How good or bad is your IT ticket system?

[Jelena]

I figure most likely pretty much every SCNer had to deal with one type of an IT ticket system or another. Which ones have you seen and did you like them or not?

In case some uninitiated user stumbles upon this post - "ticket system" would be some kind of a computer system where one would enter request such as "my laptop is not working" or "I forgot my SAP password". Some companies might have separate systems for SAP related requests and general IT. In the previous jobs I've seen a simple home-grown application and two slightly more complex partially home-grown systems based on a Numara product (this is not an advertisement, so google it if interested). All of them served their purpose quite well and I actually never gave them a second thought.

That was until in the current job we were "blessed" by an installation of Service Now application (which the users quickly re-named "Service Next Year"). Boy, if your IT management can't sleep at night thinking how could they possibly make their employees' lifes more miserable, this is the product to go to. Starting with the performance (click, one Mississippi, two Mississippi...) and ending with some mind-boggling ITIL-inspired workflow (don't even get me started) and the fields no one cares about that are nonetheless required and can't be defaulted. Since some of our business partners also replaced their no-thrills low-annoyance ticket systems with similar beasts, I'm wondering if this disease is spreading in IT?

[harishtk1]

They introduced this same system here last week. Already wading through clumps of hair lying on the ground, torn out by frustrated users.

[Jelena]

Well, one positive update since 2013 is that with a recent version upgrade we are no longer required to fill in the Resolution field (for which we were using 'x', as mentioned above). Now it's sufficient to update either Comment or Resolution field.

Also we started entering all changes as break-fixes requiring less than 4 hrs of work. In this way the ticket doesn't have to go through a long approval chain (and, of course, those people are always out of office and don't want to approve anything anyway to avoid responsibility). Humans adapt - that's how we survived so far.

[Former Member]

This message was moderated.

[Former Member]

I used Solution Manager - CHARM component. Not very Charming i must say. Had to deal with CRMD_ORDER for everythng. Its not intutive or even user friendly application.

[Matt_Fraser]

Came to this one late, but now I don't feel so bad!  I thought our ticketing system was horrible (FrontRange ITSM), though I was never sure if it was the software, our implementation, or the fact we laid off the ITSM sysadmin a few years back in a budget cut and never replaced him.  Anyway, some of your horror stories make ITSM sound... well, it still doesn't shine (especially next to Steffi's, which sounds like how it was supposed to be), but maybe the tarnish on it is just... ordinary.

[Steffi_Warnecke]

It was updated recently, so now it looks more polished with the new design and it runs faster. Also now you can see directly in the list of the open tickets, which ticket has been updated with information since the last time you opened it, because it is flagged by an icon. ^^

Some smaller things could be better though with the new design and layout, but I guess there is always room for improvement.

We're already thinking about possibilities to connect it to our IDM, so the helpdesk can for example call up the password-reset-mask with the needed user-information directly from the ticket etc. Interesting stuff coming, now I only need more hours in my day.

[Former Member]

If I may brag a bit - things have since cheered up here as well as we killed a ticket process which no one wanted nor liked.

Now if someone creates a cost center, there are no more tickets about missing roles and who to assign them to and reporting does not work -> we automatically provision the role itself based on the master data and customizing with variables for the objects, then IDM finds the responsible person and assigns it to the user in ERP, which enables a custom variable exit in BW to read the reporting auths from ERP via RFC until the extractors in the night synchronize the ERP based CO / COPA / PS / related FI auths and users and hierarchies and create static BW analysis auths to mirror the auths on the BW and portal side.

All the business folks have to do is maintain their master data correctly, the rest is an automated slave process which is idiot proof.

Cheers,

Julius

[Steffi_Warnecke]

Brag away, Sir!

But wow, just reading that made my head a bit fuzzy. That must have been quite a thing to set up!

[Matt_Fraser]

Drooling here!  However, in my shop, relying on the business folks to correctly maintain master data is a fool's errand.  Serious departmental processes are setup here as workarounds because of not trusting other up- or downstream departments in a process to do their bit properly.

And I must agree with Steffi.. that is quite complex!

[Former Member]

Programs can do things very reliably. Good programmers can keep the programs running without d'oh moments...  🙂

Yes, the trick is that they must maintain their master data correctly and completely, otherwise it does not work and are sent mail alerts to remind them that the cost center is not assigned to a profit center etc as being the reason for it not working.

They only have themselves to blame, are given sufficient informative error / warning messages and alert mails about data errors which the processing is waiting for.

This year we are going to replace testing completely with automated change workflows from simulations of changes in production and via SOLMAN route them back to the corresponding development system to transfer the simulated change (failure) and record it into a transport request automatically. The user does not even notice anything or the error nor the change.

What lengths folks go to, to avoid tickets...  🙂

Cheers,

Julius

[matt]

I wrote an extractor for one HR ERP, that takes the structural auths (ERP) and brings them into BW, transforming them into analysis auths.

Since I started working in IT, my goal has always been to reduce the amount of manual work that needs to be done. It's a specialised form of laziness.

[Steffi_Warnecke]

Since I started working in IT, my goal has always been to reduce the amount of manual work that needs to be done. It's a specialised form of laziness.

And I thought, thas was kind of the inofficial purpose of IT anyway. I know, what you mean. ^^ A lot of what I come up with in IdM has something to do with this though, I bet. *g*

[Former Member]

Yes, for some that is the theory.. 

[Matt_Fraser]

I've always maintained that it is laziness, not necessity, which is the mother of invention.  We didn't invent tractors because farmers needed them; we invented them because farmers didn't want to walk behind oxen pulling ploughs anymore.  The most successful IT sysadmin is the one who never has to get up from his desk, or should we say now, stop socializing on SCN, because everything is automated.

[former_member2987]

I've been saying this for close to 20 years now.  This is a tough topic for me to weigh in on since I started my IT/Consulting career doing Technical Support for a company called Magic Solutions which is now owned by Remedy. We had some cool workflow in that product way back when.

, I could see marrying IDM and Help Desk together somewhat, It's mostly another form of EntryType, but I don't know that it would catch on, however I'm a big fan of consolidating systems whenever possible.

[matt]

I used Magic once. I honestly can't remember anything about it one way or another!

[Former Member]

it depends on how much it took to get familiar with the tool

May be days ,weeks , months or never

[Jelena]

Well, looks like the ticket system market could be ripe with opportunities. Something that could be used as a productivity tool rather than a punishment would have a great success, I imagine.

[Former Member]

By the sounds of it the developers of ticketing systems are sourced from the pool of those who are too ***** to develop MS Project...  😉

[matt]

In 25 years I've never come across a ticketing system I didn't loath.

[Steffi_Warnecke]

I always thought our ticket-system was not very intuitive and kind of confusing when you start working with it and searching is a little tricky, too. But after reading your comments I take it all back!

We have a system, where an email to a specific email-address creates a ticket or you can create one by hand (for the call-ins). We have different queues, for which you can subscribe, so you get an email when a new ticket gets moved there. And you can subscribe to tickets, too to get emails when they get updated etc.

Also I "follow" all the tickets I have worked an. There is a link on the dashboard of the ticket-system to the list of tickets I'm watching, so I can get to them fast (also the current number is shown in brackets, so I have kind of a counter, too). And on the dashboard I can see a list of ALL open tickets, one list of tickets in the queues I'm watching and one list of the tickets I'm watching directly (not matter the queues they're in).

I know from my start with the system, that it looks pretty complicated, but as with the new SCN... when you're done looking around and costumizing it to your needs, subscribed to your queues and get how to answer a ticket and close one, it's all good.

We even have some templates for answers on the tickets. And can email the user through his/her ticket etc. ^^

So... YAY for our ticket system! It's not perfect, but hearing about your troubles, it grows on me more and more.

[Jelena]

Steffi Warnecke wrote:

And you can subscribe to tickets, too to get emails when they get updated etc.
[...]
 We even have some templates for answers on the tickets. 

I'm starting to feel jealous.

Check this out - in our system when a ticket is closed we are required to fill in 'Resolution' field. Makes sense, BUT this field is actually not emailed to the user. The user gets a different field that is called "additional comments". And if you don't fill in that field (because you already filled in Resolution) then an emal is sent to the user that under 'Resolution' has the previous comment (which could be completely unrelated to the resolution, e.g. a question to the user). Not a huge deal, but we didn't know that for months until the users started looking at us suspiciously thinking we're smoking something.

So after that we started entering resolution in the comment field. But the Resolution field is still required, right? So guess what everyone enters there now? An 'x'! And the thing is - no one cares because you can't even run any search by Resolution.

[Steffi_Warnecke]

Yeah, somebody put a lot of thinking into that one... oO

I see our ticket-system as a kind of knowledge-database, too. Or better: a solution-database. So a good search function or being able to look back at you own old tickets is IMO a must-have.

Sadly our helpdesk-guys don't quite get that, so I get tickets with the same "problem" from different users at least once a week, because most of them don't look at old tickets with the solution for that. -.-

@Jelena: Couldn't you just copy&paste the comments into the solution-field? But I guess, it makes no difference, if the field is never useful again after closing the ticket.

[TammyPowlas]

I like SAP Solution Manager Incident Management.

I am not a Basis person, but from a functional side it was easy to set up, and the BW content is easy to activate

There are multiple ways of entering a ticket - through SAP ECC, portal and SolMan itself

I watched a TechEd recording too and in SP10 tickets can automatically be created by e-mail.

[Jelena]

Tammy Powlas wrote:

in SP10 tickets can automatically be created by e-mail.

Well, this wretched Service Whenever thing can create tickets by email too. The other day I got a good chuckle while peeking at the company-wide open ticket queue (for some reason I'm redirected to it after creating every new ticket - as if the system wants to shame me for piling up even more on top of all that workload). There was about a dozen of tickets with descriptions like "cheap diet pills" and "hot local girls" obviously coming from the spam emails.

Also apparently when a user hits Forward instead of Reply for an email on existing ticket, it also creates a new ticket instead of adding to an existing one.

[petr_solberg]

lol

Andy.

[Astrid_Gambill]

we've just switched from an internally hosted web app to externally hosted web app for ticketing.  our 4th system in 12 years and it's not handling working very well with IE9.  it's not as restrictive as Jurgen's but the reporting/searching is painful.  I'm keeping track of all my support tickets in a spreadsheet so I know I can find my resolutions.

[Former Member]

Astrid Gambill wrote:

it's not as restrictive as Jurgen's 

I wonder what Jürgen's works council will have to say about problems being externally hosted? -> Call center folks in takatukaland can evaluate your performance and also see your system problems.... but you cannot.

@ Jürgen: Is the reporting so blunt? Similar to transaction STAD, SU53, SU3, etc... you should always be able to report on yourself without requiring additional system admin authorizations. Your observation that you cannot report on your own tickets sounds like a program error (too strict authority-check or being an "agent" of the ticket should give you at least display access to it without requiring any "role based access" to reporting -> "attribute based access").

Cheers,

Julius

[JL23]

I could write me to a "Super Storyteller" if I would blog about our security and probably jeopardize my job even after 36 years where you usually have already a fixed asset tag.

I had already more roles assigned than the maximum allowed which caused no authorization and 2 days lost during a migration.

Security and Ticket system is a kind of taboo to talk about, you only get 3 stereotyp answers: demand from work council, business wants it, E&Y requires it.

Everybody would agree what we should usually be able to do. I needed 14 month to get all the authorization back to do my job like before the last security project was rolled out. I had an external fight for me, because I was busy to get my migration done on time

Can you imagine that I felt like Don Quichote or like Julius von dem Bussche when he fights against this SCN point system

[Former Member]

Fighting against authorization problems which you need to perform in your daily job or have easy access to in special circumstances is what I am all about.

less testing of roles which are automatically corrected and create worklists of missing auths but the user can continue functional testing combined with authorization testing is my speciality.

Simulation of failed checks without them actually failing is another guru trick.

--> Avoiding tickets in the first place is the best option.

I suspect that your processes and in the case of access problems the concept is the (inflexible) source of the problem.

Anyway, you in addition to Jelena now also have my condolences..  😉

Julius

[Jelena]

Astrid Gambill wrote:

I'm keeping track of all my support tickets in a spreadsheet so I know I can find my resolutions.

We had to do something like that for a while. Our system doesn't have very robust authorization concept (e.g. there is no "display only" access if you are an "agent" - who comes up with this design?!), so for some time we had one person who had access to everything and would send out a spreadsheet for the team.

[JL23]

different products - same experience

the first I had to work with was TRIO, this was then replaced by SAP's SolMan and everyone was crying about this non-intuitive working experience. Anything what you permanently need to use is somewhere hidden in the menus, and all what you never needed was reachable with a button from the main screen.

And since everyone complaint, or maybe just because the non-SAP support needed as well a software, we are using Assyst now, which is ITIL conform. What a big hype with ITIL trainings in the beginning, and all what is left is a ticket system which cannot be used without cheat-sheets, from my point of view even worse than SolMan.

Nevertheless, I do not know if all this software is just poor designed, or if we are customizing it in a way to make it poor.

At least I heard that it can quite a bit more, which we are not allowed to use because of our work council. E.g. I am not even allowed to pull a report about the tickets I have solved, because such report could be used to track what individuals do. Hence I have no convenient way to lookup a solution from a ticket that I solved myself a couple weeks or months ago . Especially annoying as we are forced to document it well.

Or we have to fill certain fields to allow others to make statistics, but there is no good search help. if you search without restriction, then the system crashes because we have so many categories. so any entry is made by looking onto a printed paper even after 2 years.

Good that I have to do it just twice a month, or bad because I will never learn it with this few activity

[Former Member]

I faintly suspect that Coffee Corner folks are quite familiar with Ticketing systems, waiting for passwords / incident numbers to be assigned to mandatory fields and.... workarounds...  🙂

Security often suffers from such processes, as workaround are often not well thought out and as generic as possible from a functional perspective.

Sincerest condolences,

Julius

ps: Of course there are also convenient bad habits which need curing. Like changing programs in production because you dont test them properly.