What are categories?
Categories enable you to classify various levels of detail about the common processes that your organization handles while you log and progress these processes. Each category can have any number of sub-categories, depending upon the level of detail required.
For example, you can create corresponding categories and sub-categories to specify more detail for the Incident category. You might create categories of Hardware and Software, and relevant sub-categories for each of those to classify further information, as illustrated below:
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Category type |
Category |
Sub category 1 |
Sub category 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
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Incident Category |
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Hardware |
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Performance |
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Faulty |
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New |
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Upgrade |
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Purchase |
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Software |
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Faulty |
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Install Operating System |
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Renew licenses |
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Upgrade operating system |
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How to use |
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Categories are special types of business objects that you create and maintain using the Categories tree on the Administration component.
Using categories can help you to produce accurate reports, which can identify trends and resolve any recurring issues. Categories are also useful for keeping terminology consistent when classifying processes, rather than relying upon the interpretation of the analyst.
For example, if two analysts logged Problems about a complex system failure, without categories they can give only their own interpretation of the Problem.
You create and maintain the category structure using the Categories tree. Each level of the tree defines a different level for the relevant category. You can create categories and sub-categories at any time if you have the associated privileges.
You can create categories only for the existing category types. Before you can create a sub-category, a parent category must exist. Category names must be unique, unless they exist at different levels.
We recommend that you do not define too many categories in case the process logging procedure becomes too complicated. However, you often need to create additional categories that are identified when you have used your system for a period of time.