Create and Manage Groups

This article contains the following topics:

Serviceaide Intelligent Service Management allows administrators to create and manage groups. A group is a logical grouping of contacts. The group is based on the organization, role, specialization, or the support type. For example, create a group to work for a specific category of tickets that are raised from an organization. Members of a group can be from multiple organizations.

Some key actions you can take related to creating and managing Support Groups are:

• Efficiently manage tickets by creating different groups and automatically assigning tickets to each of them through process flows/auto routes.

• Define User For Permissions, Notifications, Assignment, Approval, or SLA Escalation to manage what support groups can be used for.

• Define contact information for support group to manage notification that is sent to the support group.

• Define Next Escalation Group for another Support Group to be used in SLA escalation for configuring escalation action.

• Manage end-users ability to view All Requests for My Organizations.

• Configure a schedule for support groups and relate holidays for the support group.

• Effectively manage permissions as permissions granted to a group are automatically granted to all its members.

• Enable organizational security by relating groups to an organization.

Default Groups

The application has the following default groups: 

• Administration
• Public
• Self-Service
• Service Desk (L1)
• Change Approvers
• CAB
• ECAB
• Change Manager
• Facilities Management
• Desktop Support
• Server Support(L2)
• Configuration Management
• Service Desk (L2)
• Release Management

Prerequisites

Verify the following prerequisites:

• The organization must be configured.
• The contacts are configured so that you can add members to the group.
• The escalation group exists if you want to configure the next escalation group for a group.

• The holiday list exists if you want to associate a holiday schedule to the group.

View, Search, and Filter Groups

To view a list of all the groups navigate to MANAGE> ADMINISTRATION> Tools> Groups. A list of all the group appears on the left column. You can sort this list that is based on the Group Name(A-Z), Last Modified Date, and Created Date. You can also search a particular group from the list that is based on the group name and description. Click Filter to apply filter on this list that is based on:

• Related Organization: Search for an organization and select it to apply filter.
• Related Member: Search for a member and select it to apply filter.
• Type: Search for a type and select it to apply filter.
• Used For: Apply filter that is based on the actions that the members of this group take. 
  • ALL
  • Permission
  • Notification
  • Assignment
  • Approval Group
  • SLA Escalation
• Status: Apply filter that is based on the status
  • Active
  • Inactive
• System Defined
  • All
  • Included System Defined

Create Groups

Follow these steps:

1. Create Group: Navigate to MANAGE> ADMINISTRATION> Tools> Groups> New Group.

2. Fill in the information, on the General tab.

   1. Enter the Group Name , Description, and other necessary information. Group Name cannot contain a comma. When creating a group verify that the group name has no commas (,). 

   2. Select which actions are available for the group through the Used For options. 

      • Permissions: If a Group is configured as used for Permissions, the group name is displayed in any Permissions lookup.

      • Approval Group: If a Group is configured as used For Approval, the group name is displayed under the Approval section of a ticket or in the ticket approval lookup of a Ticket.

      • Notification: When a Group is configured as used For Notification, the group is available for use in the To, CC, and BCC fields of Communication Templates.

      • Assignment: If a Group is configured as used For Assignment, the group name is displayed in the Assign To Group lookup of a ticket. For example, It can be used for assignment through workflow actions.

      • SLA Escalation: If a Group is configured as used For SLA Escalation , the group receives information about any SLA escalations that occur.

   3. Specify the Group Email.
   4. Specify the Group  Phone.
      Note: The administrator can classify a group depending on the type of activities. This facility is extended through the fields that are named Type and Sub Type. For example, ERP Group can have a type as Software Support and a Sub type as External Vendor. Classifying the groups in this way could help in specifying the actions that the group takes. 

   5. To enable group members to view organization tickets, select the View  Organization Tickets option.

   6. If Disable Service Feedback is selected, all contacts in that group cannot participate in service feedback process. Contacts related to the organization are excluded from the service feedback process if you select the disable service feedback flag. If you select the Disable service feedback flag for an organization, but not for the primary group, contacts cannot participate in the feedback process.
   7. Click Save. The new group is now created. The Members, Organization, and Business Hours tab become active for you to add further configuration to the group.

Add Members to the Group

Follow these steps to add members to the newly created group:

1. 1. Click the Members tab and then click Relate Existing User to search and add members to the group. Select a user and click Relate Selected Users.
      Note: The application does not impose any restrictions on the number of members in a group. You can add as many contacts to a group as you need. Also, you can relate a contact to multiple groups. No restriction is applicable on the number of groups a contact can be part of.

   2. To promote a member as group lead, click the drop-down button against a selected contact name and select Make User Group Lead. You can configure the application to send SLA escalation notifications to the group leads. You can also configure the group leads to be contextual approvers or reviewer for tickets.
   3. To mark a member as Group Viewer, click the drop-down button against a selected contact name and select Make User Group Viewer. A Group Viewer does not receive any ticket notification, however can view all tickets assigned to the group. Also, tickets cannot be assigned to a group Viewer.
   4. To make the current group as primary for a member, click the drop-down button against a selected contact name and Set As Primary.
      Note: While the contacts can be related to multiple groups, any one group is identified as Primary. This information indicates that the contact belongs mainly to this group. For all contacts with Self-Service License, the primary group by default is the Self-Service group. They can perform only those actions which are available from the Self-Service Interface. The primary group also controls aspects like the participation in service feedback.  If Disable Service Feedback is selected, all contacts in that group cannot participate in service feedback process. If you select the Disable service feedback flag for an organization, but not for the primary group, contacts cannot participate in the feedback process.

   5. To remove a user from the group, click the drop-down button against a selected contact name and click Remove User From Group.

Add Organization to the Group

Follow these steps to add organizations to the newly created group.

1. 1. Click the Organization tab and then click Relate Existing Organization to add an organization to the group. Select an organization and click Relate Selected Organization.
      Note: A user can be directly related to an organization as a contact or can indirectly be related through the user's group.

Add Business Hours to the Group

Follow these steps to add hours to the newly created group.

1. 1. Click the Business Hours tab and then click Add Schedule to add a business hour schedule. 
      Note: If you do not specify the business hours for the group, by default the group availability is considered as 24 X 7. Any business hours must be on the same day (i.e, before 11:59 PM). In any particular case, if the business hour schedule is going to the next day (i.e, After 12:00 AM), it is advised to schedule it separately on the following day. For example, If the business schedule is between 7 PM to 7 AM, then the schedule must be in two parts. First schedule will be from 7 PM to 11:59 PM. The second schedule will be from 12:00 AM to 7 AM. Defining group business hours provides information about the group availability for SLA monitoring. Therefore, if a group is available only for specific time, defining business hours would help. You can configure groups with a schedule where all contacts have the same work schedule. You can associate multiple schedules with a group. For example, you could have one schedule to be applied only for holidays or a schedule to exclude holidays. You can have one schedule for a specific part of the week; and one for another (like weekdays and weekends). Applying the schedules is used only to indicate the availability of a group. 

   2. Select the Holiday List for attaching a holiday list to the group.

Make a Group Active or Inactive

You can change the status of a group to Active or Inactive. Only the groups that are created by the users can be deactivated. The out of the box groups cannot be deactivated.