My advice would be, don't force your customers to choose between Critical or Urgent, High, Medium, and Low; they will choose the top two every time. Years ago (1998) we came up with an Urgency scale that we still use today with only minor modifications (original/current at http://arsweb3.acs.unt.edu/helpdesk/urgency.htm), and are again implementing in Kinetic Request where appropriate since it is familiar to both our IT staff and our faculty/staff/students who have used our system in the past. The Urgency scale contains items that people can recognize and select as being their actual situation, or that of the customer they are entering a ticket for, and they are then mapped to the four default Urgency ratings. I have not inserted it into ITSM 7 yet since that is a fairly hostile environment for customizations, but if I do it will be a custom field with workflow to set Impact and Urgency per the new mappings at http://itsm.unt.edu/helpdesk/urgency.htm . For now I am keeping it in Kinetic where customization is the rule, not the exception.
Given a realistic choice of severity levels to choose from, most users will pick the one that actually applies. Given the less tangible list of Critical or Urgent, High, Medium, and Low, they will simply guess, and guess high. If you want rational business impact assessments from your customers, give them realistic choices that portray the actual severity levels of IT problems in your environment. Christopher Strauss, Ph.D. Call Tracking Administration Manager University of North Texas Computing & IT Center http://itsm.unt.edu/ > -----Original Message----- > From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Hale, Greg > Sent: Monday, March 24, 2008 5:54 AM > To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG > Subject: Self-Service for Business Users > > Looking for real world experience/lessons learned for > leveraging Self Service in a medium to large organization. > We are most interested in the process for Incident and > Request submission by Business Users. For example, are most > allowing the business to drive the Urgency and Support > > drive the Impact, or does the business have no input on > Urgency and Support drives Impact, neither the business > user/support sets Urgency/Impact, etc. > > We are currently struggling with this as there are concerns > that allowing the business to drive the urgency will result > in nothing but Urgent tickets/requests. How are others > working through this issue? We are trying to follow the ITIL > Framework of letting the Urgency and Impact drive the > Priority, but there seems to be some true resistance to this. > > Any experience, insight, or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. > > Thanks, > > Greg > > ARS 6.3 Patch 20 > Mid-Tier 6.3 Patch 23 > HelpDesk v6 > SLA v6 > Solaris 10 > Oracle 10gR2 > > ______________________________________________________________ > _________________ > UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org > Platinum Sponsor: www.rmsportal.com ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" > > _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org Platinum Sponsor: www.rmsportal.com ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"
