Incidents & Service Request

Team Huddle has the added advantage of allowing agents to highlight conversations and bring them to the notice of specific team members. It allows tagging a group of agents as well.

Yes, it is real-time. We even have notifications so you would be notified immediately once a message is posted in a Huddle you are part of.

If your Freshservice account is a Non-Business team (ESM) account and is located in the US data centre, you can enable the team huddle feature by following the steps below,

1. Go to Admin > Automation & Productivity > Agent Productivity > Team huddle.
2. Turn on the toggle switch to enable the feature.
3. Customize the settings as per your requirements.
4. Click Save to apply the changes.
   
   
   

An unplanned interruption, reduction in the quality or the failure of an IT service is called an incident.
A request from a user for information, advice, a standard change, or access to a service is termed a service request.

When an issue gets reported multiple times by the same user or a requester raises a new ticket instead of following up on an existing one, duplicate tickets can be merged together. To know more about what happens when we merge tickets, you can refer to the article here

Both Incidents and Service Requests can be associated with Changes. To associate a ticket with a change,

1. Go to the Ticket view page for the ticket you want to associate with a change.
2. Select the Associations tab and click on the Associate button.
3. Choose the appropriate option from the two given:
   • Change initiated by this ticket:  to associate or create a new change that was the reason for the ticket
   • Change initiating this ticket:  to associate a change that was the reason for creating the ticket
     
     
4. Depending on the selection, a pop-up window will appear with either the fields for creating a new change or a list of existing changes to choose from.
   
   
   

In situations where an agent might need to monitor a ticket which is assigned to another agent in the team, the ‘Add watcher’ feature can be used. 
When you are added as a watcher to a ticket, you will receive email notifications when there is activity on the ticket, like the addition of a note, a change in status, etc. 

Once you are added as a watcher to a ticket, you can remove yourself from watcher list by clicking on the “Star” icon within the ticket. You can only remove yourself from the watcher list and can’t remove other agents.

We can’t add non-agents as watchers to tickets. This feature is restricted to agents.

Freshservice displays a ticket's due date and time, based on the applied SLA. You can view the due date and time in the top right corner of the ticket view page under the following categories:

• Priority: The assigned priority based on the applied SLA
• First response due: The due time for the first response from the agent. This can be a reply or a public note triggered by an agent manually.
• Resolution due: The current due date and time are based on the applied SLA. This value may be updated based on changes in the ticket properties like status.
  
  

By default, the first response due of a ticket cannot be edited. However, to change the resolution due to an unresolved ticket, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Ticket View page and click on the pencil icon next to the Resolution due date and time.
2. Choose one of the applicable preset values like today, tomorrow, this week, next week, and this month. These values will be calculated from the created date and time of the ticket.
3. Select the Pick date and time option if you want to set the due date and time to a specific date and time.
   
   
   Please note that the ability to edit the resolution due can be restricted using an app. If you cannot find the edit option, check if the app Ticket Due by property customization is installed in your portal.

No, requesters would not be able to see any conversation that has been forwarded to a third party. The same goes for replies from the third party as these get added as private notes.

Approvals are available only for Service requests and not available for Incidents. 

Freshservice offers various bulk actions to manage tickets in bulk efficiently as part of your IT service management. Some of the bulk actions available for tickets in Freshservice are:

1. Close: Close multiple tickets simultaneously based on their status, requester, or other criteria.
2. Reopen: Reopen multiple closed tickets at once, allowing agents to continue working on them.
3. Delete: Delete multiple tickets at once based on their status, requester, or any other criteria.
4. Merge: Merge multiple tickets into one ticket, making managing and tracking customer inquiries easier.
5. Assign: Assign multiple tickets to one or more agents or groups, ensuring that they are being handled by the right person.
6. Status change: Change the status of multiple tickets at once, such as marking them as resolved, pending, or on hold.
7. Priority change: Change the priority of multiple tickets at once, ensuring that high-priority issues are addressed first.
8. Add reply: Add replies to multiple tickets at once, saving time for agents who need to respond to similar inquiries.
9. Impact change: Change the impact of multiple tickets at once, such as marking them as low, medium, or high impact.
10. Urgency change: Change the urgency of multiple tickets at once, such as marking them as low, medium, or high urgency.
11. Change assigned agent and group: Change the assigned agent or group of multiple tickets at once, ensuring that they are being handled by the right person or team.
12. Asset type change: Change the asset type of multiple tickets at once, making tracking issues related to specific assets easier.
13. Source change: Change the source of multiple tickets at once, such as marking them as phone, email, or chat.
14. Department change: Change the department of multiple tickets at once, ensuring that they are being handled by the right team.
15. Category change: Change the category of multiple tickets at once, making it easier to filter and categorize them.
16. Add tags: Add tags to multiple tickets at once, making it easier to filter and categorize them.
    
    
    

These bulk actions can save a lot of time and effort for agents and service desk managers, making it easier to manage tickets efficiently.

As an agent when you are working on tickets or accessing articles, characterizing them by adding a tag would help to track and segregate them with respect to issues or requests. You can filter tickets by tags and use them for reporting. Tags also serve the purpose of indexing search for solution articles.

Creating incident categories in Freshservice can help you classify, track, and prioritize tickets. It also helps streamline communication and ensure that the right team members handle the right issues.

Here's how you can create incident categories in Freshservice:

1. Go to Admin > Service Management > Service Desk Settings > Field Manager.
2. Click on Ticket Fields and scroll down to the Category option.
3. Click on the Pencil icon next to add new categories.
4. Under the Properties pop-up window, set the behavior for agents and requesters.
   
5. Under the Nested field Labels section, you can create the categories and sub-categories as per the hierarchical levels.
   
   

   Note: When fetching a reader output and assigning a nested field in an action, only the first sub-category in a custom object can be assigned, even if multiple sub-categories exist.

6. Alternatively, use the free-form text area to add or edit items for your dropdown. You can indent items by pressing the tab key once or twice, which will automatically be converted to dropdown items based on the indentation.
7. Click Done and Save the changes.

Once you have created the categories, you can use them to classify tickets as they come in. When agents create a new ticket, they will be prompted to select an incident category from the dropdown menu. The selected category will then be visible on the ticket view, and you can use it to track and prioritize issues.

Sub Categories work as the second level of categorization for your ticket. Make sure to provide a single tab spacing from the margin when adding sub-categories in admin-> form fields -> shared fields -> categories.