SWSD September 29th: Group Assignment Fields, Incident-Specific Survey Results, New Software Management Functionality – and More!
Understand and Optimize Team Processes Like Never Before with the Help of a New System Field: Group Assignment
There are endless ways to structure service management teams and agents. Often, agents will be members of multiple teams or groups working on different types of issues. Filtering reports and routing to specific agents is time consuming and can become outdated quickly. Plus, reports that are just filtered to agents aren’t entirely accurate, as they would include work done for other teams or groups.
To improve processes and understanding, we’re introducing a new system field called Group Assignment. Incidents, problems, changes, releases, SLA actions, change catalog and service catalog items can all be assigned to a specific group. Agents can be members of one or multiple groups. Reports can be filtered down to accurately report on issues assigned to that particular group. The use of group assignments will promote better routing and automation and will also greatly enhance analytics, allowing leaders to better understand how those teams are performing and any inefficiencies or issues that can be optimized.
See Service Desk settings and Categories for more information.
Unlock Incident-Specific Feedback for More Actionable Service Improvements with Custom Survey Results in Incidents
Global survey results are great for understanding the overall end-user satisfaction of service management teams, but the information is general to everyone who has submitted a survey. What if an agent or other team member wants to know an end-user's feedback for a specific incident? Now they can, with Custom Survey Results in Incidents.
This feature allows service management teams to identify trends or issues tied to specific incidents, enabling more targeted service improvements. It also helps in recognizing patterns related to individual support agents, teams, or incident types, offering more actionable feedback. Combined with global survey reports, teams can get a full picture of their performance. For more information see View survey results for an incident.
Gain More Clarity and Simplify Your Organization’s Software Management
Many companies are operating with large tech stacks that utilize different versions of the same software, and as we become more digitally dependent and software evolves, the complexities will only increase. SolarWinds Service Desk’s software management enhancement streamlines the way organizations track and manage software by merging multiple versions of the same software title into a single, unified record.
This update makes reporting and analysis significantly easier, reducing clutter and confusion caused by slight variations in software names. It addresses the problem of fragmented software data by allowing agents to merge or split software records based on organizational needs, ensuring more accurate software tracking, and helping IT teams efficiently manage and support their software inventory. For more information about merging and splitting software records, see Software.
Enhance Visibility and Improve Outcomes with Service Statistics on Problem Records
Mean time to resolve (MTTR) is a critical data point for understanding how successful a service management team is, but often, it doesn’t tell the full story. There are many actions that happen between a problem being initiated and being marked as resolved. Knowing the cadence between these actions can help identify areas of success, as well as optimization opportunities.
Service Statistics on Problem Records–which functions similarly to the existing feature, service statics available for incidents–provides detailed insights into the lifecycle of a problem in an easy-to-follow visual timeline, offering key metrics such as how long a problem remained open, the time taken for assignment, and the duration each assignee worked on it. These insights empower management to identify bottlenecks in problem resolution, helping to reduce turnaround times and improve service delivery. Additionally, these metrics can be leveraged for more accurate reporting and strategic resource allocation. For more information, see Incidents: Service statistics.
Other notable enhancements
- Update resolution code with automation rules
- New option to control Chat with Live Agent in Virtual Agent settings
Reminder: Do you have more questions about Enterprise Service Management, your multi-department service management setup, or questions about switching from ITSM to ESM? You can join us for any of our upcoming ESM office hours and get all your queries and questions answered. View and book your slot here.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.
See what else we’re working on.
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