item board (WIB) on behalf of the requester.
  • An incident ticket can be opened by a monitoring tool directly via integration.

Additionally,

  • Smart suggestions display knowledge articles based on keywords in the subject line, which help in incident deflection.
  • Tickets are auto-assigned based on configured assignment rules.
  • The ticket due date is determined by the SLA, which can be set by the SLA manager.
  • Once an incident is created, the user will get an auto-generated email.
  • Stakeholders or on-call support can also be notified through SMS functionality (integration is required with the customer’s SMS gateway).

Question: What is the impact, urgency, and priority of an incident ticket?

Answer: Impact: Potential damage anticipated due to disruption of service.

Urgency: How quickly the resolution needs to be provided.

Priority: Priority is derived from the combination of selected impact and urgency. The end user or consumer can select the urgency based on the affected service interruption and the support user can update the impact based on the severity of the service interruption and its effect on business.

Question: What is a Configuration Item (CI)?

Answer: CI is the lowest level of detail an organization needs to capture and map various components that are being used to deliver services to the consumer. The CI is the entity configured in the asset and configuration board as soon as it is deployed and used as a service component to deliver the services.

Question: How do I associate multiple CIs with the incident?

Answer: To associate multiple affected CIs or impacted services, use the “Relate CI” button provided on the work items: Incident, Problem, Change, and Fulfilment.

Question: How do you find relevant knowledge articles in the incident form? Is it possible for the short description field to display knowledge articles?

Answer: When the user creates an incident from any offering on the right-hand side of the incident form, the “Search knowledge articles” field will display all the relevant articles based on the text entered in the “Describe the issue field”.

In addition, users can enter the subject in the search bar for knowledge articles, showing relevant results in the corresponding section.

Question: What is the goal of Service Request Management?

Answer: The primary objective of Service Request Management, (SRM) is to enable users to request and receive the required services from the support team. It also ensures that standardized methods and procedures are followed to handle the service requests effectively and promptly. The goal of the request fulfilment process is to record, monitor, and track the service requests (SRs) till fulfilment.

Customer expectations are set by clearly defining the requested items (service offerings) available, their cost, and the time required to fulfill them.

The other objectives of an SRM process are to:

  • Provide an organized channel for users to request and receive a set of services.
  • Ensure that all standard service requests have defined approval and fulfilment channels (follow the pre-defined process).
  • Provide an appropriate level of review and approval based on the request type.

Question: How does Service Request management work in BigFix Service Management?

Answer: BigFix Service Management service request module helps users in:

  • Requesting a service that the user is entitled to, for self or on behalf of other users
  • Tracking the request
  • Providing feedback and reopening the request in case the user is not satisfied

Upon submitting a request, it will move to the designated approvers (if any) and then to the fulfilment group. Once the request is submitted, the requestor will receive an auto-generated notification email.

An approval email will be sent to the personnel authorized for approval. In the case of multilevel approvals, the email will be triggered to the designated approvers in a sequence of the approval levels configured. Requests are auto-assigned basis configured assignment rules. The request’s due date is determined by the SLA, which can be set by the SLA Manager at the time of onboarding the service.

Question: What is the role of PIT in Problem Management?

Answer: The Problem Investigation Team (PIT) is responsible for determining the root cause, workaround, and/or permanent solutions for the respective problems assigned to them. BigFix Service Management offers dynamic PIT formation, allowing the problem manager to choose the members to be included in the PIT team to work on a specific problem.

PIT investigates and evaluates options for eliminating root causes and identifying & implementing corrective actions. PIT would look at temporary fixes which were used in incident resolution and after analyzing the root cause, accept or validate the temporary fixes. Root Cause Analysis (RCA) techniques are available out of the box to support PIT in performing and capturing RCA.RCA techniques are available out of the box to support PIT in performing and capturing Root Cause Analysis (RCA).

Question: What are the different types of Changes?

Answer: Different types of changes included in BigFix Service Management are

  • Standard change
  • Normal change
  • Emergency change
  • Latent change

Each change model has a different workflow, which is attached to each RFC at the time of creation. Change Initiators should raise the RFC under the appropriate change model which cannot be modified after the RFC is submitted for review.

Question: What is Conflict Detection?

Answer: Conflict detection identifies potential scheduling conflicts for a change request based on the configuration items (CIs), planned start date, and end date in scope for the change. It is mandatory to run conflict detection for all normal and emergency changes before submitting RFCs.

If the planned dates of RFC submission are changed at any point in time, conflict detection must be run again.

The two prerequisites for the change conflict detection to run efficiently are:

  • Existence of CMDB.
  • The affected CI should be selected on the change form.

Question: How can I access different services from BigFix Service Management?

Answer: Enterprise users can navigate through services in the catalog using the search bar, quick view bar and category view in the consumer portal.

Question: How can I raise incident requests?

Answer: End users can raise incidents from the related incident offering that has been configured as “Report an Issue”.

Agents can raise incidents from the WIB- Incident section.

Question: How can I personalize my experience on BigFix Service Management?

Answer: Users can set their application preferences by clicking “My Profile” on the top right corner of the home page to personalize the date format, time zone, currency, and preferred language. They can also choose to update their profile picture, organizational information, and contact information from available categories in the quick view bar on the home page. Delegations for approvals can also be configured to avoid requests getting affected due to unavailability of the approver.

Question: How can I fulfill a Service Request, Task, Incident, Problem, or Change ticket on BigFix Service Management?

Answer: Support users having access can log in and navigate to designated modules on the “Work Item Board”.

Once inside the relevant module, the user needs to search for the ticket number and start work on it.

Question: What are admin preferences in BigFix Service Management?

Answer: Configurable admin preferences in BigFix Service Management allow business admins to manage company or instance specific properties which can be turned on / off as per business need. Company specific properties are configurable for each company on a multitenant instance whereas instance specific properties are the common ones configured across the instance and are applicable to all companies on the instance.