KnowledgeCenter Search For Incident Solutions

Summary: KnowledgeCenter-aided solution search is used in Valuemation incident tickets.

It involves the following steps:

• In Valuemation Incident editor, call action 'Search Solutions'.
• Select one of the incident's ticket descriptions as a starting point for the search and confirm the selection to initiate the search.
• KnowledgeCenter opens and the search is performed. Examine the search results and confirm the suitable ones as solutions.
• In Valuemation, process the solutions. Processed solutions result in new ticket descriptions.

Use Case

Service desk personnel are looking for a solution to a Valuemation incident ticket. USU KnowledgeCenter suite is installed and used for information and document management. The goal is to use KnowledgeCenter search to find solutions to the incident ticket and pass the information back to Valuemation.

1. Open the incident.
2. In the incident editor, click the 'Search Solutions' button. You must be the ticket responsible person to be able to work with the ticket.
3. The 'Browser: Ticket Description' catalog opens. The catalog displays all ticket descriptions belonging to the incident except for ticket descriptions of the 'Work History' type.

   In the catalog, select a ticket description which can serve as a good starting point for the search. The search query will be based on information contained in some ticket/ticket description fields - see Ticket Specific Settings for information on which ticket and ticket description fields are used for query construction.

4. Confirming the selection (by double-clicking the ticket description or selecting it and clicking the 'Ok' button) calls the KnowledgeCenter application and automatically initiates the search.
5. KnowledgeCenter is opened. The KnowledgeCenter user interface is organized in so-called perspectives, each perspective contains several areas (InfoObjects) displaying different types of information. When KnowledgeCenter is called from Valuemation, the 'Search perspective' opens by default. This perspective usually contains at least the 'Search input', 'Search result list' and 'Search result preview' InfoObjects.
6. In KnowledgeCenter, examine the search results. All found documents are listed in 'Search result list', 'Search result preview' displays the currently selected document. You can also re-adjust the search by modifying fields in the 'Search input' InfoObject.
7. When a relevant document has been found, open it in the 'Search result preview' and click the 'Confirm' button at the top of the 'Search result preview' InfoObject. This confirms the document as a successful search result for the query and it also transfers information about the document to Valuemation.

   If several relevant results have been found, they can be transfered by opening them in the preview one by one and always clicking the 'Confirm' button.

8. Having confirmed the search results in KnowledgeCenter, switch back to Valuemation and click the 'Assign Solutions' button at the bottom of the incident ticket editor from which the search for solutions was started. The 'Browser: KC Solutions' catalog opens.
9. The catalog lists all search results transfered within the current Valuemation session. For each listed search result there are two check boxes: 'Select' and 'Delete'. The catalog can be used to create actual ticket descriptions from the transfered search results:
   • To create a ticket description from a search result and keep the search result in the catalog for further use: tick the corresponding 'Select' check box, leave the 'Delete' check box unticked and click the 'Ok' button at the bottom of the catalog.

     To create multiple ticket descriptions from multiple search results at one pass, tick the 'Select' check boxes of all suitable search results and click the 'Ok' button. One ticket description will be created from each of the search results, they will all belong to the incident ticket from which the search was started.

   • To create a ticket description from a search result and delete the search result from the catalog: tick the corresponding 'Select' and 'Delete' check boxes and click 'Ok'.
   • To delete a search result from the catalog without using it: tick the corresponding 'Delete' check box and click 'Ok'.

     It's always possible to process multiple search results at one pass.

10. The resulting ticket description(s) will appear in the 'Descriptions' tab of the source incident ticket. Their main classification attributes will be filled in according to settings in 'Ticket Specific Settings'. The default statement type for this kind of ticket description is 'Solution'. (This, however, can also be changed by changing the 'Solution Statement Type Code' attribute in 'Ticket Specific Settings'.)

    Most importantly, the 'Solution Link' attribute of such ticket descriptions contains an URL to the relevant document found by KnowledgeCenter search.

Ticket description(s) created in the above described way can then be used to share the information found by KnowledgeCenter search within the Valuemation environment.