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  • 1.  Closed Task Count By Individual for ServiceDesk 7.1 SP2

    Posted Jun 17, 2014 12:28 PM

    Hello,

    We are needing to create a basic report that allows us to report on how many tasks a technician has closed for a period time.  We have run into a problem with accuracy because when a task "times-outs", the task is closed and then reopened automatically by the system.  It actually makes the technician look like they have closed more tasks than they really have closed.

    Has anyone encountered this issue and come up with a resolution?

    Thanks for any help around this.



  • 2.  RE: Closed Task Count By Individual for ServiceDesk 7.1 SP2

    Posted Jun 18, 2014 03:53 PM

    I'm not seeing any information in the database to indicate that a task was completed because of a timeout. 

    My thought is to utilize Escalations inside the dialog component, and set the timeout value for the timeout action to something that will likely never be reached, so that escalations handle the timeouts instead.

    So we can move the "Set Status" component that is being used on the exit path illustrated here:

    6-17-2014 5-01-46 PM.png

    and create an escalation item, and place that status update component in that model instead (see below).

    6-17-2014 4-56-34 PM.png

    When a timeout occurs, the flow leaves the dialog component and loops back around, closing out the active task and creating a new one.  

    When an escalation occurs, the task remains the same.  This way, you can still do anything you want for the "escalation" (such as notifying a technician of a task expiration) but the timed out tasks you don't want to show up in the report will not be there at all.  For example, here I am updating the process status to indicate that it has timed out.  This will occur when the escalation time passes, but no new task is created, because the flow never leaves the dialog component.

    6-17-2014 4-55-54 PM.png

    So for practical instructions, since you're using 7.1, you should be able to (supportably) edit the SD.IncidentManagement project and copy whatever you want to occur from the "timed out" path into an escalation model instead, and set the "Timeout Time Span" to whatever threshold you think is best.  During the amount of time I spent considering this answer, no caveats or risks occurred to me, but that's not to say that there won't be side effects to making this change.

    Maybe someone else has a more elegant solution, but that's what I have for now.  Let me know if you need more info.

     

    -andrew



  • 3.  RE: Closed Task Count By Individual for ServiceDesk 7.1 SP2

    Posted Jun 18, 2014 04:36 PM

    I appreciate the information.  I am constructing this in the test environment now.  This looks to help all new tasks being created.  Thank you.

     

     

    As for the older open processes, we have a large number that we are trying to get accurate reporting on who closed tasks within them.  Some processes may have 1 task that has timed-out a large number of times.  This is making it look like the technicians are closing many many tasks out when in reality they have not closed a single task.

    Is there any way around this misleading situation?



  • 4.  RE: Closed Task Count By Individual for ServiceDesk 7.1 SP2

    Posted Jun 18, 2014 04:49 PM

    Thank you.  This will helpl with processes going forward.  I am trying it out now in the test environment.

     

    I could still use some help if anyone has thoughts around this for existing processess.  Technicians are getting postive counts for tasks they did NOT close and this is hurting metrics.  This close-open on time-out is really creating a lot of noise.



  • 5.  RE: Closed Task Count By Individual for ServiceDesk 7.1 SP2

    Posted Jun 18, 2014 09:52 PM

    Again, someone may have a better answer, but maybe this will help in the meantime.

    For existing processes, it may need to be an educated guess.  This is a script i put together to get all results for technicians, but only giving credit once per process ID.  

    So if gwashington@usa.com closed tasks IM-000001.1 and also IM-000001.2, he gets credit only once.  if alincoln@usa.com closed task IM-000001.3, he gets 1 credit for it.

    select case
         when T.CompletedBy is null
         then 'Total Tasks Closed'
         else T.CompletedBy
         end AS [Technician]
         ,sum(case
              when T.IsCompleted = 1
              then 1
              else 0
              end) AS [TasksCompleted]
    from (select CompletedBy
                   ,WFTaskNumberPrefix
                   ,IsCompleted
              from task
              where WFTaskNumberPrefix is not null
              and CompletedBy is not null
              group by CompletedBy, WFTaskNumberPrefix, IsCompleted) T
    group by T.CompletedBy with rollup
    order by TasksCompleted desc

    maybe that will help you get closer to actual numbers, or at least a good ratio.  if you don't care about the Total Tasks Closed, just remove the "with rollup" clause.

    -andrew



  • 6.  RE: Closed Task Count By Individual for ServiceDesk 7.1 SP2

    Posted Jun 19, 2014 10:49 AM

    I want to thank you for taking the time to provide this information.  Your modification to the workflow will help going forward.  We will be implementing it.  The script is interesting, but unfortunatly is not giving us what we need.  I am going to play around with it to see if I can do anything to get a little closer to what we desire.  There are cases where the timed-out tasks are not officially closed but give credit for an unresolved task.  Management will continue to ask why is John getting credit when the task is still open.

    To get around this, we are running the reports by week and manually openning the ticket to see if the task is closed.  Unfortunately, these manual processes are time consuming.  If only there was some indicator to eliminate system generated comments from actual user comments.