Workspace tutorial for agents starting with a record

Perform the steps in this tutorial to get an idea how you can use workspace when you begin with a task already stored in the database.

Before you begin

Role required: agent

About this task

You use workspace to:

• Find a task to work on.
• Do research to resolve the task.
• Communicate the solution to the requester or enter notes for yourself and other agents that document your progress in finding a solution.

The following graphic provides a quick overview of finding and solving an issue.

Procedure

1. Open your workspace by selecting your Workspace from the Workspace menu.
   

   Note:

   In the previous image, you can see Agent Workspace Home in the application modules. You can select that to open Workspace. The following steps are for you if you're using a different workspace.
2. Select the name of your workspace and then under Related Links, select Open workspace.
   Your workspace opens.
3. Log in to your workspace.
   

   The first thing to do is find out what to work on. You can do that by looking at what's on the landing page, as shown in this image. Or, you can go directly to the list of open issues to solve. Let's see how to do both.

4. On the landing page, if you want to look at the P1 incidents that haven't been solved, select the box Open P1 Incidents.
   
   A list of P1 incidents open.

   

   This display is called List view. It's a list of records, in this case, incident records. Normally, you would select one of the records to open it. Before you do, let's see how else you can start from a list to find a task to work on.

5. Select the list icon () in the left, edge menu.
   In the Lists tab, you see the groups of records you can open as lists. For example, you could open All problems or All change requests.
6. In the Lists tab, under Incidents, select Open.
   A list of open incidents appears. Let's find out what the problem is and solve it.
7. Select an incident.
   The record opens in what is called Record view.

   

   From top to bottom, here's what to notice:

   • This record is on a tab labeled INC000905. You can open other incidents without closing this one. How? Select the list icon () and select another incident. You can jump from record to record by selecting the tabs.
   • The form header shows the record's short description, "Email server is down." The form header is like the title of the incident record.
   • Underneath that title in the form header is high-level information, including the importance of the task (Priority), whether it's been worked on (State), and the kind of incident this is (Category).
   • On the bottom-left, the Details tab shows many details in the record. This section is called the form pane. Notice that you can scroll this section. You can enter information in this section, for example when you get additional information from the requester.

   We will get to the other things you see in the next steps. But basically, the Activity pane is where you communicate with the requester or make notes to yourself or other agents about you progress in dealing with this incident. On the far right, the Contextual Side panel is where you do your research to find solutions for the task at hand.

8. Select through the tabs to the right of the Details tab to get information related to the open record, such as the service level agreement (Task SLAs) for this task, continuous integrations (Affected CIs) that might be affected, services impacted by the incident, related incidents, outages, and so on.
   These items that work like tabs are called the Related items menu.
9. If you want to work on this incident, select Assign to me.
10. Scroll down the stack of cards in Agent assist, which is on the right side, to solve the issue.
    If you don't see a card that suggests a solution, you could enter a search term beside the search icon (). Notice that workspace automatically entered the value of the Short Description field from the record in the search field and used that to search.

    

11. Select the Reboot Windows Server card.

    Agent assist gives you the opportunity to order a reboot.

    

12. Select Helpful to provide guidance to the predictive intelligence software that this was a good solution for this incident.
13. Select Order to issue a change request to reboot the Windows server.
    Notice a new tab appears as a child tab of the same incident tab. These child tabs enable you to accomplish multiple tasks on one screen. All of the child tabs relate to the same incident, which is shown on the tab at the top.

    

14. If you were really solving this issue, you would select Submit and then select the option to save the change request.
    The system would then create the change request, which someone would then perform.
15. In Activity, in the Compose field, select Comments and enter a note to the requester explaining what you did to document what you've done.
    
16. Select Post Comments.
    Workspace sends your comment to the requester and also adds it to the Activity Stream, which is the history of communications and actions you have taken.

    

17. Select Work notes (Private), enter a comment, and select Post Comments to save information that's only seen by fellow agents.
    You might use this internal commenting feature if you've not completely resolved an issue but want to document what you've done for other agents or yourself when you come back to the issue later.
18. In the form pane, scroll to the section, Resolution Information, and do the following.
    1. In Resolution code, click on one of the choices from the menu, for example, Solved (Permanently).
    2. In Resolution notes, enter a description of your resolution.
    3. In Resolved by, select your name.
    4. In Resolved, select the date and time of the resolution.
       

       This information becomes part of the record.

19. If you haven't resolved the issue but want to save your progress, select Save.
20. If you've resolve the issue, select Resolved.
    The incident no longer appears in the list of open records.

What to do next

You've walked through finding and solving an incident that was in the database. Next, walk through solving an issue that comes in through a phone call or a chat.