An Incident, according to ITIL, is any event that disrupts the work of the user. Incident Management is about managing those incidents i.e. bring back normalcy to the user, using workarounds or solutions. But the idea is not let any incident affect business.
So what is a Service Request? First, it is not a disruption of any service. It is generally (but, not necessarily) a request for something new like information or access. So is password reset an incident or a service request? According to my definition of incident, the user’s work is disrupted and it should be classified as an incident. ITIL V2 does classify password reset as an incident. But in ITIL V3, it is classified as a service request. The idea is that the service, as such, is not disrupted or there is nothing wrong with the service. The user only needs to contact the service desk to get access to the service.
When classifying your requests in ServiceDesk Plus, there are three options available:
- Incident
- Service Request
- Request for Information
Let’s understand them using examples. If a user calls into the help desk and reports he can’t access his email, that is an incident. If the user wants to know how to access the Intranet when he is travelling, that is a Request for Information. If a user asks for memory upgrade on his laptop, that is a Service Request.
ITIL V3 looks at Service Requests in a whole new way and calls it a new name too - Request Fulfillment. But that is something we will tackle later.
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