How to Get Started with Demand Management › Configure Incident Categories

Configure Incident Categories

Before resources can log incidents, create incident categories. Incident categories are logical groups of investments that help classify incidents of a particular type. Configure logical groupings of incidents that reflect the structure of your organization. Then create and associate investments with these incident categories.

Incident categories help to distinguish real incidents from IT service requests. All incidents must belong to an incident category. Incident category mapping can occur at the investment level or at the administration level. Both require particular access rights. In small organizations, where resources work with all incident categories, you can add all resources to a group. Then assign the group to an incident category. In a larger organization where resources are specialists, you can create groups and can add resources to groups based on their expertise. Then assign the groups to different incident categories.

As an administrator, define the incident category properties and associate your investments with incident categories. Then grant resources, groups, and OBS units access to the incident category.

Follow these steps:

1. Open Administration, and from Data Administration, click Incidents.
2. Click New and complete the following fields:

   Category Name

   Defines the short name for a related group of incidents. Examples include 2016 New System, Mobile Devices, or Access Issues.

   Category ID

   Defines the unique identifier for the incident category.

   Description

   Describes this category of incidents.

3. Click Save.
4. To create a catalog of your investments including assets, applications, products, services, and other work, repeat these steps.
5. Click the Associated Investments tab.
6. To associate investments with an incident category, click Browse and select the check box next to one or more investments.
7. Click Add.

   The investments are assigned to the incident category.

8. Click Save.
9. Click the Access to this Category tab and select one of the following menu options:

   Full View

   Displays a list of all entities (resources, groups, and OBS units) with access to the incident category. You can click an entity to view its access rights for the previously select incident category.

   Resource

   Defines the resources that have access to this incident category.

   Group

   Defines the groups that have access to this incident category.

   OBS Unit

   Defines the OBS units that have access to this incident category.

10. If you selected Full View on the Full Access View page, select an entity (resource, group, or OBS unit) and click Continue.
11. Click Add, select the check box next to each access right, and click Add and Continue.
12. Select the check box next to each entity (resource, group, or OBS unit) and click Add.

    Note: The list of entities that appears depends upon your selection.

13. Click Return when finished. Repeat these steps to configure access to each category.
14. Click the Priority Setup tab.
15. Select the incident priority for a given impact and urgency combination. The product uses your incident priority matrix to escalate incidents based on impact and urgency.

    Note: The impact values are plotted against the urgency values. The intersection of every impact and urgency value becomes the incident priority. When you save an existing incident, the incident priority is recalculated based on changes that are made to the incident priority matrix.

16. Click Save.

    Note: To assign investments only to specific incidents, click Assign Investment, specify your filter criteria, and click Apply.