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iWise Service Desk (Incident/Problem/Change) FAQs


iWise Service Desk (Incident/Problem/Change) Answers

Do the iWise Service Desk disciplines integrate with the CMDB, Software Distribution, Remote Control, and network and systems management functions?

Yes. As outlined in the ITIL framework, the Service Desk is the single point of contact between service providers and users on a day-to-day basis. It is also a focal point for reporting incidents, problems, and requests. Therefore, it is vitally important that the Service Desk have access to an integrated application suite like iWise, which taps into a Configuration Management Database (CMDB). This allows Service Desk staff to provide better assistance to customers and users when resolving complaints or obtaining answers to questions.

iWise maintains interfaces to software distribution, remote control, network, and systems management applications using our open XML architecture, published APIs, and proprietary programs (DLLs).

To manage all changes to the mainframe or distributed environments, iWise uses the Request and Change Management applications.

Does iWise provide ITIL-based incident, problem, configuration, and change management functionality?

Yes. iWise supports - and in some cases, exceeds - the ITIL framework and best practices by integrating the following ITIL-compliant applications with the CMDB:

Does iWise include an integrated knowledge base or multiple knowledge bases?

Yes. The iWise CMDB provides a central knowledge base of iWise solutions for incidents, problems, changes, requests, clients, human resources, releases, and financial information.

iWise provides Solution records, which are used by the Service Desk to resolve issues, as part of its core knowledge base. iWise customers can start using the supplied knowledge base to seed the database during the installation process, then either modify the existing objects, or create new knowledge base objects (solutions) that mirror their specific requirements.

The sample templates used for e-mail notification and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) associated with products and services are contained in the iWise Knowledge Base.

Interface tools such as XML, ODBC, and scripting languages provide third-party product integration with iWise Service Management process functions. This allows you to apply all iWise Policy Management business rules throughout the environment.

Does iWise provide for management of customer-defined service levels on incidents, problems, and changes?

Yes. The iWise Configuration Item Definition Hierarchy allow the definition of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for specific products or services.

Customers can also define SLAs that address unique organizational perspectives. For example, outages specific to Department A can be compared to an SLA for a given configuration item (CI). iWise provides the capability to report and summarize data at multiple levels. Organizations, divisions, departments, etc., can have SLA definitions as appropriate for each independent of the specific hardware, software, and service SLAs.

The iWise CMDB hierarchy allows SLA definitions at one of three configuration levels. The lowest level is the component level, where you can specify SLA for a specific device that may belong to one of your directors and requires immediate action. The next level is the product level, where the customer defines SLAs for all of your Dell or IBM laptops. The next level is the generic level, where the customer defines SLAs for all PCs. The ability to set basic rules at a high level provides a high degree of automation quickly after implementation. Using iWise, you can address the specific or the generic in order to accomplish your support goals. To reduce the number of old incidents and problems maintained within the database, iWise provides summary data in the CMDB at various levels and perspectives.

iWise can be used to define products, services, and configuration items in your enterprise. iWise provides an ITIL-type Service Catalog function as part of the CMDB.

Examples of products defined in these applications include hardware and software items, telecommunications equipment, operating systems, software applications, etc. iWise Service Management applications also provide facilities to record all maintenance fixes (a subset of ITIL Release Management) that have been applied or are pending for each product.

The relationship between Product Catalogs and Generics is straightforward; Products are specific examples of Generics. "Windows/2000," "Windows/XP," "Windows/Vista" are all operating systems, but under iWise, they are specific Products that reference a Generic classification called Operating Systems.

Shown in the following table are sample products with the minimum required attributes:

Type Software Hardware
Generic Operating System Server
Product/Item Windows XP PowerEdge
Model/Version (release) Professional/SP2 SC1420
Vendor Microsoft Dell

Products represent the second level in the iWise data hierarchy. Adding products provides finer control over processes that use hierarchical data. Automatic incident assignment can occur when the hierarchy contains only generics; however, by adding product definitions, the result is more specific automation.

When you add products to the hierarchy, automatic assignment for incidents, changes, requests, and financial records occurs based on the support rules defined in the products record. Where you previously had all incidents reported against a type of PC assigned to a single group, you can now have incidents reported against a specific type of PC assigned to the group best suited to fix those incidents.

Can end-users log and query their own incidents via a customizable, adaptable web interface?

Yes. All iWise object types are accessible using the e-mail, web, and/or Windows interfaces. You can use a variety of customization tools to apply customer-specific modifications. Changes to the iWise Windows client are performed using the iWise XML editor.

In addition to the web and Windows interfaces, users can submit e-mail messages that automatically create iWise objects such as incidents and problems. The e-mail interface also functions as a basic notification and acknowledgement mechanism, and can address advanced bi-directional requirements such as the ability to add text comments or perform new record assignments.

When objects are assigned to users, iWise Monitor Agents use HTML templates to send e-mail messages to users' e-mail addresses based upon each user’s notification profile. These HTML templates can contain as much data from each object in the body of the e-mail as required. Any authorized user who knows basic HTML and how to locate iWise data can modify iWise-supplied templates.

iWise provides over 100 Monitor Agents to automate things such as escalation, notification, record generation, and third party product interfaces. These agents look for specific conditions in a record or set of records and take the appropriate business rule-driven actions. Customers can use the default processing rules for each Monitor Agent provided by iWise, or define their own specific monitors with unique processing rules.

iWise Monitor Agents execute at pre-defined intervals (hourly, daily, weekly, etc.) specified in each monitor record. The customer can also set specific execution intervals.

Can end-users query the Knowledge Base via a customizable, adaptable web interface?

Yes. The iWise Web Client provides customizable search capabilities for each iWise application. In addition, iWise provides a field-level search capability that scans the iWise repository and returns a list of records that reference the data string.

An important benefit of the iWise structure is the performance speed of each search operation. iWise allows unique contextual searching using traditional SQL tables, typically not found in other web clients. This is an important benefit of the iWise structure, because it allows high-speed search operations.

Does iWise provide integration into ERP and other business applications?

Yes. iWise provides an open interface structure to integrate with ERP applications such as SAP and PeopleSoft through the iWise XML interface. If the ERP product does not support XML, iWise can use other software's published APIs for integration. In addition, infraWise can also implement a specialized interface based on the customer’s requirements.

Another example of integration with other business applications is the Voice Response Unit (VRU) interface that infraWise has implemented for various customers. This interface creates an iWise incident object when the customer enters their phone number. It then extracts their information from the CMDB so that when you pass the call on to the helpdesk agent, the incident object contains the caller’s details.

Does iWise provide an easy method to generate ad-hoc management reports via the Windows and web interfaces?

Yes. iWise can use any ODBC reporting tool. However, iWise provides over 150 Crystal reports with the base iWise product that you can use as-is, or copy and modify them to suit your requirements. Many reporting tools, such as Crystal, provide a scheduling function to provide up-to-date reports that can be automatically distributed as required.

iWise contains an interface to Google Maps which provides an Interactive Map view (shown below). This facility shows incidents, or other iWise objects, mapped to the corresponding geographical map. When you click on the icon that displays on the map, it drills down to show the specific iWise objects created for that location. These objects can then be selected and displayed in their entirety.

Is the iWise Windows Client easily customizable?

Yes. iWise can be modified using XML editing tools such as XML Spy. iWise uses XML style sheets to customizing the various GUI end-user screens. In addition, iWise attribute objects describe every field that is stored in the iWise database. This gives your iWise administrator the ability to change attribute descriptions and add comments, and quickly make the automatically-generated help information available to the iWise web or Windows users when they request help. Help can be invoked by clicking the help icon on the iWise web screens, or by pressing F1 while the cursor is in a specific field in the Windows Client. The attribute objects automatically are also used to generate the iWise Web Client screens.

iWise help panels are stored as XML files and served up by a web server. This means that you only have to update the help information in one place, whether your users work with the iWise Web or Windows Client.

With Mod files, the iWise Administrator has a flexible tool to make external global label modifications, such as changing all occurrences of "Reported by" to "Reporter," without having to use the XML editor to modify the panel itself. Mod files streamline the maintenance and upgrade process so that rewrites of local modifications are not required for each iWise release.

Does iWise provide IT users with the ability to view automated diagnostic scripts based on incident & problem classification codes?

Yes. Each CI Alias in the iWise CMDB can contain iWise Analysis Scripts, which assist the iWise Incident and Problem Management processes. You can also define the problem or incident diagnostic steps in iWise Solution records. In addition, you can define checklists for each Catalog or Symptom type, which can be linked to specific incident and problem classification codes.

Up-to-date analysis scripts are a powerful feature that enables your Service Desk to resolve many issues that previously had to go to other support levels for resolution.

Any authorized iWise user can update the contents of these scripts/checklists, and they can be created and modified at any time.

Does iWise provide an easy-to-use, automated customer IT Service Satisfaction Survey capability?

Yes. iWise incidents include a User Satisfaction Survey feature that automatically sends an e-mail survey form to the user when their incident is resolved. The user responds directly to the incident survey questions through e-mail. The questions can bd easily customized in the e-mail template form.

Reports can be produced against survey data and used by management to obtain feedback regarding customer satisfaction with their various services they offer.

Does iWise allow file attachments to incidents, problems, and changes?

Yes. iWise Incident, Problem, and Change Management (and all other iWise Process Management features such as Request, Financial Contracts, Purchase Orders, etc.) allow the attachment of various file types. This feature permits the customer to store as many attachments as required.

Only authorized users may view or modify attachments, and only one user may update an attachment at a time, thus preventing multiple updates to a document from being lost.

Does iWise security include record-level authorization to prevent one group of users from accessing another group's information?

Yes. iWise provides for data separation, where multiple organizations can store all data in a common database but limit record access to the "owners" at an organizational level.

iWise provides internal record locking that prevents simultaneous users from updating the same record. In addition, iWise Authorization Groups (privilege class objects) permit record- and field-level security. iWise Windows and Web Clients use the same authorization group records, so there is no need to create authorization groups unique to the access method.

Multiple users can be part of an iWise authorization group. You can also include a user in multiple groups. This gives each user the ability to swap between multiple roles depending on his or her job description. For example, if a user's role is financial and he does not have update authority for problem or change objects, that user will only be able to display those object types.

Do the iWise Incident, Problem, and Change Management applications automatically report on the possible overall impact of each item? For example, what configuration item and business processes will be impacted by a change?

Yes. iWise provides "related product" definitions that can be used when an incident, problem, or change references a particular CI Alias ID and all related CIs need to be identified.

iWise incident and problem objects contain an impacted areas panel group that contains many functions, including:

You may also report by specific products for individual organizations. Within this structure, you can obtain reports for CIs related to the specific CI defined in the organization.

iWise Monitor Agents automatically calculate product outages. You can present this data through Crystal reports or HTML pages linked to the iWise Dashboard trend analyzer. This enables the customer to monitor items that disrupt historical patterns for any measurable time, ranging in frequency from milliseconds to hours, days, weeks, or years. For example, your helpdesk may receive, on average, 100 calls every day from 8 – 10 AM. If the call count spikes to 150, this creates an alert indicating a change in the historical pattern.

Does iWise generate and assign incidents raised via monitoring products such as NetCool, Cisco, TWS, and Omegamon (including classifying, prioritizing, and recording required information)?

Yes. iWise provides an open interface structure to collect data from monitoring tools such as NetCool, TWS, Omegamon, Patrol, and Spectrum through the iWise XML or E-mail interfaces. Each application that identifies incidents can automatically create, prioritize, and assign objects to a specific group of users to action.

In addition to using templates, you can create iWise Model objects with all of the required defaults. You can copy these models as necessary to create objects that contain the defaults.

Can iWise automatically log status alerts/exceptions as incidents in the service desk component, with the appropriate incident category, priority, and details?

Yes. iWise provides default templates to control what data is added during an automatic entry process. The templates that control this process are easy to modify using an XML editor such as XML Spy. When creating iWise incidents, automatic assignment occurs based on assignment rules defined in the iWise Configuration Item Definition Hierarchy.

What does iWise use to prevent message storms - multiple messages for the same event - from creating multiple incident records during automatic logging of alerts/exception incidents?

External applications, using the iWise XML interface, can automatically create incidents based on alerts/exceptions. As a best practice guideline, logic at the originating interface source is the preferred method to prevent multiple incidents for the same event type for the same error code. iWise provides default templates to control what data is added during an automatic entry.

Does iWise have a fully functional remote access facility available for remote IT users (i.e., Remote Workers)?

Yes. The iWise Web Client accommodates access from a variety of devices and methods such as PDAs, E-mail, Remote Terminal Services, VPN, etc. For example, home users can use the iWise Web Client to search, display, create, and update iWise objects. They can also automatically create iWise incidents or approve iWise change objects by sending an e-mail message to the iWise e-mail interface.

Does iWise allow easy-to-define automatic incident entry rules and automatically populate all incident fields according to the specific incident type?

Yes. iWise provides several methods of quickly completing data fields. Shortcuts, similar to macros, can be created to automatically enter standard data values based on each type of standard call. Default templates can be defined to control which data is added during an automatic entry process. XML templates are easy to modify and can include as many or as few automatically populated incident fields as required by the customer.

Does iWise automatically generate messages to reflect when an incident is reaching its MTTR (e.g., 50%)?

Yes. iWise uses Monitor Agents to periodically scan the database and send notifications based on user-defined threshold exceptions, including Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) measurements. MTTR reporting is just one of many KPI measurements provided with the base iWise product.

iWise Monitor Agents perform many operations, including the following, across all iWise object types:

Informing people of the conditions detected by the monitors can be done by various communication methods, including:

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