Incident Entry Best Practice

One incident per request.
Why? Each incident is unique and could  require different IT staff  to assist or involve waiting for parts or a software order or have varying degrees of urgency. 

For example: a lab has 4 different problems (a broken mouse, missing keys on the keyboard, unable to print, or a software installation required on all machines), these should be four separate incidents.

The mouse may need to be ordered, the keys may be able to be fixed immediately, the printing problem may be urgent; and the software may need to be ordered.  If the incidents are separated they can be dealt with at different times, by the appropriate IT staff member.

Choose the most likely category to fit the incident.
Why? This determines who will most likely look at the problem first and will speed up the resolution of the incident.

It's an Urgent Incident.
Call the IT Service Desk at 3484 first.  An urgent incident is one affecting a large number of users or a critical core system such as Report Central or is of a time sensitive nature.

For example: a school server is down or a lab is needed for the afternoon and none of the machines can print.

Calling the Service Desk will ensure that the request is dealt with appropriately.   A caller may be asked if the incident has already been reported;  this is to ensure a duplicate entry is not created.

Incident Descriptions.
They should be brief and to the point.
They should contain as much of the following information as possible:

• What equipment or who is experiencing the problem?
• How many people are affected?
• When/how often is the problem occurring?
• Have any steps been taken to attempt to resolve the problem?
• Does the problem occur on a different computer with the same user , or with a different user on  the same computer?
• Is it a Windows or Mac computer?

Other Important Entries.
Ensure that the room is entered in the appropriate field.
An attached screen shot is immensely helpful, particularly if it is an error message.

Extras or “Thanks but no thanks” ….
We would like to keep the service as personal as possible, recognizing that we deal with people not machines.  However, we would appreciate if any extra comments such as Hello, Help, Yikes, Please and Thank you are not part of the incident details.