FAQ's in Admin Module

 

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User

Technician Auto Assign

Mail Server Settings

Notification Rules

Survey

Data Archiving

User

1. I have purchased a 10-technician license. What is the maximum number of technicians that can be added ?

You can add an unlimited number of technicians in ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand. The license is based on the number of technician login (i.e) since you have purchased 10 technician licenses, only 10 technicians will be able to log in to ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand and work with the application. The remaining technicians will be considered as Non-Login technicians. Login permission cannot be enabled for these technicians, but you can configure to send SLA violation emails, group notifications and scheduled reports to these technicians. A typical case where non-login technicians can be used is for your Field Technicians, who need not log into the application but be notified about the issues which are assigned to them. When a Request is assigned to these technicians, they will receive a notification email from ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand in their Blackberries and when they reply to the notification email after completing their job, ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand appends this email into the original request automatically.

2. Is it possible for a requester to view all requests of his/her department without changing him/her as technicians ?

Yes it is possible. Go to Setup --> Users & Permissions --> Users --> Requesters --> Edit Requester and choose from the options listed beside 'Requester allowed to view' under the Department Details column.

 

3. I would like to delete a technician. But what will happen to the Requests, Problems and Changes associated to him ?

When you delete a technician, all the closed Requests, Problems and Changes will still remain assigned to his name as a historic reference. 
Requests, Problems and Changes in any other status (resolved, open, etc) except the closed status will move to unassigned status.

 

4. Can requesters add tasks?

No, only technicians and administrators can add tasks and delegate work accordingly.

 

5. How do I define access permissions for my technicians?

Here, this link must be useful. Click here.
 

6. I want to send notifications via SMS to my technicians. How do I configure it in ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand?

This link must help you. Click here.

 

7. How do I change a Technician to a Requester?

Go to Setup > Users > Technicians. From the list view, choose the technician(s) whom you want to change as Requester(s). Click the Actions tab and select 'Change as Requester'.

 

8. How do I change a Requester into a Technician?

Go to Setup > Users > Requesters. From the list view, choose the Requester whom you want to change as Technician. Click on this icon  and fill in the relevant details on the page that follows. 

 

Technician Auto-Assign

 

1. How do I automatically assign tickets to technicians?

With Technician Auto Assign, you can allocate tickets to the technicians automatically. The Technician Auto Assign follows a Round Robin Method or Load Balancing Technique to assign technicians based on their availability. If the technician is not available on the due by date of the request, he will not be assigned to that request. 
Technician Auto Assign is executed after the SLA is applied to the request. If the site is specified for a request, then the technicians associated to that site alone are considered. Similarly, if group is specified in a request, the technicians associated to the group are taken into account. 
Round Robin Method: In this method, the tickets are assigned equally to all the technicians in an order and starts again from the same order of the list. This way all the incoming tickets are equally distributed among the available technicians. 
Load Balancing Technique: Technicians with the least number of requests will be assigned to the request. If more than one technician has the least load, then any one of the technicians will be assigned to the request.  This configuration is available at Setup > Automation > Technician Auto Assign.

Mail Server Settings

1. I do not want some emails to be fetched into ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand such as, Out of office emails. Can this be enabled?

You can configure these rules in the Spam filter (Setup > Mail server settings > Spam Filter) in such a way that mails matching certain criteria will be fetched from the mailbox and dropped before it reaches ServiceDesk Plus.

 

2. If the mail fetching stops for some reason, how do I get to know about the problem immediately?

Enable the 'Send an e-mail when an Application Error Occurs' option from Technician notifications under Setup --> Automation --> Notification Rules --> Other notifications.

3. What is E-mail Command? How do I configure it in ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand?

E-Mail Command is used to parse the incoming e-mail and set various request field values like Category, Status, Priority, Level etc, from the e-mail content. You can access it from Setup --> Mail Settings --> E-mail Command.
When Enable E-Mail Command check box is chosen and incoming e-mail subject contains the E-mail Subject contains field value, the e-mail content will be parsed and the request fields will be set based on the Command Delimiter field value. Any special character (@@, ##, $$, %%, &&, so on) can be provided as the Command Delimiter. The field values assigned between these special characters is assigned to the corresponding fields in the request form. The fields that can be parsed on the e-mail are, LEVEL, MODE, PRIORITY, URGENCY, IMPACT, IMPACTDETAILS, CATEGORY, SUBCATEGORY, ITEM, GROUP, TECHNICIAN, TECHNICIANEMAIL, REQUESTER, REQUESTEREMAIL, REQUESTID, REQUESTTEMPLATE, REQUESTTYPE, STATUS, SITE, ASSET, RESOLUTION and additional field label (the field label given in the e-mail must match the field label set in the product).
Note: Enable E-mail Command check box should be selected to activate e-mail command feature. If this option is not selected, then the incoming e-mail will be handled as normal e-mail even if the incoming e-mail contains the parsing string in the subject.

 

4. What are the operations that can be performed with E-mail Command?

The operations that can be performed with E-mail Command are, creating requests, updating requests, closing requests and assigning requests to other technicians. The operating string for these operations are "Operation = AddRequest", "Operation = EditRequest", "Operation = CloseRequest" and "Operation = PickupRequest".

 

Notification Rules

 

1. How do I avoid sending notifications to some users or to users belonging to a specific domain i.e I do not want notifications to be sent for Out of Office replies.

Click on Setup --> Automation --> Notification Rules --> Requests and scroll down to the end of the page where you will find the option 'Disable notifications for requests matching the criteria'. Click on the 'Edit criteria' button that is listed beside this option, select the box that says 'Match the below rules' and specify the 'criteria' and 'condition' to match. This will help you avoid sending unwanted notifications from ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand.    

 

Survey

 

1. Where do I enable Survey in ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand?

Surveys can be enabled under Setup --> User Survey --> Survey settings. You can configure the default values for welcome message, email content, survey success or failure message, and thank you message. You can also schedule the periodicity of conducting the survey. 

Data Archiving

1. What is Data Archiving? How do I configure it in ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand?

Data Archiving is a process of moving old unused requests from the active database into a separate storage state on a routine basis. Since the application accumulates large volume of closed/resolved requests, in the long run, it may hinder the smooth performance of your system. However, these data may be required at times for reference, hence they are kept safely stored.
In ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand, Data Archiving can be found in the Setup tab under Data Archive block.

  1. Set the parameters of the requests that need to be archived.
    • The Status of the requests.
    • Time of creation/closure of the requests.
  2. If there are any specific requests that need to be retained in the active requests list, select the check box Allow Exception. Set the rules by choosing the parameters (Column Name, Criteria and Value) from the available drop-down boxes. All requests that satisfy these rules will be held within the active list.
  3. Save the settings.
 

2. Where can I view the list of archived requests?

Once the requests are archived, you can view the archived requests from the Request tab on top in the left hand side. Click on Archived Requests to view the list of archived requests.