Incident Processing

This section focuses on Incidents processing by the agents.

State Flow

*This state model is valid for End-User incidents. Infrastructure Incidents do not have Rejected by User state.

Waiting Statuses

Incidents Prioritization

Incident Priority can be figured out based on its impact and urgency using a priority matrix.

The impact of an incident indicates the damage that may be caused to the business user. In SimpleOne, the impact can be categorized as:

1. Low
2. Medium
3. High
4. Very High.

The urgency of an incident indicates the measure of time until an incident has an impact on the business. In SimpleOne, the urgency can be categorized as:

1. Low
2. Medium
3. High
4. Very High.

Based on the priority, incidents can be categorized as:

1. Low
2. Moderate
3. High
4. Critical.

The priority matrix

Assigning and Updating Incidents

Once the incident is registered, it has to be assigned to the responsible person to be processed. To assign an incident, please complete the following steps:

1. Open the incident you want to work on.
2. Find the Assignment Group field, then click the magnifier icon to select a group to assign the incident to.
3. (Non-mandatory step) complete the same step for the Assigned User field.

The incident is assigned.

To perform any updates in the incident, please complete the following steps:

1. Open the incident you want to work on.
2. Change the desirable field(s).
3. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply changes.

Your changes will be displayed in the Activity log, that is located in the Notes tab (scroll down the page).

The following information is displayed:

1. Update author
2. Field updated
3. New field value
4. Old field value.

Activity view

Create a "parent-child" relationship between incidents

Create such relationship to link two or more incidents with each other in a "parent-child" model.

To create a child ticket, please complete the following steps:

1. Start creating a new incident.
2. Fill in the form, then scroll down the page and open the Related Records tab.
3. Click a magnifier icon next to the Slave Incidents field. The incidents list will appear.
4. Select desired incidents from the list and click the Select Items button. You can choose more that one item, in this case, all of them will be slaves for the master incident.
   1. The Level of Dependency field is automatically populated with the Master value and remains read-only.
5. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply changes.

If you need to make an existing incident child for another one, then you can skip step 1.

To create a parent ticket, please complete the following steps:

1. Start creating a new incident.
2. Fill in the form, then scroll down the page and open the Related Records tab.
3. Click a magnifier icon on the Master Incident field.
4. Select an incident you need to be a parent for this one.
   1. The Level of Dependency field is automatically populated with the Slave value and remains read-only.
5. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply changes.

If you need to make an existing incident parent for another one, then you can skip step 1.

Create an Incident Announcement

Create an announcement to inform about the Incident being processed.

To create an Incident announcement, please click the Create Announcement button in the Incident form.

In there, two types of announcements are available:

• Recovery – this type of announcement informs that some service or CI recovery activities have been started.
• Completion Recovery – this type of announcement informs that some service or CI recovery activities are over.

Create an Incident Task

If incident solving requires the participation of various departments, then you can create Incident Task for each of them. They will be related to the parent incident, but not like in the "master-slave" model. The better example is the "parent-child" model. 

To create an incident task, please complete the following steps:

1. Open the incident you want to work on.
2. Scroll down the page, then open the Incident Task tab.
3. Fill in the fields.
4. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply changes.

Create Relationships

You can create relationships between incidents and other types of tasks. For this, please complete the following steps:

1. Open the incident you want to work on.
2. Scroll down the page, then open the Related Records tab.
3. You can create these types of relationships:
   1. Solved by Changes
   2. Caused by Changes
   3. Related Problems
   4. Known Error
   5. Related Inquiry
   6. Slave Incidents

   7. Master Incident

   8. Related Articles.
4. To create these relationships, please complete the steps below:
   1. Click a magnifier icon next to the appropriate field.
   2. In the appeared window choose a necessary option and click Save.

Relationship types

Closure information

Based on the SimpleOne state model, when the incident is resolved, it must be marked as Completed, that will denote the incident closure. Also, the agent must provide the following details:

1. Closure Code
2. Closure Notes.

Closure Code

This code specifies an option of the closure. SimpleOne has the following options:

Closure Notes

In this field you need to put down information on works performed, and maybe other information related to this incident. 

Escalation Rules

There are two possible types of escalations: functional and hierarchical.

• Functional escalation is when 1^st level service agents are unable to solve an incident due to any reasons (lack of authority or competence), they escalate it to the 2^nd level to address.
• Hierarchical escalation is typically required when an incident is of a serious nature or a set of incidents may take an excessive amount of time. It's an escalation up to the management.

In SimpleOne, automatic incident escalation is implemented. How it works:

1. If the incident have not been processed for a certain period, and there is a risk of the SLA breach, then assigned person or group manager is notified about this.
2. If the things have not been changed, then incident urgency increases, the incident rises up in line.

3. If it didn't help, then incident urgency increases again, the incident rises up in line, the assigned person or group manager is notified about this repeatedly.

Also, you can keep the line manager of the agent informed about the incident activities by clicking the "Notify Manager" button on the form.

One of the examples of the hierarchical escalation:

If the incident solution was rejected by the caller (state Rejected by User was set) two times, then the automatic notification is sent to the agent's manager.