Incident Management
Classifying incidents
Make it easy to identify problem areas for your organisation, saving valuable time and money. Classify your incidents by selecting from a hierarchical list of issues that affect your organization. The 5 level issue hierarchy allows you to be as general, or specific as you need to be.
The 5 level hierarchy for defining incident classification allows you to adopt a category / type / item (CTI) approach, or an ITIL taxonomy that uses a more organizational approach.
This same classification hierarchy used for incidents is also used to classify knowledge base articles, thereby allowing a tight integration between incidents and problem resolution.
Once an incident has been classified, you can then create workflow and escalations based upon the classification you use for each incident.
Incident creation via quick-log templates
HelpMaster has a unique template-based design that allows you to model your business into job templates (incident types), action templates (things you do), and email templates (the correspondence you send to clients and staff). Link these templates to each other to create powerful workflow models.
Use these templates to log incidents quickly and efficiently.
Templates allow you to log the same types of jobs in the same way. This means
- 1. Speed
- 2. Consistency
- 3. Ease of use
These templates can be re-used in other areas of HelpMaster to assist with Email Reponse Management, Escalation and Web self-service. Read more about the template system of HelpMaster.
Incident prioritization
Correct prioritization of incidents and problems is a core concept of helpdesk and service delivery. HelpMaster makes this easy.
Each incident is prioritized via the Priority drop-down box that is populated with codes that you define and describe. Once classified, system administrators can easily create SLAs and escalation rules based on this classification for timely resolution and notification.
Incidents can automatially be prioritized by configuring rules that are based on other parameters of the incident.
For clients using the self-service web portal, system administrators can allow clients to determine their own priority, or pre-configure it according to a job template.
Escalation and SLA
The Priority Manager gives you the ability to automatically escalate jobs as they get closer to the SLA deadline, making sure that every incident is dealt with on time. Using a simple "query by example" SLA / escalation builder, create escalation rules that deal with all aspects of your business. Escalations can be as simple as sending a "hurry up" email to a staff member for a job approaching a breach timeline, to a more extreme action such as re-assigning the job, increasing the priority and notifying the team.
The Priority Manager allows you to create profile-based escalations rules that can cover all aspects of your service delivery objectives.
Reporting
HelpMaster uses the powerful and flexible Crystal Reports software to generate reports directly from the database. Find service bottlenecks quickly and easily by running one of over 120 different reports. New reports are added to the swap-shop all the time.
Reports can be exported to other tools like Excel for futher analysis.
Quickly get statistics like
- Who is my hardest working staff member?
- Who is my most problematic client?
- Which services are failing the most?
- How many jobs did we log last month vs this month?
- Are we getting busier
- Are we meeting our service level agreements?
Read more about the reporting capabilities of HelpMaster
Communication
Notifying clients, customers and staff
Whenever an incident is updated HelpMaster can be configured to automatically notify your clients, staff, management or anybody else that may be involved. When both staff and clients are informed as to the status of their job, they are less likely to call the helpdesk for an update.
Email templates can be configured to provide specific information about the nature of the job via the use of email tags that are dynamically replaced with content from the incident when the email is sent.
More than just email - build an automated email response service desk 
Go way beyond just sending out informational email. HelpMaster can also automatically create, or update a ticket based on an incoming email. Furthermore, use the HTML style email teamplate to embed hyperlinks to your web self-service portal. Once a client logs a job, they can immediately check the status of it via the custom web portal.
Use the Email Manager to automatically respond to customer emails, responses, or other network events.
Problem Management
Link problems to incidents via drag 'n drop
Once a problem has been identified as the underlying cause of an incident, HelpMaster makes it easy to link related information together. Simply drag a "problem" onto an "incident" to link them together. In fact, you can drag a whole bunch of related "problems" onto an "incident" to instantly link them together. There is no limit to the number of jobs you can link together.
Moreover, HelpMaster supports 2 different styles of linking - Simple and Parent / Child. You won't find this feature in other products.
A simple link simply relates 2 or more jobs together. This makes searching and finding related information easy and convenient. Related jobs are displayed in the "Links" tab of each job. Double-click to view any of the jobs.
A parent / child link allows you to create a workflow and establish a hierarchy of jobs. By linking one or more "child" jobs to a parent, HelpMaster will keep track of the order in which jobs should be completed in. When you link one or more "problems" to an "incident", ITIL problem managers can order, then assign each job to the appropriate team specialist for action and resolution.
"Known problem". Using the knowledge base.
Searching the knowledge base is just one click away from each problem or incident. Each problem is classified with the same classification code as the incident/problem code. This allows HelpMaster to perform an "overlap" search against the knowledge base and suggest the most appropriate knowledge base articles for effective problem resolution.
Knowledge base articles are easily linked to problem records via the universal drag 'n drop interface.
Known problems can be publicized via the web client portal. When a knowledge base article is classified as "Web enabled", or linked to a web-enabled incident or problem template, clients using the HelpMaster web self-service portal can browse a list of knowledge base articleson-line.
If searching the knowledge base does not assist them, clients can use the simplified web interface to log an incident, or check on the progress of existing jobs.
Escalate problems - meet SLAs
Problems require resolution....fast.
Sometimes however, things get delayed, staff get sick, jobs get overlooked, or for some reason or another your service level agreements or targets are not met.
HelpMaster can really help you meet your service level agreements by calculating the time of each job in absolute hours, as well as "Business hours", including non-work days.
Furthermore, by utilizing the "stop the clock" feature for jobs that have been classified as "on hold" , the helpdesk can accurately determine response times, resolution times, and closure times. By using this information in the escalation and automation process, HelpMaster can take care of the SLA, while you take care of the problem.
Get the facts
When problems lead to incidents, you need to know how, when and why they are occuring in the first place. This is where reporting can help.
HelpMaster ships with over 120 different types of reports, created with the powerful Crystal Reports engine.
Service managers can drill down, graph, chart, or examine the detail of every aspect of every incident and problem.
If the shipped reports don't have the detail you require, the HelpMaster community also has a reports swap-shop, as well as the providion to create, or modify your own reports and view them via the custom reports browser.
For report writers, HelpMaster comes with a fully documented database dictionary as well as full report writing support, including regular discussion posts and blogs about reports, database queries and helpful hints. The heart of every service mangaement and helpdesk application is a well engineered and supported database, and at PRD Software, our database platform for HelpMaster is ready for any data needs you can think of.