About Incidents and Service Requests

An Incident is an unplanned interruption to a service or a reduction in the quality of a service (example: Something is not working). A Service Request is a request for information, advice, a Standard Change, or access to a service (example: Installation of new software).

In CSM, Incidents and Service Requests are stored together in the Incident Business Object. The categorization (Service/category/subcategory) identifies the record as either an Incident or Request. A categorization often requires a unique form to capture the correct information. For example, an Incident for a non-working network printer would require different information than a Request for printer toner cartridge. To facilitate gathering this specific information, CSM embeds and uses several default Specifics Forms, which are automatically displayed when you categorize the record. For more information, see Specifics Forms.

Good to Know

• The workflow for Incidents and Service Requests is almost identical, and the forms are similar. Specifics Forms always vary.
• CSM provides several default Automation Processes to automate Incident management. For more information, refer to the Automation Process documentation.
• When on a record, you can send an email directly to the current customer by selecting File > E-mail Current Customer, or by selecting the customer's email address in the Incident Form. If using the File menu, the email is blank. If using the Default Form link, an email template is used to auto-populate the email with information from the current Incident (example: Incident ID, customer's name, and logging date/time details).