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ITIL Service Desk Incident Problem Management Cont
The ITIL Service Desk provides the focal point of communication for both the IT external customer community as well as those internal customers within the IT department. The incidents reported to the Service Desk are recorded and relevant data gathered including the unique configuration item (CI) identifier, the symptoms, the customer contact details, time the incident occurred and so forth.
 
If the Service Desk is unable to resolve the incident it is usually passed to a second or third line support team who work on the incident through to resolution, updating the incident periodically with the actions undertaken throughout. Once resolved the incident is normally allocated a resolution or closure code with the opportunity to add a brief description.
 
The resolution / closure codes provide invaluable information for ITIL Problem Management as they are able to provide trend analysis and initiate Service Improvement Plans with internal IT departments or third party suppliers as necessary.
 
A recommended activity of ITIL Problem Management is to periodically review the resolution / closure codes. Often a code is provided that is used by the Service to close incidents if none of the existing codes are appropriate, an example of this code is 'Other'. The 'Other' code can be used as a 'dumping ground' for those incidents that are not easily categorized. Reviewing those incidents that are closed under the 'Other' category provides the opportunity to amend and update the existing closure codes and educate Support and Service Desk staff accordingly. Whilst reviewing seize upon the opportunity to remove any unused 'closure codes' from the list.
 
Care should be taken not to dilute closure codes as this can result in excessive time spent on deliberating which code to select and can potentially become confusing and subjective regarding the correct code to use.
 
If you have any comments or can add additional value to the article then please add them using the comments box below.
 
 
 

3 VISITOR COMMENTS

2011-07-07 by "fitzgeraldb"

The discussion is good but can you provide a base set of closure codes. When you have many services that you are providing in an IT environment the details are often required for reporting purposes. Where should this detail be contained if not in the closure codes? We are maturing in the ITIL world and are struggling with product and service structure along with categories actions and closure codes.
Reply on 2011-08-07
The codes are usually grouped, e.g:
- USER RELATED
- HW FAULTS
- NETWORK/COMMS
- APPLICATION ERRORS
- SECURITY
- and so on

Within each grouping there would be a number of codes, e.g in USER RELATED:

- TRAINING ISSUE
- PASSWORD RESET
- USER ERROR
- etc

It's also important to add that the codes should only be available for use with the correct "actual failing components". So you couldn't have "DISK FAILURE" associated with an application, you have to link it to the hardware that the application was running on.
Reply on 2012-08-09
Close codes should be basic and simple so that technicians will actually use them. I like the default ones that came with Symantec ServiceDesk 7.x.

Document Review (our doc needs to be updated)

Training Required or Training Given (which is generally the same as user issue)

Completed Success (useful for break / fix issues, hw replacements that were resolved)

No Fault Found (could not duplicate the error, user must have done something different without realizing it)

Monitoring Required (it's working right now but not sure if it's fixed; we may see issues again)

Change Required (leading to change management).

2011-09-12 by "craig.stokes"

Another way to do this is by Service, Sub-service and activity so it is like this.

Application - Share point - new site

Network - Lan - connection fault

User hardware - printer - install

The activity can determine if it is an incident or a service request.
Reply on 2011-09-12
Many thanks for your comment. Makes good sense.

2013-12-30 by "srichard"

I get confused between Close Codes and Cause Codes. My company is proposing additional close codes. They are:-- ELF (Early Life Failure)- Connection/Connectivity Issue- Excessive Runtime Issue (Long Running jobs)- Disk and/or RAM capacity problem (ran out of disk space or memory)Are these valid close codes?
Reply on 2014-01-08
Many thanks for your question.In my experience Incident Resolution codes are very important as they provide invaluable information for Problem Management, especially when attempting to establish the Root Cause. Problem Management have the benefit of not having to be reactive to resolving an Incident within a specific response and resolution time. Problem Management have the opportunity to be proactive and are able to provide in-depth investigation into why certain incidents occur and what actions need to be taken to eliminate or reduce the future impact.The codes you have provided do appear to be rather generic and may not be of immediate benefit to Problem Management or Management as a whole.If I take the example of Excessive Run Time when reviewed in conjunction with the Configuration Item (CI) name for example the 'Job Name', the time and day the incident occurs would provide Problem Management with sufficient information to investigate what else is running at the same time that may cause the excessive run time to occur or is it simply the volume of date increases on particular days following the quarterly marketing campaigns.So in answer to the question the codes used must work for your organisation, the support teams that are involved with Incident Management through to the Problem Management team(s).I hope this response makes sense and more than happy to answer further questions.

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Tags; ITIL Incident, Problem Management, Continuous Improvements,ITIL Service Desk
 
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