Introduction

ServiceNow is the help desk/ticketing system used by CRE to handle tickets for incidents. ServiceNow is supported and maintained by MIT/IS&T.

Ticketing systems are used to track issues over the course of the issue's lifespan. Information attached to a ticket typically includes interactions between the agent and the client through phone calls, emails, face-to-face conversations, file attachments/documents, and status information. It can also include private discussions between other agents not visible to the end-user. Interactions are stored in a single repository for the issue: i.e., the "ticket."

A simple example is someone submits an inquiry through our website asking about the MSRED program. That inquiry goes into the CRE General Information Queue and a ticket is generated, where it notifies the CRE Reception Staff via email. Staff can respond to the inquiry, assign it to a new queue, view other staff member's responses, and see any new interactions with client.

Advantages of Ticketing Systems over Email

Ticketing systems are superior to email because:

  • Tickets are centered around a specific issue. If a user has a problem with their computer, the IT department can create a ticket for the incident and record the troubleshooting steps they have taken, and any interactions with the client. Especially when working in team environments where an incident may pass through multiple agents, ticketing systems ensure that the same troubleshooting action is not attempted multiple times. It also documents changes so agents won't question how to undue modifications, should the system breaks several weeks or months later.
  • Tickets prevent incidents from falling through the cracks. A ticket can have a status of Open, In-Progress, or Closed. Keeping a ticket "open" ensures that you do not forget to follow up with someone.
  • Tickets provide continuity. If you run a lab or group where staff members are constantly coming and going, a ticketing system can allow anyone on the queue's staff list to review the history and interactions with a client regarding each issue.
  • Tickets make escalations easy. You can easily reassign tasks to other departments, or automatically notify other staff members of responses. This mitigates staff responding to a client's question more than once.
  • Tickets provide greater management insight into common problems. You can categorize problem types and assign tickets to them, which helps management understand where the organization needs more help. For example, you may have categories such as "IT - Desktop Support" and "IT - Printing" to see how frequently printer problems occur, and whether or not it makes sense to look at reducing the ways in which that will be problematic.

How to Access

In order to access Service Now, you must first be assigned to a staff queue. If you are not assigned to a staff queue, contact CRE IT.

Once you are assigned to queue(s), visit https://mit.service-now.com and log in using your Kerberos credentials. Please note, the website really only works on desktop computers.

If you want to access the ServiceNow website on your mobile device, you can try selecting "Desktop Mode" from your browser's settings and then selecting "Switch to Desktop" in the ServiceNow application. Click this link for step-by-step instructions.

Training

For the training outline, please view this page.

Tips

  • There is a bug in MIT's SN instance which causes the dashboard to hang when you click on the Requestor's name. Click on the Ticket Number to open the ticket details.
  • The "Description" field is included in emails to your clients
  • When you create a new ticket, an email is not automatically generated to the end user. You need to add a second response, even if it just says "Please see below" to generate the email to the end-user
  • You can enable/disable a setting which forces the agent to select a category and service. Categories and services are useful for reporting information, but may not be necessary depending on your use case.
  • You can send emails with attachments in the top-right hand corner. These emails will be added to the ticket.
  • You can create checklists for TODO lists using the checklist tab.
  • You can forward an email to the ingest email address without adding anything to the email body. This will create a ticket using the original sender's email address as the requestor on the ticket.
  • Use "Cancelled" status to close junk/spam tickets. This eliminates the need to fill in mandatory fields.
  • It may take overnight for staff members in nested moira groups data to sync to ServiceNow.

Frequently Asked Questions

When someone submits a ticket to a queue with several agents, who receives it?

Support

To request a ticketing queue for yourself or your team, email cre-it@mit.edu.

To request support for ServiceNow, email dlc-ticketing@mit.edu and cc cre-it@mit.edu.

CRE's ServiceNow Queues

CRE has several queues within ServiceNow:

If you would like to open a queue for yourself and/or your team, please contact CRE IT.

Deactivated Ingest Email Accounts

To reactivate an inactive ingest email queue, perform the following steps:

  1. If the ingest email address does not exist in moira, create a group for it
  2. Make sure it has at least its "Active," "Moira Mailing List," and "Moira Group" flags activated
  3. Add the user Service Desk Backup Account (sdbackup) to the Moira group
  4. Add the email address mit@service-now.com to the Moira group
  5. Test to verify emails are going to the intended queue.

If emails do not go to the intended queue, contact DLC-Ticketing@mit.edu to ensure that their settings are configured to correctly assign that email address to the appropriate queue.

Additional Information

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For questions about this space email creit@mit.edu.