iSolutions Service Management, with help from Applications Management, have been working to streamline and consolidate the list of Incident States in ServiceNow both for ease of use and to reduce maintenance overhead and bugs.
The full details of the new state list are as follows:
- New – Only applicable to an Incident that is currently being logged or that has arrived from Self-Service and not been picked up by a fulfiller. Cannot be selected once an Incident has been progressed.
- Assigned – Applies when an Incident has an Assignment Group is changed, including if the Assigned To is also populated. This indicates that the Incident has been assigned to a team or individual but isn’t currently being worked on.
- In Progress – Applies when an Incident has an Assigned To populated and is updated by the assignee. Updates by other users will not automatically change the state to In Progress but it can be manually selected if appropriate. This indicates that an individual is working on the Incident.
- Awaiting User Info – A hold state that specifically relates to the Incident pending action or information from the caller. For iSolutions this also facilitates the auto-prompting of the caller to provide this information.
- Awaiting 3rd Party – A hold state that specifically relates to the Incident pending action or information from a 3rd party supplier.
- On Hold – Indicates that the Incident is on hold for any reason apart from pending action or information from the customer or a 3rd party supplier e.g. an agreed delay to process the ticket, the caller is on leave etc.
- Resolved – To be used when the actions to address the issue are completed. The Incident can still be reopened for a 5 day period.
- Closed – Applies after the Incident has been Resolved for 5 days. After this point the Incident cannot be reopened and another one should be raised if the issue reoccurs. This state is set by the system automatically and should not be selectable.
This change primarily removes all the additional “Awaiting” states (barely in use and can be represented through On Hold), as well as “Accepted” (redundant with the new Assigned & In Progress behaviour) and “Re-Opened” (redundant as there is a counter showing if tickets have re-opened). It also makes On Hold available to all users.
All states will also be available at all times during the ticket’s life.