Description

Ticket Module of Service Ticket System

Jim has just taken the position of the Director of the IT department. Understanding that the top priority of his position is to provide quality IT services to internal employees, he wants to digitize IT services by first adopting an IT Service Ticket system (STS) to manage service requests and keep track of service quality.

Currently, the IT department offers support services (e.g., installation, setup, upgrade, replacement) on hardware (called assets, and could include any hardware used by business departments including desktop, laptops, cellphones, each of which carries a unique four-digit ID) and software (the standard software applications provided to all employee across different departments). The basic information kept for all hardware includes AssetID, manufacturer, model, and manufacture date. But for desktop and laptop, additional information such as screen size is also kept. For software applications, the information stored includes vendor name, vendor contact, version number, license number, and license type.

One key module of the system is the Ticket module where service tickets are created and updated. There are three ways to create a ticket: by email, phone, or via the web site. There is a designated email address for employees to use to report any technical issues with hardware and software. The system shall, upon receiving an email from an employee, automatically generate a ticket with a unique ticket number. Employees could also create a ticket via the web site where they could provide his or her contact information and the description of an issue. If an employee makes a call to report an issue, the IT professional who answers the phone will create a ticket. Regardless of the different methods of creating a ticket, an automatic email notification confirming ticket creation will be sent to the employee.

A new ticket will be added to the ticket pool and listed in the order based on the time the ticket is created. A ticket contains ticketID, date and time created, the name of the employee for whom the ticket is created, and description of an issue.

When an IT professional logs into the ticket system, he or she will see the list of the tickets in the ticket pool. If the employee doesn’t have an existing ticket, he or she could select the ticket on the top of the list. Once a ticket is selected, it will show up on the professional’s to-do list, and its status will change from “new,” to “assigned.” The professional will then investigate the issue, and once the issue is resolved, update the ticket status to “closed.” In closing a ticket, the professional will indicate the category of the issue (e.g., application update, hardware maintenance), and asset information (e.g., assigned asset ID, asset type such as laptop, desktop setup). The automatic email notification of the closure of the ticket will be sent to the employee, and the completed ticket will be added to the employee’s list of completed tasks.  

Once a ticket is taken by one IT professional, other IT professionals could only check the ticket details, but couldn’t update the ticket. If for some reason the IT professional who owns a ticket couldn’t complete the work, he or she will send a request to Jim to transfer the ticket back to the ticket pool. Upon approval, Jim then change the ticket’s status from “assigned” to “new” and the ticket will be returned to the top of the ticket list.