Project: Helpdesk & Ticket Management Solution
Key Deliverables: Online Ticket Management, Helpdesk, Client Support
Client: ABM - In House
Staff & Users Guide
Ref: http://sitracker.org/wiki/Manual
Proposed By:
Farrukh Dawoodani Project Manager
28 November 2014
Table of Contents
OVERVIEW .......................................................................................................................... 3
Features: ............................................................................................................................. 3
Data & Process Flow: ........................................................................................................ 3
Incidents ............................................................................................................................. 4
Sites .................................................................................................................................... 4
Contracts ............................................................................................................................ 4
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) .................................................................................... 4
Knowledge Base ................................................................................................................ 4
INCIDENT ............................................................................................................................. 6
Incident Log ....................................................................................................................... 6
Status .................................................................................................................................. 6
Closed Incidents: ................................................................................................................ 6
Next action ......................................................................................................................... 6
SITE ....................................................................................................................................... 7
Site Types........................................................................................................................... 7
CONTRACT .......................................................................................................................... 8
Service Periods................................................................................................................... 8
All Site Contacts Support................................................................................................... 8
Available Balance .............................................................................................................. 8
SERVICE LEVELS (SLAS).................................................................................................. 9
Service Level Targets: ....................................................................................................... 9
Timed Service Levels ........................................................................................................ 9
KNOWLEDGE BASE ......................................................................................................... 10
New Article. ..................................................................................................................... 10
Distribution ...................................................................................................................... 10
BEGINNERS GUIDE .......................................................................................................... 11
Login ................................................................................................................................ 11
Adding an incident ........................................................................................................... 11
Incident Details ................................................................................................................ 12
OVERVIEW
SiT! is a fully featured and mature application designed specifically to track technical
support Incidents, in addition to this it has many functions that help to manage a team (or teams)
of engineers and to improve engineer collaboration.
SiT! is not bug tracker, although it can be used to track any kind of issue, there are more
specialised tools available for tracking bugs.
Features: Web Link = http://sitracker.org/wiki/Features
Free and Open Source software! Licensed under the GNU General Public License
Separate incident queues for each user
Incidents can be assigned Low, Medium, High or Critical priority depending on customer impact
Send and receive emails within Incidents
Log of customer communication and engineer actions with each incident
Configurable service levels (SLA's) for different types of incident, for different priorities and for each customer.
Knowledge Base
Customer (Site and Contacts) Address Database
Configurable list of vendor, products association of skills.
Configurable list of engineer skills which can be used for sharing incidents amongst engineers with similar skills
Tags and tag cloud for incidents, sites, contacts and more
Fast search facility, including full text searching
Reporting
Triggers - Highly customizable user- and system-level notification and action framework
Data & Process Flow: 1. Customers
Organization Management
Contact Management 2. Skills & Products
Vendor Management
Products Management
Skills Management 3. Service Levels (SLAs)
Action / Responses
Due Timelines for Actions 4. Contracts
Assign Service Levels (SLA) to Customers
Assign Product to SLA 5. Support
Incidents o Adding an Incident
Defining Customer Incident Details Incident Queues Action / Responses
http://sitracker.org/wiki/Featureshttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Incidentshttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Groupshttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Usershttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Features
o Closing an Incident
Watching Incidents
Reassigning an Incident 6. User Management
Users Management o Adding Product/Skills
Group Management
Role / Permissions 7. Triggers 8. Knowledgebase 9. Reports
Each person to be supported in SiT! is called a Contact and typically must have
a Contract entitling him/her to receive support before an Incident can be logged.
Once an appropriate Contract with a related SLA (Service Level Agreement) is in
place, Contacts can submit support requests via a web Portal or by email.
Incidents are then assigned to queues belonging to a engineeers who have the
appropriate skills to find a resolution to the issues raised.
Incidents As is clear from the name Support Incident tracker, incidents are an important part of SiT!,
'Incident' is the name we use for what may also be referred to as a 'support call'. 'service request'
or 'helpdesk ticket'. An incident contains all the information relating to an issue raised by the
the Contact in a single place, everything from details of the current status of the incident to a
complete history of actions and communication over the period the incident has been open.
Sites Every organisation that you provide to support to is referred to as a site and each site can have
a number of contacts. Contacts are the individuals within an organisation that you provide
support to.
Contracts Before you can add an incident on behalf of a contact there must first be an agreement in place
to provide such support, these agreements are referred to within SiT as 'contracts'. Each contract
specifies which contacts can receive support, how long they are entitled to be supported and
for which product they are supported.
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) Each incident created is allocated a service level (sometimes referred to as an SLA, or service
level agreement) according to the service level set in the contract. The service level targets
define an amount of time allowed for the incident to reach a certain stage of progression,
ensuring your team meet these targets helps you to provide a better service. Targets have
different times for each incident priority so you can aim to respond to high priority incidents
faster.
Knowledge Base The Knowledge Base is a collection of articles written by Engineers and categorised
by Skill. Contacts can view the knowledge base by logging into the Portal or it can be
configured to be public.
http://sitracker.org/wiki/Contacthttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Contracthttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Incidenthttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Adding_Incidentshttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Contracthttp://sitracker.org/wiki/SLAhttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Contacthttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Incidentshttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Portalhttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Inbound_Emailhttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Incidentshttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Incident_Queueshttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Usershttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Skillshttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Contacthttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Updates_loghttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Updates_loghttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Contacthttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Producthttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Incidenthttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Contracthttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Incident_priorityhttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Usershttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Skillhttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Contactshttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Portal
This knowledge can be used to see the result next time someone has a similar problem, and fix
the problem faster, or the Contact can do it herself if the Knowledge Base's permissions are set
for this.
http://sitracker.org/wiki/Contact
INCIDENT
Incident Log As is clear from the name Support Incident tracker, incidents are an important part of SiT!,
'Incident' is the name we use for what may also be referred to as a 'support call'. 'service request'
or 'helpdesk ticket'.
Incidents are usually referred to by their reference number, what we call the 'Incident Number'.
Incidents have a title, an associated product, skill, contract and contactand possibly other
information as well. After an incident is added it is always 'owned' by a SiT! user although the
user can reassign this ownership while the incident is open.
Status Each incident has a current status which may be one of the following:
Active
Closed
Research Needed
Called And Left Message
Awaiting Colleague Response
Awaiting Support Response
Awaiting Closure
Awaiting Customer Action
Unsupported
Closed Incidents: Sent Information
Solved Problem
Reported Bug
Action Taken
Duplicate
No Longer Relevant
Unsupported
Support Expired
Unsolved
Escalated
Each incident has an 'Updates log' which shows everything that has happened during the
lifetime of the incident, a complete record of all contact with the customer, with colleagues and
with external engineers. Incidents can also have files attached.
Next action In addition to setting the status of an incident you can set a 'Next action' and a 'Next action
time'. The Next action is a label that can act as a reminder what is to be expected to happen
next with the progress of this incident. Examples: "Try to reproduce in Lab" or "Have a word
with Bob about this" or "Wait for customer to get back from vacation".
When 'Next action time' is set the incident will be placed in the Waiting queue. This has no
effect on the SLA.
http://sitracker.org/wiki/Productshttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Skillhttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Contracthttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Contacthttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Userhttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Updates_loghttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Incident_Queues#.27Waiting.27_Queuehttp://sitracker.org/wiki/SLA
SITE
Every organization that you provide to support to is referred to as a site and each site can have
a number of 'contacts'.
View sites by selecting Customers | Sites | Browse to get a list and then click on the site name
to view details of that site, including contacts.
We recommend that you never delete sites unless absolutely necessary, this is because each
site may have a number of associated records, such as contracts or incidents that are related
only to that site. If you do decide to Delete, SiT! will prompt you to select another site to receive
the associated records.
Site Types Sites can be organised by placing them into notional categories called Site Types
A default SiT! Installation comes with three built-in site types, but you can modify these or add
your own.
Academic
Commercial
Unclassified
To add or edit Site Types go to Customers | Maintenance | Site Types
http://sitracker.org/wiki/Contacthttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Contactshttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Contractshttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Incidents
CONTRACT
Before you can add an incident on behalf of a contact there must first be an agreement in place
to provide such support, these agreements are referred to within SiT as 'contracts'.
To add a new contract select Customers | Maintenance | New Contract and fill in the details
on the form.
Admin Contacts are not supported contacts, you must add supported contacts separately. Each
contract holds information about the agreement such as the product supported, the service level,
the number of supported contacts allowed, the number of incidents included with the contract
and the expiration date.
Service Periods Each contract is given a 'Service Period' which consists of a start and end date during which
the contract will provide an entitlement to Support for the supported contacts.
Listing Supported Contacts
To be useful each contract must have at least one contact associated with it. To add a contact
simply follow the link Add a support contact to this contract on the contract details page.
These supported contacts are the only people who can log incidents.
It is possible to add a contact from another site as a supported contract.
All Site Contacts Support You can set a contract to allow all the contacts from the associated site to be supported, if you
do this then all the contacts that are currently associated with the site along with any future
contacts that may be added will all be supported.
Available Balance Shows the amount available on the contract, which is adjusted as units are used
http://sitracker.org/wiki/Incidenthttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Contacthttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Admin_Contacthttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Productshttp://sitracker.org/wiki/SLAhttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Contacthttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Incidenthttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Site
SERVICE LEVELS (SLAS)
Each incident created is allocated a service level (sometimes referred to as an SLA, or service
level agreement) according to the service level set in the contract. SiT comes with just one
service level 'standard' defined by default, but you can add more or customise existing levels
to suit your requirements via SiT! | Control Panel | Service Levels.
The service level targets define an amount of time allowed for the incident to reach a certain
stage of progression, ensuring your team meet these targets helps you to provide a better
service. Targets have different times for each incident priority so you can aim to respond to
high priority incidents faster.
Service Level Targets: Initial Response
Problem Determination
Action Plan
Resolution/Reprioritisation
Review*
You can meet a service level target by making an update to an incident or by sending an email
and marking the service level you want to meet.
* An incident Review is a special type of service level target, the review period is not affected
by the working week it is simply based on the amount of time an incident has been open, to
review an incidentmake an update and mark the update type as 'Review'. Review periods are a
useful way of preventing incidents from dragging on and on.
The service level can also specify whether an incident may be reopened. In some cases it may
be useful to force a new incident to be created rather than an existing incident reopened.
Timed Service Levels A service level can be marked as 'Timed' which means that any incidents created under it will
have an extra 'Activities' tab which allows recording of timed activities for billing purposes.
When marked as 'Timed' a service level has three additional fields
Engineer Period
Customer Period
Limit
The first two additional fields specify the number of minutes that constitute a billing period.
The Limit field specifies a default overdraft limit (as an amount of currency) for contracts under
this service level. Activities will be allowed to accrue charges until this limit is reached. For
example if you set Limit to -500 no more activities will be allowed once the balance drops
below -500.
Incidents that are timed cannot be reopened, therefore the option to allow incidents to reopened
is not available for timed service levels.
How incident status affects service level targets
As an incident progresses it will change status many times, for those times that the incident is
not in the control of the engineer (for example when the incident is waiting for the customers
response) the SLA clock is effectively stopped until the incident becomes active again.
http://sitracker.org/wiki/Incidenthttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Contracthttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Incident_priorityhttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Reviewhttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Updating_Incidentshttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Activitieshttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Billinghttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Billinghttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Incidenthttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Users
KNOWLEDGE BASE
The Knowledge Base is a collection of articles written by Engineers and categorized by Skill.
You can add a knowledge base article by going to Knowledge Base | New Article
You can also add knowledge base articles when you close an incident, put a checkmark next to
New Article.
New Article. Each article is made up of one or more optional sections: Summary, Symptoms, Cause,
Question, Answer, Solution, Workaround, Status, Additional Information and References.
You can use as many or as few sections as you like, use the sections that you think will best fit
the situation you are describing in your article.
Distribution You can set the distribution of your article to decide who gets to see it.
Public appears in the portal for contacts to view (or everybody if SiT! is configured for a public
knowledge base
Private is information that can only be viewed by Users and should never to be released to the
public
Restricted is information that can only be viewed by Users but could be mentioned to the
public if asked, for example: information about patch that is still in development
http://sitracker.org/wiki/Usershttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Skillhttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Portalhttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Configuring#Portalhttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Configuring#Portalhttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Usershttp://sitracker.org/wiki/Users
BEGINNERS GUIDE
This basic tutorial walks you through some common tasks.
Login First we need to login, if you haven't got an account yet, you'll have to ask your administrator
to create you one
After logging in you'll be presented with your dashboard, we'll configure your dashboard later,
but for now you might want to notice that there are various information panels (dashboard
components) and that you can drag these around your dashboard to position them how you like
Adding an incident Let's add an incident to see how they work, first go to the Support menu then choose Add
Incident. The first step to adding an incident is to find the contact we'd like to add an incident
for by typing the contacts name or site into the search box. Note that the box autocompletes
from the letters you type.
http://sitracker.org/wiki/File:Sit330login.jpghttp://sitracker.org/wiki/File:Sit330dashempty.jpghttp://sitracker.org/wiki/File:Sit330add1.jpg
After hitting Find Contact you are presented with several lists with options of which person
and which contract to log the incident under. As you can see for this search of 'John' there are
two contracts that match but one of them is terminated. You can ignore the second list for now,
that shows all the contacts matching 'John' and allows you to log an incident against the site
rather than the contract. For now lets click Add Incident next to contract 4, the second row.
This will start to log a new incident under contract 4.
Incident Details Now we get to the part where we actually describe what the incident is about, first we select
which skill we are supporting, a list of skills available via this contract is shown in the drop
down list. Then we give the incident a title and begin to fill in as much detail as we can about
the problem.
At the bottom of the page we can choose to send an email to the customer confirming that an
incident has been logged and informing him of the incident number. We can also set the priority
of the incident, it is best to base this on the actual impact the problem is having on the customer.
A low priority might be suitable for a general usage question, whereas critical priority would
usually mean the customer is severely affected and cannot continue without help. Once we're
happy the add incident form is filled in a fully as we can we click the **Add Incident** button
at the bottom.
http://sitracker.org/wiki/File:Sit330add2.jpg
The newly created incident is then assigned to a user based on a weighted lottery taking into
account factors such as number of incidents, appropriate skills, status and more. This
functionality can be turned off to allow incidents to be assigned manually.
http://sitracker.org/wiki/File:Sit-add-incident-3_51.png
