Managing Recurrent Tickets

The Recurrent Tickets functionality allows automated submission of Service Desk Tickets (Incidents, Problems, Change Requests, or Work Orders) according to the specified schedule. You can create jobs for running recurrent tickets, set their schedules, and specify Ticket details.

NOTE: To enable generating recurrent tickets, the Automation Server must be configured and running. Contact your Alloy Navigator administrator for details.

You manage recurrent Ticket jobs using the Recurrent Tickets window. To open this window, click Tools > Recurrent Tickets on the main menu.

The Recurrent Ticket window contains the following sections:

• The grid on the left lists configured recurrent tickets. Double-clicking any of recurrent tickets opens it for editing.

• The Action Bar on the right displays the available recurrent tickets actions. Actions are grouped by class of Service Desk tickets (Incidents, Problems, Change Requests, and Work Orders).

IMPORTANT: You set up recurrent tickets using workflow Actions configured by your Alloy Navigator administrator. An empty Action Bar on the right means that there are no Actions available for your role. For details, contact your Alloy Navigator administrator (the person managing the Alloy Navigator configuration).

To create a recurrent Ticket job:

1. In the Action Bar on the right, click the action the recurrent Ticket job will be based on.

2. Type the job name and optionally the description. This will identify the Automation Server job.

3. If you have many recurrent Ticket jobs, you may want to categorize them to make them easier to find. Select a category from the Category list or type a new one.

   NOTE: By default, the Category field is not included in the recurrent Tickets grid. To show the Category column you should modify the view configuration and add this field to the view. For details, see Showing and hiding record fields.

4. Under Schedule, click Change and define the schedule for creating tickets (for details, see Setting the schedule for Recurrent Tickets). To define the schedule for creating tickets, keep the Enable Recurrence check box selected, and click Change.

5. On the Data tab, set values to ticket fields.

6. Click OK.

To modify a recurrent Ticket job:

1. Double-click the job record.

2. Change its details as needed.

3. Click OK.

To export recurrent Ticket jobs:

1. Choose the jobs to export:

   • To export all existing recurrent Ticket jobs:

     • Click Export All on the Module menu.

   • To export individual recurrent Ticket jobs:

     • Select one or multiple records and click Export Selected on the Module menu.

2. In the Export to window, go to the location where you want to save the .xml file:

   • To export the jobs to a new file, specify its location and the file name, and click Save.
   • To export the jobs to an existing file, browse for that file, click Save and confirm your action by clicking Yes in the dialog box. The contents of the .xml file will be overwritten with new data.

To import recurrent Ticket jobs:

1. In the Recurrent Tickets grid, click Import on the Module menu.

   NOTE: We recommend that you do not attempt to import jobs from an earlier version of Alloy Navigator than the one you are running. The recurrent Ticket jobs cannot be imported if the Create Actions they use are missing.

2. In the Import from window, go to the location of the .xml file, select the file and click Open.

To temporarily disable a recurrent Ticket:

1. Double-click the recurrent Ticket job.

2. Clear the Enable Recurrence check box. To re-enable a disabled job, select this check box.

3. Click OK.

To delete a recurrent Ticket job:

• Select the job record and click Delete on the Module menu.

To view completed sessions of a recurrent Ticket job:

1. Double-click the recurrent Ticket job.

2. Go to the Sessions tab. Here, you can view the statistics about completed sessions of the recurrent Ticket. By default, four data views are available:

• All Time - displays the list of all records
• Errors - displays records for job sessions with errors and failures
• Last 7 days - displays records logged in the last 7 days
• by Action Name - displays records grouped by Actions

You can switch between views using the View: [View Name] list on the Module menu. You can also customize the default views using the standard Customize View window and save your customizations as your own custom views that will display the log data exactly as you need.

Each entry in the list contains statistics about a particular recurrent Ticket session:

The overall statistics of all sessions are shown in the footer.

The section allows you to perform the following operations:

• To view the log file for a session

  • Double-click a session (or select a session and click View Log). The log file opens.

• To delete information about recurrent Ticket sessions

  • Select one or several records on the list and click .

• To refresh the view

  • The log automatically refreshes every ten seconds, which practically makes the displayed information always actual. However, there could be some situations when you may want to refresh the log manually. To do this, click Refresh (or press F5 on the keyboard).

Related Information for Administrators:

Configuring the Automation Server