1. Requests

Escon SupportPortal Incident Management module helps you better manage the services provided by your IT services team. The requests module can be used to track outstanding and overdue incidents and requests that need immediate attention and thus improves the response time and resolution time of your IT services team. Apart from this, SupportPortal allows you to add relevant notes pertaining to the request that is being handled.

This note can contain any information such as the exact scenario of the request or how the issue was resolved. Also every action performed on the request in the SupportPortal application is stored in the Request History. Clicking the Requests tab on the header pane takes you to the request module. Here the term request denotes any service that is requested by a user from the internal IT services team. The requests can be submitted to the system via mail or a web-based form. Sometimes, the requests can also be placed through a phone call during which, the help desk agent has to record the details of the phone call in the web-based form and assign priority and technician based on the urgency of the request. The various actions that one can perform in the request module are explained in the respective sections.

To ease the process of tracking the requests posted by individual requesters, a Self Service Portal has been provided. This can be used by the individual users to track the status of their requests and to look up solutions from the online knowledge base. To access this self-service portal, the user need to log in to the SupportPortal application using their respective user name and password.

    1. Creating a New Request

When system users need a service from the system support team relating to any service such as software installation and so on, they can send a request to the team. There are different modes of placing a request to the system support team, such as web-based form, e-mail notification, and phone call. SupportPortal provides options to log details of a request originating in any of the above-mentioned forms.

To create a new request using the web-based form:

  1. Log in to the SupportPortal application using your user name and password.
  2. Click the Requests link available just in the header pane and then
  3. Click the New Request button just bellow the header pane.
  4. Quick Create

    Enter the Requester Email, Request Subject, and Description in this form and click Save. You can select the requester name by clicking the user look up button beside the requester email field. If you feel you want to add some attachments before submitting, then you can do so by clicking the Browse link beside the Submit request button.

    The Quick Create - New Request form comes in handy when help desk agent is loaded with work. He/she just has to enter the requester name, request title, and description. The other details can be filled in by the technician who handles the request.

    Providing Request Details

    In the Active request form, the first block - Request details has information regarding the request, such as status of the request, channel of request submission, and priority of the request. All these are drop-down boxes containing predefined values that can be added from the Configuration module. While submitting a new request, the default entry of the Status of the request will be Open. Depending on the form of request submission (phone call/e-mail/web form), you can select the Channel. For example, if a user calls the SupportPortal agent to report an issue and place a request, the SupportPortal agent selects the mode as Phone Call and then record the other details of the request.

    Based on the request content, the Number of users affected of the request can also be assigned. If unsure the default entry can be left as is. Based on the level the Priority of the request also changes.

    Assigning Request to Specialist/Technician

    You need to provide the owner for the request. You can assign request to a specific specialist/technician. Under the Assign information, you can choose the specialist/technician.

    Additional Request Details

    You can define your own organization-specific fields that do not appear in the New Request form, from the Configuration module. The fields defined there will be available in this block of the form. Depending on the fields, enter the required values for the fields. To know more about how to add user-defined fields in the new request form, refer to the Configuring Custom Fields section in the request form under the SupportPortal configurations.

    Selecting the User

    You can select the user from the list of users using the SupportPortal application.

  5. In the New Request form, beside the email field, click the requester lookup button ( ). The User List window pops up.
  6. From the above list of users, click the hyper-linked row with user name and email to choose the user.
  7. If the user list is huge, then you can choose to view only a select group of users by entering a search string and clicking Search. Now choose the user name. The name of the user is displayed in the User email field.
  8. Classifying Request Category

    Under the Category Details Block, there is a Category drop-down box. This lists the various categories under which a request can be classified. You can select the relevant category under which your request can be classified.

    Select the relevant Sub-Category from the combo box. Also select the relevant Item from the combo box. Specify the subject line to be displayed while sending the request in the Subject text field. The subject line will be displayed as the request title hence this is a mandatory field.

    Describe Request

    Once you have specified the details for the request, you need to describe the request in detail. Provide a detailed description with any other associated details relevant to the request in the Description text box.

    Add Attachments to the Request

  9. In the Task Details block, below the Description text box, click the Attach a file button beside the Attachments field. This opens an Add/Remove Attachment pop-up window.
  10. Click the Browse button and select the file to be attached from the file chooser window and click the Open button.
  11. Click the Attach button. The selected file will be listed below the Attached Files heading. If you have more files to choose, follow steps 2 and 3 repeatedly till you have attached all the relevant files. Please ensure that the total size of the attachments does not exceed 10 MB.
  12. Click Done. The selected files are attached to the request. Once you have done all the above, click the Add request button. The request gets added to the list of requests and can be viewed from the request list view which can be invoked by clicking the Request tab in the header pane.
  13. Adding a Reply for a Request

    You also have an option to add reply to the request in the request form. If you have an answer or solution for the request you can quickly add in the reply text block and add it to the request.

    The purpose of having reply in the new request form is, when a specialist/technician is reported about a problem which has been already cleared by him/her then, in this case he can create a new request, specify the solution and/or conversation with end user in the reply field, set the status as closed and he can close the request. Thus this option makes the job easier for the technician to specify the resolution and close the request immediately.

    To add reply, click the Reply tab in the request form. This opens the Reply text field. Specify the message in the given text field and add to the request.

    Modes of Creating a Request

    You can create a new request in one of the following methods:

  14. E-mail the request to the help desk team. This e-mail will be automatically converted to a new request in the SupportPortal application.
  15. Call up the help desk agent and report an issue or explain the nature of your request. The help desk agent will manually feed in the details into the application through the web-based New Request form available in the Request module.
  16. Log in to the SupportPortal application using your own user name and password and fill in the New Request form or Quick Create - New Request yourself and submit your request.

There can be other modes of requests also by which requests can get created. For more information on how to add additional modes, refer to Configuring Mode section.

    1. Viewing a Request

To view a request available in the SupportPortal Request module:

  1. Log in to the SupportPortal application using your user name and password.
  2. Click the Requests tab in the header pane. The next page lists all the requests available in the SupportPortal application. Unassigned and assigned requests that have not yet been viewed by the corresponding technician even once will be in bold text, while the viewed requests will be in regular font.
  3. Click on the Title of the request that you want to view. This opens the View Request page. By default the page displays Request, Reply, User, Organization and History tabs. The Request ID is displayed on the top left corner of the page above the tabs, and corresponding Subject of the request, too In the request tab, the data is grouped in a logical manner. By default this page displays Request Description, and Requester Details. The Status and priority of the request is displayed on the top right corner of the page.

Viewing Request Details

The Request Details block displays the Product, Type, Group, Organization, Channel, Number of users affected, Assigned to, Status, Priority, Created Date, Created By, Modified Date, Modified By, Due Date and Total Time of the request. You have inline edit option to edit all the request details under this block. To edit the details click the link available for each of the request details against each field. Say for ex. If you wish to change the specialist Doe to John Abraham for Request ID 14 then click the name of the specialist and select the specialist name from the list.

Viewing Reply Details

Viewing User - Requester Details

In the User Details block, the details of the requester such as the Requester Name, Contact Number, Department, Email Address & Mobile Number of the requester are displayed. You can not edit any of the requester details under this block. To edit the details you must use Users tab on the header pane

Viewing History

Next is the History block, which displays the changes / threads / mail transactions / that have been done within request and exchanged between the specialist and the requester, related to the request. The details that are displayed in the history are in the ascending order with the earliest performed action shown at the top of the page and the latest action at the bottom of the page. Conversations are listed in the ascending order of the time, together with performed actions. The history block is visible only if there have been any, notes and mail transactions between the requester and the specialist.

Viewing Reply Editor

Reply to a Request allows specialists to respond to the clients’ request. A specialist can only send reply to requests that have been assigned to them. If you select the option "Private note" then the note will be displayed as Public. Else will be listed as private. You also have an option to edit or delete the discussion notes.

Finally, you can enter the time spent details for the request, which is available left to the Private note option.