Role required: incident_manager.
Create an incident announcement
You can create an announcement to inform affected users that the incident is being processed.
To create an incident announcement, complete the following steps:
- Navigate to Incident Management → All Incidents and open the incident you need.
- Click the Create Announcement in the top right corner of the form.
- Fill in the fields.
- Click Save or Save and Exit.
You can create as many incident announcements as you need.
As a result, a new announcement is created in the Announcement table. It has a reference to the incident in the Related Incident field. This announcement record is also displayed in the Related Lists area on the incident form.
Incident Announcement form fields
| Field | Mandatory | Description |
|---|---|---|
Number | Y | This field contains an announcement number in ANCMXXXXXXX format and is populated automatically. |
| State | Y | Announcement state. This field is populated automatically with New when the announcement has just been created. Other options:
Only active announcements {state IS Published^via Portal IS Yes} are displayed to the Portal users. |
| Related Incident | Y | This field is populated automatically with the number of the incident. |
| Announcement Type | Y | Available options: |
| Service | Y | Specify the service affected by the incident. |
| Recipient Email | N | Specify the email of the announcement recipient. You can add more than one email, separated by commas. |
| Reviewer's Email | N | Specify the email of the announcement reviewer. You can add more than one email, separated by commas. |
| Subject | Y | This field is populated automatically with the subject of the incident. |
| Announcement Body | N | Type a message about the incident to share with the affected users. You can design the announcement body using the built-in editor functionality, such as by formatting the text, working with tables and media, lists, styles, and headings. |
| Signature | N | Reference to the Announcement Signature. |
| Description | N | Add a description for the announcement. |
| via Email | N | Select the checkbox to send this announcement via email. It will be sent to all addresses specified in the Recipient Email field. |
| via Portal | N | Select the checkbox to display this announcement on the Self-Service Portal in the Portal Announcements area. |
Create relationships
You can create relationships between incidents and other types of tasks.
To create a relationship, complete the following steps:
- Navigate to Incident Management → All Incidents and open the incident you need.
- Open the Related Records tab.
- Click the magnifier icon
next to the appropriate field. In the window that appears, choose the necessary option.
Сlick Save to apply the changes.
Relationship types
| Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Related Problems | The incident is related to the problems specified. |
| Related User Query | The incident is related to the user query specified. |
| Solved by Changes | The incident is solved or can be solved by the change request specified. |
| Caused by Changes | The incident is caused by the change request specified. |
Master Incident | The incident has a parent incident (a parent incident is the opposite of child incidents). |
| Slave Incidents | The incident has one or more child incidents. |
| Related Articles | The incident is related to the Knowledge Base article specified. |
| Known Error | The incident is a known error. It has a recorded root cause and a workaround. |
| Related Request | The incident is related to the service request specified. |
"Parent-child" relationship between incidents
You can create a "parent-child" to link two or more incidents.
To make the current incident parent to another existing incident, complete the following steps:
- Navigate to Incident Management → All Incidents and open an incident that you want to be a parent incident.
- Open the Related Records tab.
Click the magnifier icon
next to the Slave Incidents field. The incident list will appear. - Select the necessary incidents from the list. Click the checkbox icon
on the left. - You can choose more than one item; all of them will be children for the parent incident.
- Click the Select Items button at the top.
- The Level of Dependency field is automatically populated with the Master value and remains read-only.
- Click Save or Save and Exit to apply the changes.
To make the current incident child to another existing incident, complete the following steps:
- Navigate to Incident Management → All Incidents and open an incident that you want to be a child incident.
- Open the Related Records tab.
- Click the magnifier icon next to the Master Incident field.
- Select the incident you want to be the parent for the current incident.
- The Level of Dependency field is automatically populated with the Slave value and remains read-only.
Click Save or Save and Exit to apply the changes.
Parent and Child Incidents
You can close all child incidents related to the parent incident with a bulk action, without having to navigate to a form of every child incident. To do so, complete the steps below:
- Make sure that the parent incident is in the Completed state.
- Navigate to the Related Records tab and click the Close all Slave Incidents button.
The state for all child incidents will be changed to Completed, too. The closure notes and other service information will be transferred from the parent incident.
Also, when you comment on a parent incident, the comment you made is transferred into its child incidents in two ways, depending on the comment type:
- The comment in the Work Notes field is copied from the parent incident into the relevant fields of all the child incidents.
- The comment in the Additional Comment field is copied from the parent incident into the relevant fields of all the child incidents. A comment announcing notification is sent to the incident caller.
Create an incident task
If solving an incident requires participation of various departments, you can create an incident task for each of them. They will be related to the parent incident, but not like in the "parent-child" model.
To create an incident task, complete the following steps:
- Open the incident you want to work on.
- Scroll down the page to Related Lists.
- Open the Incident Task tab.
Click New and fill in the fields.
- Click Save or Save and Exit to apply the changes.
You can create as many incident tasks as you need.
Incident Tasks form fields
| Field | Mandatory | Description |
|---|---|---|
Number | Y | This field contains an incident task number in INTXXXXXXX format and is populated automatically. |
| Parent | Y | This field is populated automatically with the number of the parent incident. |
| State | N | Available options:
|
| Assigned User | Y | Choose a person to assign the task to. When an incident has been assigned to a user, the Assignment Group field becomes non-mandatory. There is a dependency between the Assigned User and Assignment Group fields. To learn more, refer to Restrictions for assignment. |
| Assignment Group | Y | Choose a group to assign the task to. When an incident has been assigned to a group, the Assigned User field becomes non-mandatory. There is a dependency between the Assigned User and Assignment Group fields. To learn more, refer to Restrictions for assignment. |
| Subject | Y | Add a short description for the task. |
| Description | N | Add a detailed description for the task. |
| Followers List | N | Contains a list of users subscribed to receive notifications about this task. This field is populated automatically. |
| Schedule tab | ||
| Planned Start Datetime | N | The date when the assigned person is supposed to start working on this task. |
| Planned End Datetime | N | The date when the task should be Completed or Closed. |
| Actual Start Datetime | N | The date when the assigned person started to work on this task. The agent should fill in this field. |
| Actual End Datetime | N | The date when the assigned person finished the work on this task. The agent should fill in this field. |
