With ITIL gaining popularity in the US especially in the last 2-3 years, more and more IT managers are looking at a ServiceDesk as the starting point to ITIL. It is surprising to see a lot of helpdesk managers starting out with a search for a basic ticketing system and over time they start to realize that they need something more than just basic ticketing. They end up reinventing the wheel when they finally find out that ITIL actually has answers to all the problems that they wanted to solve. (atleast from a End-user desktop support perspective)
Of all the different processes in ITIL, I think most people have realized tremendous value on the Service Support side. And in Service Support most people start with Service Request management and Incident management first before rolling out Problem management or Change Management.
So if you are considering implementing ITIL Service Support here is a first step with a video on “The Role of ServiceDesk in ITIL”. I have taken the liberty of demostrating some of the key ITIL concepts with our ServiceDesk Plus software. Feel free to evaluate any ServiceDesk software that suits your needs but remember to include ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus !
Here are the videos - Part 1
and Part 2
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:
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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