Analyst

As an analyst, your primary role is to provide support to your customers. You also have to ensure the fulfillment of all requirements that are related to processes and service level agreements.

The analyst interface provides you all the tools that are required to create, monitor, and fulfill different types of requests.

The key features that are available to you are:

Manage and track tickets during their lifecycle.
Act on outstanding approvals, reviews, and service feedback surveys.
Create and maintain the CMDB of IT devices, services, and other supported items.
Configure, generate, and schedule reports.
Perform global search on all components in the database, like tickets, CIs, knowledge articles, assets, and attachments.
Relate assets, CIs, and other tickets to a ticket.
View Assets, CIs, and other items that are related to a ticket from the ticket details page.

This article contains the following topics:

A workspace is a working area of the application window where you can perform various tasks. The workspaces available vary depending on the permissions that are granted, types of services that are subscribed, or your role. All workspaces have a brief description in the sidebar panel that provides basic information about the workspace. You can view the workspaces available to you by clicking WORKSPACES in the main menu bar.

All workspaces also have an Actions button, which displays a list of actions that can be taken on that workspace. When you click this button, the different actions available are grouped based on the type of action. Actions are specific to each workspace, and the administrator manages permissions to the options available to you. Set as Homepage is available on all workspaces.

You cannot have access to all the workspaces described in this article. Even within a given workspace, there are some fields or sections that are described, but are not available. This document describes what is available by default. However, your application administrator manages access to different workspaces and the view available to different user groups.

Analyst Workspaces

As an analyst you use Serviceaide Intelligent Service Management for tasks that are related to logging and managing tickets. The WORKSPACES menu is your gateway to perform your primary activities as an analyst.

The workspaces available to you are as follows:

Ticket Center Workspace

This workspace is the primary place for analysts to view and interact with tickets. This workspace displays the Announcements section, and the Tickets section. The Search tab allows you to search for tickets within the ticket list. You can search for tickets using parameters such as ticket description, ticket ID, and ticket details. You can also search for tickets with parameters such as Reason Code, Requester, and Requested For. The sidebar panel displays more information about tickets. The Tickets Needing Attention, Tickets By Group, and the Tickets By Age charts shows the relevant information for the tickets. The Actions button displays all actions that are available to you on this workspace. Export the ticket list to PDF or CSV format by using the Print to PDF or Export to CSV options. All actions are available in both, List and Grid view. The ticket list cannot be sorted in the list view. The SLA compliance and VIP user icons cannot be displayed in the grid view.

Note: Based on permissions granted to you by the administrator you can also view tickets for all organizations and support groups that you are a member of.

Tickets by Group Chart:

This dashboard chart is available in the sidebar panel. The chart displays information about tickets that are assigned to different support groups that you are a member of. To view only tickets that are assigned to a specific group, click the respective bar in the chart. The ticket list is filtered to display only tickets that are assigned to the selected group.

Tickets by Age Chart:

This dashboard chart in the sidebar panel displays information about the aging of tickets in your queue. For example, to view open tickets for a selected time period, click the respective bar in the chart. The ticket list is filtered to display only tickets open for the selected period.

Service Catalog Workspace

The Service Catalog workspace displays a list of items that you can use to log fulfillment requests. Use this view to search and request for different items regarding your role in the organization. You can filter the catalog on the popularity of the items (depending on most frequently requested items). You can also select a category from the drop-down list to view requests in the selected category.

Outstanding Items Workspace

The Outstanding Items workspace displays a list of outstanding tasks that require your action and contains the following sections:

Approvals - Tickets pending your approval.
Review - Tickets pending your review.
Article Approvals - KB Articles pending your approval.
Article Reviews - KB Articles pending your review.
Feedback - Service feedback surveys pending your comments.

Knowledge Management Workspace

The workspace displays information about the knowledge articles in the knowledge base. This workspace also displays dashboards and KB article categories.

The dashboard contains the following charts:

Top Categories by Count
Top Categories by Rating

These charts provide a snapshot view of the KB article categories that are frequently viewed and have the highest rating. Drill down to view knowledge articles of a specific category by navigating to that category.

KB Article Categories:

The administrator can select the KB article categories to be displayed in this section. Knowledge Articles from the selected categories are displayed in this workspace.

In addition to these main sections, the workspace also displays the Recently Modified and Top Rated Articles portlet. These sidebar panels display the three most recently modified, newly created, and the three most highly rated knowledge articles. You can also use the Search tab to search for a specific article or type of article.

The administrator manages access to a knowledge article by assigning permissions to each article. Permissions can be assigned to user, groups, or roles. The dashboards, portlets, and search results contain only those knowledge articles that you have permissions to view.

Configuration Management Workspace

The workspace displays a list of configuration items that make up the IT infrastructure of your organization. You can view the dashboards for information about any planned or scheduled changes. You can see the currently affected Configuration Items (CIs) and can be prepared against any unplanned outages. You can also use filters to manage the list of configuration items displayed.

The Upcoming Change and Affected CIs displays the CIs that are related to open Change, Incident, or Problem tickets. The CI Count by Status displays a chart with the CI count by status.

Global Search Workspace

The workspace provides you the ability to search for records across the application. You can narrow the search using the filter options available.

The search field allows you to enter text for indicating what you want to search for. The search field is a free text field. The Categories and Last Modified filters allow you to indicate the type of records to be included in the search. You can filter records on when they were last modified.

Scratchpad Workspace

The workspace enables you to take notes from the requester calling in for IT support or services. You can use the notes to log a ticket on behalf of the requester. The tickets you log and the configuration items that are related to the requester are available on the scratchpad.

You can open the scratchpad in the following ways:

From the Scratchpad workspace.

From the Scratchpad tab in the Ticket Center workspace.

From the Scratchpad tab in the Global Search workspace.

The Ticket Information, Related Tickets, Relate CIs, and Related Assets display information that gives you a snapshot of the requester. In addition to these sections, the User Badge, User Statistics: Last 90 Days, and User Notes portlets are displayed in the side panel.

The User Badge portlet displays the name, online status, primary organization, email, and phone number of a contact. The User Statistics portlet displays statistics for the last 90 days. You can see the count for tickets where the user is the Requester, or Requested For. The User Notes displays special notes about the related contact. The information is maintained in the contact records, and is used to provide useful information about the related contact. Click the expand icon to view the complete notes. You can add or edit the notes and save the changes. For more information about logging a ticket using Scratchpad, see Log Tickets.

Action button and Type of Actions

The application administrator manages access to the actions by assigning permissions. The actions are grouped under the following types:

Service Desk

This group lists service desk-specific actions that are taken on the workspace or navigation menu.

For example, the actions under Service Desk in the Ticket Center list are:

Create Request
Create Incident
Create Change
Create Problem
Create KB Article
Set as Home Page

On a ticket view, the actions under Service Desk are:

Create Task
Create Task from Template
Create New
Copy to New
Save
Save & Exit
Send Mail

This group lists a common workspace action Set as Homepage and is available across all workspaces.

Workflow

Actions that are grouped as workflow actions manage the state and status of the record. Workflow actions on tickets move the ticket through the lifecycle.

Common Workspace Actions

While the actions available on all workspaces are different; a set of common actions are available on all workspaces.

Follow these steps:

Set as Home Page: Navigate to the desired workspace, click Action, and select Set as Home page.
View lists in the Grid view or List view: Navigate to WORKSPACES> SERVICE DESK, and Ticket Center. Click to view the tickets in the Grid view or click to view the tickets in the List view. You can switch between the list and grid view for All Configuration Items in the Configuration Management workspace.

Intelligent Service Management - English