Don’t let your End users Define Priority

When an end user sends a request, he always expects it to be considered as High priority. Even if it is a minor issue, it is a High Priority one, in his terms. I always suggest my clients to carefully design the Requester’s Incident Form in the Self-Service Portal in such a way that the Requesters do not drive the workflow of the ticket. Here are few thoughts on what inputs should be gathered from the form,

Fields which should definitely be in the requesters incident form,

  • Requester Name
  • Subject
  • Category

Fields which should not be in the requesters incident form,

  • Priority
  • Technician
  • Level

 Configure SLAs based on priority

ServiceDesk Plus allows you to configure SLA based on many available criteria, however it is highly recommended to configure SLAs based on Priority. It is always easier to classify any ticket  (irrespective of the type, category, and requester) based on the priority.  This way, you can classify all your incoming requests with fewer SLAs and set up the due by time as per your environment’s acceptance level. Now this raises the question, how to assign the right priority to each ticket? To address this, we have come up with a feature called Priority Matrix.

Define your Priority automatically using Priority Matrix.

You can define the Priority of any incident based on the Impact that incident has created in the organization and the Urgency in which the ticket should be resolved. For those who need clarification on Urgency & Priority, here is a scenario for explanation. Consider a payroll server down on say Jan 5th & the same server being down on Jan 27th . In this case, the urgency to resolve the ticket is higher on Jan 27th as it is towards the end of the month and needs to be addressed immediately compared to Jan 5th when the payroll usage is minimum. Depending on the Urgency, the Priority of the ticket raised on Jan 27th is Higher. 


ServiceDesk Plus allows the End User or the Technician to define Impact & Urgency based on which, the Priority Matrix will automatically sets the Priority. This way, the SLA too can be set based on the Priority Matrix.

It is better to automate the SLA based on Priority Matrix (Impact and Urgency) than letting end users define the SLA.

Arvind Parthiban