Incident, Problem & Known Error (IPK) Management
You can configure your system for managing your service desk operation, setting global options for the Service Desk, as well as defining values for the parameters used on call windows.
IPK Tiers
The IPK management functionality encompasses ITIL guidelines for Incident Problem Known Error (IPK) Management. According to these guidelines, a three-tiered approach is recommended for managing incidents, the tiers being Incidents, Problems, and Known Errors also referred to as IPK.
To understand this system better, you should have an understanding of the tiers.
Incidents are call records where a fault (about a service) is reported by a User is logged. The objective is to get the User’s issue resolved.
When a number of Incidents pertaining to the same service is logged, one of them is promoted to a Major Incident. A Major Incident occurs when the impact of a fault affects a number of Users.
Problems are logged when they require an investigation to determine the cause of an Incident. The objective is to get the service operational.
When the cause is identified and a Request for Change is initiated to rectify the issue if appropriate, a Problem record can be converted to or cloned to a Known Error.
Using this concept, when an Analyst logs a new Incident, the Incident is matched against existing Incidents, Problems, and Known Errors. Available workarounds are applied to ensure that the Incident is resolved quickly. The benefits that this approach provides include an improvement in the quality of service provided by the service desk, a reduction in the turnaround time in providing a resolution, and subsequently reducing the volume of Incidents logged.
Setting up your System for IPK Management
The standard steps for setting up your system for optimal service desk operation are as follows, and they are typically carried out by the system administrator:
Configure the IPK settings.
Set up the entities that will be partitioned.
Set up IPK tiers or IPK Statuses.
For each status, your organization may choose to set up streams, if required.
If you are an organization that provides computer hardware maintenance services, you could set up your streams as PCs, notebooks, servers, etc, and when service desk Analysts log incidents they can select the relevant stream.
If you are not using IPK tiers for your organization’s service desk, you can set up different call screens based on issue type so that a specific screen appears depending on the type of incident being logged. Values can be specified for call statuses, impact, urgency, and priority. Call screens may be configured through the ASM Designer, and Call Templates can be created to configure the screens used for different call types.
Analyst access to different areas of IPK Management can be restricted through the IPK Management Security Role settings.
As some parameters are read from the database at application start-up, you should always make changes to settings when there are no Analysts logged onto the system. You may need to log out of the application then log in again before the changes take effect.
Below is a list of all the IPK Management options. Select an option to find out more about it.