Introduction
Service delivery is transforming from siloed, department-specific models to more connected, enterprise-wide models. This is driven under the context that employees shouldn’t have to think about organizational structures to know where to go for help, and agents should be able to seamlessly work together across functions.
Universal Request was introduced in the Quebec release to help drive a more unified experience, eliminate service delivery dead ends, and enable better cross-departmental collaboration.
Table of Contents
- What is Universal Request?
- How does it work?
- When is a Universal Request created?
- How can employees create a Universal Request?
- How can agents create a Universal Request?
- What features are included in Universal Request?
- Configuring Universal Request and learning more
What is Universal Request?
Universal Request is like a universal remote control. While universal remotes consolidate multiple TV remotes down to a single controller, Universal Request consolidates the employee request experience and serves as a flexible record that can seamlessly span various departments.
In the Quebec release, Universal Request has delivered integrations with HR Case, IT Incident, and Workplace Case, with the option of integrating with custom apps. Beginning in Rome, delivered integrations are also available for IT Service Catalog and Idea. Universal Request functionality can also be setup to work with any service/department, including custom apps, using our Guided Setup instructions.
How does it work?
Universal Request is a new task type that serves as a connecting record between primary departmental tickets, such as an HR Case or IT Incident. The Universal Request [universal_request] table is extended from the base task [task] table, so it includes all task fields and has several key components that help drive a universal experience:
- Number: Each Universal Request is assigned a number that serves as a unique and constant identifier for employees (e.g. UR0010001). This is the number that is visible to employees from their portal views, and does not change during transfers between departments.
- Primary Ticket: A Universal Request can only have one departmental primary ticket record associated at a time to encapsulate function-specific work. Again, this could be an HR Case, an IT Incident, or another record type. Note that agents can also view all historic primary tickets in the Associated tickets related list of a Universal Request record.
- State: This is mapped from the primary ticket based on the configurations defined by each customer in Universal Request > Administration> State Mapping and can be one of the following values: New (default), In progress, Awaiting response, Closed. The state of the primary ticket is what drives the state of the Universal Request, and the corresponding attributes and actions employees can take for that record in the portal.
- Additional Comments: Comments can be made directly within the Universal Request and are also copied to the primary ticket when the primary ticket is opened.
When is a Universal Request created?
Universal Requests can be created from both structured and unstructured requests. There are typically three personas involved:
- Employees: By default, Universal Requests are created by employees from a portal or the Now Mobile app, which includes the use of chat, virtual agent, and record producer forms.
- Routing Agents: Routing agents may be required to triage unstructured Universal Requests that do not have an associated primary ticket. In this case, the routing agent creates the appropriate department ticket from the Universal Request record so that it can be worked.
- Fulfiller Agents: Fulfiller agents work on department tickets, such as an HR Case, IT Incident, or Workplace Case. If their department ticket is the primary ticket of a Universal Request, they will have the ability to transfer it to another department ticket, or back to the Universal Request for triage if additional coordination is required.
How can employees create a Universal Request?
Employees can create a Universal Request in one of the following ways:
Using a "structured" department-specific record producer that is configured to create a Universal Request (e.g. "Create Incident", or "Payroll Inquiry"). In this scenario, a Universal Request will be created automatically and linked to the department ticket generated by the record producer. The Universal Request will then serve as the connecting record, and agents will be able to transfer their department ticket to another department if the incorrect form was submitted, or if cross department collaboration is required. With Universal Request, the primary ticket can move across various departmental teams on the back-end, yet the employee still has a seamless, single request experience. In this context, system administrators must have configured specific services to auto-generate a Universal Request using the Create Universal Request field for that record producer.
Using an "unstructured" Request Help record producer, which should be used if employees can’t find what they need through other self-service options like the knowledge base and service catalog. The Request Help feature is a general record producer that can be accessed by employees at the bottom of the search page or via a chat topic. This will create a Universal Request without a primary department ticket, which will be sent to routing agent teams to triage and create the appropriate department ticket. If Predictive Intelligence is configured, the Universal Request may be auto assigned to the appropriate team based on the description of the Universal Request. Beginning in the Rome release, Predictive Intelligence can also automate creation of a primary department ticket to reduce the need for manual triaging of unstructured Universal Requests.
Using Virtual Agent, from the delivered Employee Help Request topic, or by creating additional Virtual Agent topics. For Incident topics, there is also a property that can be enabled to create an associated Universal Request.
- See set up Virtual Agent for Universal Request
- See ITSM Virtual Agent Conversation Flows > Open IT Ticket
If you are looking to provide a consistent employee experience where a Universal Request number is shown to the employee in all scenarios, you can automatically create a Universal Request for services created through other channels by configuring a business rule for each table where you would like this functionality to apply.
How can agents work on a Universal Request?
While employees benefit from viewing a single Universal Request number with all associated status updates, agents benefit from working on the primary tickets they are already familiar with. A primary ticket can be created directly from a Universal Request via a button/UI action. If a primary ticket is created, it can:
Be worked to completion, and when closed, the Universal Request will move to Awaiting Response by default to allow the employee to accept or reject the solution. This behavior can also be configured in Universal Request > Administration > State Mapping.
Be transferred to another department. Agents can choose to transfer back to the Universal Request if they aren’t sure where to route the request next, or they can transfer to another department or service directly (this creates a new primary departmental ticket and associates it to the Universal Request, which still serves as the master record for the employee). Agents are also prompted to select a transfer reason of either Transfer with resolution or Transfer without resolution.
- See Transfer a primary ticket for more information.
What features are included in Universal Request?
Standard Ticket page: The Standard Ticket portal page provides employees with a consistent view of their requests. It contains the Universal Request number, Universal Request state, consolidated activity stream information from any primary departmental tickets, and any fields that have been configured to show from primary departmental tickets (e.g. the Opened For field from an HR Case, or Item field from a Request Item).
Request Help Record Producer: If employees complete a search and cannot find an article or catalog item to solve their need, they can use the Request help option at the bottom of the page. This will create a general Universal Request record without an associated primary ticket until it is triaged by the routing agents. Employees can also mark this request as sensitive or confidential which will further restrict it from agents who do not have elevated roles to view restricted Universal Requests.
Universal Request Security: Universal Request Security helps protect any sensitive information that may be present within a Universal Request. Employees can mark a Universal Request as sensitive while they’re opening a request, and routing agents can also mark a request as restricted. This restricts visibility of the Universal Request to only users with the Sensitive Info Agent role [sn_uni_req.sensitiveinfo_agent], as well as agents assigned to the primary ticket of the Universal Request.
Cross-Departmental Machine Learning Routing via Predictive Intelligence: Machine learning can be used to predict both the assignment group and the appropriate primary departmental ticket for a Universal Request. This is enabled via a delivered Predictive Intelligence Classification definition that uses the short description and description of the requests.
Reporting & Dashboards: Two delivered dashboards are available:
- Universal Request Overview dashboard: Provides routing agents, service owners, and admins a summary of open Universal Requests, as well as other information on breached or at-risk SLAs, departmental tickets, and more.
- Process Overview dashboard: Gives service owners and admins information on closed Universal Requests, with focus on areas like resolution time, triage time, and SLAs to assess areas of opportunity.
Employee Tasking with Universal Task: An adjacent Universal Task application is available for Pro+ customers for use alongside Universal Request or any other record that extends the task table. This provides a flexible employee/end user tasking framework to allow agents to create a Universal Task when the requester needs to take an action for the delivery of their service.
For example, if an employee submits a Universal Request to order a new laptop, the fulfiller can create a Universal Task and assign it to the employee with an embedded catalog item form that needs to be submitted for a new laptop. Universal Tasks show up as “Tasks” in the Standard ticket portal page for that Universal Request.
Employee View
Agent View
Configuring Universal Request and learning more
See the two below recorded sessions on the topic of Universal Request. Also be sure to check out the two delivered guided set ups for Universal Request: Guided Setup for Services and Guided Setup for UR.
HR Service Delivery Academy on Universal Request:
End-to-End Configuration of Universal Request:
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