Forward Facing Known Error Articles

MC_Teknaut · ‎11-21-2023

Hello,

I currently use the ServiceNow knowledge base as our Known Error Database (KEB) and I'm actively creating Known Error Articles (KEA) within the ticket. The challenge I have is that I feel the Known Error Database feels tucked away and is not easily seen by Service Desk technicians actively working problems. I understand that we can train our folks to check the KEB, but is there a more streamlined way to display current KEAs?

One of the questions asked of me is: "Is it possible to communicate with customers and technicians when a specific configuration item is associated with a Known Error? For example, if a user opened a ticket and a technician fills in the CI field, will ServiceNow alert the ticket user of an on-going problem investigation? I suppose it's possible to send a daily email of current Known Errors as a "heads up display"?

Any advice is appreciated. Thank you!

Sincerely,
Michael C.

Ethan Davies · ‎11-21-2023

You're going to want to make sure that your Known Error KB is searchable in the Related Search results on your Incident form, that will help at least your agents understand if there is an active Known Error. You may need to tweak your current config to improve it slightly.

Another great way you can also communicate is via the Outage records. You can log a cmdb_ci_outage against a CI that is impacted and maybe log it as a degradation in Service. You can then display these outages on the portal so users can see any potential outages before they even log a ticket. You could also get fancy with this, and then have some functionality (like you suggested) that if a CI has an outage, then you can display some sort of warning message via Client Script. That wouldn't be too hard to achieve.

You may also want to consider the Workspaces here as well. You could create a more focused experience for your Service Desk Technicians to show a list of Known Errors / Outages as soon as they hit their Service Operations Workspace. You would also benefit from a better Knowledge integration here using the Search capabilities (similar to Related Search but a lot better), so Agents would be able to easily see a Known Error Article that is linked or references a CI on the ticket.

All that being said - I think the option that would drive the most benefit for your situation right now is to develop a Client Script that simply checks the Known Error Knowledge Base for any Articles linked to the CI in your ticket and either provides a message saying there are some or a link to the ones it found.

View solution in original post

Ethan Davies · ‎11-21-2023

You're going to want to make sure that your Known Error KB is searchable in the Related Search results on your Incident form, that will help at least your agents understand if there is an active Known Error. You may need to tweak your current config to improve it slightly.

Another great way you can also communicate is via the Outage records. You can log a cmdb_ci_outage against a CI that is impacted and maybe log it as a degradation in Service. You can then display these outages on the portal so users can see any potential outages before they even log a ticket. You could also get fancy with this, and then have some functionality (like you suggested) that if a CI has an outage, then you can display some sort of warning message via Client Script. That wouldn't be too hard to achieve.

You may also want to consider the Workspaces here as well. You could create a more focused experience for your Service Desk Technicians to show a list of Known Errors / Outages as soon as they hit their Service Operations Workspace. You would also benefit from a better Knowledge integration here using the Search capabilities (similar to Related Search but a lot better), so Agents would be able to easily see a Known Error Article that is linked or references a CI on the ticket.

All that being said - I think the option that would drive the most benefit for your situation right now is to develop a Client Script that simply checks the Known Error Knowledge Base for any Articles linked to the CI in your ticket and either provides a message saying there are some or a link to the ones it found.

MC_Teknaut · ‎11-27-2023

Ethan,

This is precisely what I was looking for! I'll take this further with my team. Thank you again for the excellent answer!