Provance ITSM: Discover Provance ITSM Service Desk: How Tier 2 Can Evaluate Tickets Better

By Chris Mahanes

This blog post will be the first in a series about the newest capability, Provance ITSM Service Desk. The goal of this series is for you to get a better understanding of how to use the ITSM Service Desk to achieve more efficient issue resolution.

What is the Provance ITSM Service Desk?

Put simply, the Provance ITSM Service Desk is the first iteration of the Provance ITSM solution in the new Unified Client Interface that is focused on tickets. It gives Tier 1 and Tier 2 support the ability to filter based on variables (such as ticket type, affected services and priority), dive deper into the services workload, and review ticket status information. Essentially, it gives Tier 1 and Tier 2 easy access to the most common support functions, improving efficiency and visibility of current workloads and activites.

Here is a picture of the Provance ITSM Service Desk. There’s a lot more to it though (of which I’ll explain over the blog post series).

Before I get into how Tier 2 can evaluate tickets better with the Provance ITSM Service Desk, I’d first like to discuss the underlying Microsoft technology: Unified Client Interface.

What is the Microsoft Unified Client Interface?

Released with Dynamics 365 9.0, it uses responsive web design principles to provide optimal viewing and an interactive user experience, no matter the screen size, device or orientation used. Whether you’re on a desktop, tablet or mobile, the experience will be consistent—no need to learn different ways of doing things.

The Unified Client Interface has allowed us to engineer apps for Provance ITSM that are more role focused, so instead of all users getting a generic view of one type of dashboard, we now have, for example, the Provance ITSM Service Desk, which gears information available in Provance ITSM and Dynamics 365 to Tier 1 and Tier 2 support. The Provance ITSM Service Desk is the first role-based capability that we’ve engineered and we have many more in the works, so stay tuned.

And just to note, the Microsoft Unified Client Interace is here to stay—it will be the preferred UI for Dynamics 365 moving forward.

How Tier 2 Can Evaluate Tickets Better

In this user scenario, I’m a Tier 2 support person and I’m about to start my day. So, the first thing I decide to do when I open up the Provance ITSM Service Desk is to review my pinned records for those items that I’ve pinned because I need to keep working on them this week. I also decide to take a look at my recent issues that I’ve worked on over the last few days (see the screenshot below).

The best part of the Provance ITSM Service Desk is that it puts the most important information that I need for my job at my fingertips. So, within the left-hand side site-navigation, I can also easily get to tickets or incidents or knowledge management articles for more in-depth review. Or I can change views from Service Center (where I am now) to Status Center (more on this later). I can also, very easily, slice and dice key information displayed in the interactive dashboard based on what I really need to see. So, here’s a screenshot of my Service Desk dashboard (note that I’ve minimized the left-hand navigation into icons so the charts are larger):

If I wanted to focus on Service Requests, I could go to ITSM Tickets by Types and click on the Service Requests bar:

This would bring up all my Service Requests, but notice in the screenshot below how all the charts now focus only on the different variables related to the Service Requests:

So, for example, the Tickets by Priority chart tells me how many high priority service requests there are (one in the screenshot above). Notice how in the left-hand pane, the three service requests are now shown, with one color-coded red, so I can easily click on that service request and review (review in the screenshot above). Once I’m finished dealing with the high-priority service request, I can clear the filtering and change my priority (screenshot below).

Also notice on the right-hand side titles (see screenshot above), there’s information listed that I need to be aware of, for example, if it’s my turn to triage. Here is where I’ll be able to see how many tickets need evaluation. And of course, if I select that specific tile, I’ll be able to see all the tickets right away. For this user scenario, I click and select Outlook is not sending (see screenshot below). And I get brought to the ticket form, with a Business Process Flow at the top.

If you’re familiar with Dynamics 365, with the normal UI, I’d have to toggle back and forth, but with the Provance ITSM Service Desk, I can pop out the left pane and it shows all the tickets, and I can toggle back and forth between the tickets while keeping the same view (see screenshot below), thereby increasing efficiency and productivity.

Changing my focus back to the ticket form, I can see key information, like who submitted it, their contact information, and the detail about the problem (see screenshot below).

So, the information is now more focused. I continue to fill out the form details. Then I want to move to the next stage of the Business Process Flow, so I click on Log and Categorize (see screenshot below). The Business Process Flow guides the agents through the steps and information that needs to be completed depending on the type of incident or service request that is being administered. The Business Process Flow ensures that your team gets the necessary information to effectively complete the task as well as produce consistency and reduce errors.

A drop down with all the important information that must be completed appears. Notice that it’s kind of cut off? That’s no problem within the Provance ITSM Service Desk because I can then dock this and focus on the steps that need to be completed within this given stage while still viewing additional information.

So, if I wanted to see if there’s any other tickets that have similar issues, I can look at the customer details, and see a list of all of Alan’s tickets. While I’m doing this, I realize that I have a couple of questions for Agent Cooper about the new hire Alan Turning, so with one click I can easily reach out via IM (see screenshot below).

The Office 365 integration really helps you be more efficient when it comes to issue resolution. I get the info I need from Agent Cooper and then I select the ticket type – Incident, so I can move to the next stage in the Business Process Flow, which is Investigate. I send an automatically generated response email to Alan to let him know I’m working on his issue, then I decide that I need to see if there’s a knowledge article available regarding this issue. I click on Activities and Knowledge and I see all the articles that are automatically suggested as possible resolutions to our incident title: Outlook not sending (see screenshot below).

So, I can read this information and work through the issue, or I can email the knowledge article directly. And if I scroll down (see screenshot below), I can also see all the previous activity, including the response email I just sent to Alan.