4. Incident Resolution and Closure

Incidents are resolved when service has been restored to normal. Incidents can be resolved in a variety of ways including attaching a Workaround or a Known Error. A Workaround includes the steps on how to circumvent the problem. A Known Error is a problem where there is no known fix. There might be a workaround for the Known Error.

When you resolve an incident, you can select a Known Error, a Workaround, or a Knowledge Center article as a solution.

Note:

When the incident is resolved from the Classification state, it may be marked as First Call Resolved. This data is used in reports, such as Weekly First Call Resolution Rate, to keep managers informed about which incidents are resolved with the first call.
Users can automatically submit and then immediately resolve an incident if a Knowledge Center article presented from the submit form addresses their needs. See Viewing Articles When You Submit a General Request or Incident for more information.

The option to create a How To article in the Knowledge Center is available on the Resolve transition. Select Yes to launch the Submit form into Knowledge Management after you complete the Resolve transition.

The content fields in the Knowledge Center article are automatically populated with the content from the incident. Select Load Article Template to clear the populated information and replace it with the content from the template.

Restriction: You must have permissions to submit an item into Knowledge Management to create an article. For example, you could be a member of the Contributors role in Knowledge Management.

In the Resolved list, select one of the following options:

without Known Error enables you to enter the resolution details in the Resolution field.
with Known Error and with Workaround enable you to search for existing known errors and their associated workarounds.
Tip: When you close the item with Known Error or with Workaround, you must select an active Problem or Known Error. A problem or error cannot be selected if it is in the Closed state.
with Knowledge Center Article enables you to search for and select a Knowledge Center article to associate with the incident. To search for the article, click Search Knowledge Center and choose the relevant article from the results.

The Resolved Timestamp field is automatically set during the Resolve transition. It is cleared if the incident Resolution is rejected by the submitter using the Re-Open transition. The Resolved Timestamp field enables you to report on incidents that were resolved in a specific time frame.

On the Resolve transition form, you can use the Caused By Incidents Multi-Relational field and the Caused By RFCs Multi-Relational field. These adds traceability by allowing you to document that a change request was caused by the current incident.

Depending on whether the incident was resolved with a workaround:

If the incident was resolved without a workaround, it moves to the Resolved state, where it can be closed.
If the incident was resolved with a workaround, it moves to the Resolved by Workaround state. The incident remains in this state until the problem associated with the workaround is addressed. When the problem is closed, the incident automatically moves to the Resolved state.

From the Resolved state, a user can close the incident by selecting the Close transition. The Close transition launches a survey form, where users can rate their service desk experience. The survey form has four selection fields and a text entry field for additional comments.

The completed incident moves to the Closed state, indicating that it is no longer active. The final incident displays a total Survey Score, which is a summation of the weighted values of Courtesy, Responsiveness, Technical Expertise, and Overall Satisfaction values. The default weightings for Courtesy, Responsiveness, and Technical Expertise are the selected values. Overall Satisfaction is weighted at ten times the selection, for example, a selection of 1 would be weighted as 10 for the Survey Score.

Tip: The Satisfaction Dashboard provides four reports to assist in monitoring the responses to the satisfaction survey.

Administrators can change the weights by editing the fields in SBM Composer.

A second method of closing an incident from the Resolved state is the IT Close transition. This transition is not available to users in the User or Contact roles. This transition does not include a survey form.