I work for a School District as a tech and we're still learning SolarWinds. I think I've learned a very good amount of what it could do, especially how the dashboard can work with the queries. As much as I've learned, there's just one thing I can't seem to figure out after weeks of fiddling with the queries. I really hope there's a solution that will make this work flawlessly. From what I'm finding, there's currently not a real way to setup a query that will display all reassigned tickets to a tech in a specified date range. Preferably looking for scaled results for a large number of techs if possible. I've included a TL;DR at the bottom if this discourages anyone. Any input will be sincerely appreciated.
The end goal: We want to know three main things:
- How many tickets each tech currently has as open/waiting for parts (solved)
- How many tickets each tech closed this week (solved)
- How many tickets were new to the tech/assigned/reassigned to the tech this week. And possibly, any specified week with a date range. (unsolved)
Scenarios: We want to know if the tech is able/not able to keep up with the workload and easily determine the same/difference in numbers by new and old tickets and then investigate further.
- So, if a tech has 10 tickets open, closed 10 the same week, but has 10 open the beginning of the following week, how many of those are old (already assigned to the tech), and how many of those are new tickets that were assigned to the tech this week? Why the same in numbers?
- If a tech has 30 tickets open, closed 15 the same week, has 30 tickets open the following week, how many are old and how many are new? Why the difference in numbers?
Issue I'm running into: I can't setup a query that will automatically do this accurately
Query - ALL: Tech > is > insertnamehere
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(ALL/ANY - pulls same result): Date > Opened > This week
=
Issue with this query is that it will only pull up tickets that were opened that actual week. If the first-responder takes longer than that week and forwards the ticket to the tech the following week, it will not show up in this query because of the past tense condition "Opened" It will also pull up current open tickets if there were any specific changes/update in the ticket (haven't quite figured out the root cause) This query will pull up very inaccurate numbers for what we're looking for.
Possible solutions:
Query 1 - ALL: History > contains > Assigned to insertnamhere from insertnamehere
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ANY: Date > Updated > This week
=
This is closer, better, and does this automatically but there are several issues with this query.
- It will pull up results from any existing open ticket that's been updated in that same week (adding a note, editing a note adding a barcode, etc.)
- Generally the tickets are supposed to be forwarded by the First Responder but sometimes the tech will assign the ticket to themselves, someone else assigns the ticket, or the ticket was reassigned to that tech. There could be anybody that could assign/reassign the tech a ticket but the History has to be very specific matching the actions and the more History conditions you add such as "History > Assigned to insertnamehere from insertnamehere + History > Reassigned to insertnamehere from insertnamehere" the less it will work properly. Even if you try switching, mixing, trying different variations of the History combined with the Date condition in ALL/ANY, it still will not work properly because the options after "Date" are limited. This would work better for what we're looking for if there were existing conditions like "Assigned/Reassigned" and then selecting a date range.
- If we want to know dates, there is currently no condition that will allow us to search only by date range and then setup all other ALL/ANY conditions. The only real option we have to search for dates forces us to select from the drop down Date > "Opened, Closed, Scheduled, Updated, Due" This would possibly work if "Reassigned, Assigned" were included in those options so the query would then look like "Date > (if added: any of) > Assigned + Reassigned > This week."
(Pros: accurate, does this automatically Cons: can't really go back and search for accurate assigned/reassigned tickets in any given week, Can't be scaled for a large number of techs (but it could if more conditions were added) and under Supervision. Has to be done by the individual tech for this to work and manually see which ones are new.)
Query 2 - ALL: (MUST BE BLANK)
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ANY: Ticket No. > insertticketnumberhere
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Ticket No. > insertticketnumberhere
=
This works works very well but the tech will have to look at their ticket que and add every single ticket that was reassigned to them (thanks to the purple solid dot) daily, and add it to their saved query before working on the ticket so they don't forget. As a solution to help the tech remember, they could flag the ticket so it saves in their Flagged Tickets. At the end of the week or the beginning of the following week, the tech would have to remember to unflag the tickets so that the section is reset. The downside of this is that the tech would also have to remember to do this and they would have to substitute something else for flagging if they were using it.
(Pros: very accurate, has the exact information we're looking for. Cons: does not do this automatically, has to be done manually. Techs have to keep up with this every week. Techs could forget. Can't be scaled for a large number of techs and under Supervision. Has to be done by the individual tech. Tech could also forget to flag/unflag and have to substitute something else for flagging if they were using it.)
Other possible solutions: Contact SolarWinds to possibly add new conditions
- Example Query - Date Range here > Date Range here
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Tickets? > were > any of > Assigned + Reassigned > to > insertnamehere
2. Example Query - Date > Assigned > This week
+
Date > Reassigned > This week
+
History > contains > Assigned to insertnamehere
+ or Tech > was > insertnamehere
History > contains > Reassigned to insertnamehere
3. Example Query - Assigned by > any of > allusersselectedhere > Assigned to > any of > allusersselectedhere
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Date Range here > Date Range here or Date > (any of possibly?) > Assigned + Reassigned > this week
4. Example Query - Tickets > any of > Asssigned + Reassigned > to insertnamehere
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Date Range here > Date Range here or Date > (any of possibly?) > Assigned + Reassigned > this week
5. Query (Have not tested this yet)
ALL: Tech Note > contains > specialnotehere?(Week11-15Dec)
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ANY: Tech > is any of > insertselectednameshere - Not sure how accurate this condition would work since "is" is present tense. But you could sort the query by tech names.
(Pros: probably would be very accurate, would kind of solve the scaling issue. Cons: it's more tedious to keep up with and the note would have to be very special and unique so only the tech groups know what it pertains to and it can't mistakenly be put into the ticket by clients and other users)
There's probably more conditions that could be added that may be easier other than the ones I've listed but hopefully you get the idea. There's some that could be potentially scaled but some not depending on what is possible from SolarWinds. Any helpful information is appreciated.
TL;DR: I want to try and find out how many tickets were assigned/reassigned to a tech in a specified week, possibly even any given week. Tried many different combinations of conditions but I can't seem to find the right set of conditions I'm looking for. Would like the results scaled for a large numbers of techs as well. Not sure if it's something I'm overlooking.
Message was edited by: Fernando Soto