Email address used by Octopus

To configure the sender addresses, go to the menu, “Tools,” “Email sending configuration.” For more details, see here.

Emails to users

For each type of event, you may choose if Octopus must send an email to the user and may modify its contents. 

• Send a confirmation upon incident/SR creation
• Send a confirmation upon creation of an incident/SR transferred.
• Send a confirmation upon creation beginning of work on an incident/SR. 
• Send a confirmation upon incident/SR resolution. 
• Include resolution activity by default. 
• Allow to send activities via email. 
• Automatic reply for closed or cancelled requests.
• Sending Web Portal password. 
• Send an email when password is changed.
• Send an email when account gets locked.
• ​Request for approval
•  Confirmation of Approval by Email
•  Approval request reminder
•  Approved request
• Denied request
•  Approver required
•  Approver requiered reminder
•  Approval assigment confirmation
• Notification task

Emails to technicians

this series of options enabled edition of the contents of emails sent to tecnhncians. 
* Emails to technicians are enabled according to notification preferences. 

 

• Incident/SR assigned to a technician.
• Request/Task assigned to an unavailable person.
• Request/Task closed or resolved by another technician.
• New Incident/SR received by a group to which the technician belongs.
• New Incident/SR received outside service hours by a group for which the Octopus user is a member.
• Addition of an activity to any request/task.
• Addition of an activity to a request/task that I am following.
• Addition of an activity to a request/task assigned to an unavailable person.
• Addition of an activity to a request/task that is assigned to me.
• Addition of a new activity by the user to an unassigned request/task.
• Incident/SR escalation (SLA).
• High priority Incident/SR.
• New problem recieved by a group to which the technician belongs.
• Problem assigned to a technician. 
• New known error.
• Closed (and resolved) problem.
• Change assigned to technician. 
• New event recieved by a group to which the tecnician belongs.
• Event assigned to a tehnician.
• Reminder.
• Meeting invitation.
• Meeting reminder.
• Meeting modification.
• New task recieved by one of the groups to which the tecnician belongs.
• Task assigned to a technician.
• Approval refused in a request in progress.
• Service contract expiration (specifiy the period).
• Lease contract expiration (specifiy the period).
• List subscription.

Emails to suppliers
These options allows to modify text included in emails sent to suppliers.
 

• Send activity by email. 

​Other messages
List of templates for automated emails/messages for various situations.
 

• Automatic reply for denied request creation by MailIntegration.
• Error notification
• New Octopus version available soon. 
• Octopus update.
• Response SLA - Breached.

IMPORTANT: Before enabling this option, make sure you have configured all the options below related to SLA.

For more details on SLA, see here.

Services Hours and Holidays

When service level agreements are activated,  Octopus uses your schedule to calculate the due date for incidents and service request.
 

• Hours of operation: You must specify your hours of service.
• Holidays : You must enter your organization's holidays annually.

Resolution targets for incidents

• Specify your resolution target in the list below. 

Process targets for service requests (SR)

• Specify in the list below, your process target delays for each type of service request. 

​Warning levels and colours

Octopus informs you when your incidents and service requests are on the verge of being late or when they are late. There are two imminent expiration warnings and one overdue warning.

1st warning :

• Display incidents using the following color :  specify the color according to your preference.
• If elapsed time percentage is greater than: specify the percentage according to your preference

2nd warning :

• Display incidents using the following color :  specify the color according to your preference.
• If elapsed time percentage is greater than: specify the percentage according to your preference

Breached :

• Dispaly incidents using the following color: specify the color according to your preference.

•  Send the SLA notification to all members of the affected group.
•  Send the SLA notification to the assigned technician and to the group managers.

If it is an unassigned incident: specify

•  Send the SLA notification to all members of the affected group.
•  Send the SLA notification to the assigned technician and to the group managers.

Netword directory containing the attached files

The files that are attached to Octopus data (incidents/SR, CI, contracts) will be saved on your netowork. Specify below the location where to save the files. 
 

Users must have read and write access to the folder. For more details about the files, see here.

For hosted customers, it is possible to host your Octopus files on our servers. In this case, the location will be empty. 

PLEASE NOTE: For the option of sharing tasks between teams, the collaborator from the collaborating team must have access to the directory of the team that owns the request. For more details on Multiteam collaboration, see here.

Visible and requiered fields

This series of options allows to determine which fields are mandatory upon an incident creation, except Category, Subcategory and Adding CI fields which will only be required upon resolution.

Incident
 

•   Priority
•   Urgency
•   Impact
•   Category
•   Subcategory
•   Description
•   Adding a CI * this option does not apply to "quick call".
•   Affected service
•   Site (incident/SR)

Service request
By default, priority is not visible because there are request processing targets.
 

• Priority
• Description

​Activity

• Type : template for recurring activities to be configured in the reference data.
• Description
• Effort: calculation of time spent on an activity.

Planned request

• Estimated effort: must be set if you want to use planning reports
  ​

User file

• Personnel email

Defaut Incident / SR type

• Default type preselected when creating from Octopus

​Default priority

• Default priority used when creating a new incident from Octopus

Default priority for Web Portal

• Default priority for all incidents submitted via the web portal.

* If SLAs are enabled, we recommend not using this option to ensure that the request is analyzed in order to select the correct priority.

Priority derivation

• ITIL recommends deriving the priority of an incident based on imapct and urgency for the organization. Octopus can automatically derive an incident priority as soon as imapct and urgency are selected. 

Display mode for major incidents on the Web Portal

• Use this option to control the visibilty of major incidents on the Web Portal.

Text format for activities added by technicians

• This option indicates if rich activities (HTML format) are used for technician activities.

* We recommend using HTML format. For more details, see here.

Defaut values

• These options allows to designate a value to be used when Octopus cannot redeuce the value frim the context. Specify the default site and user.

WMI Update Manager options

• These option allow you to designate the values to use when detecting the configuration of computers, either by using the console application or by using Octopus updating a computer or set of computers.
   
• User detection
• Printer detection
• Detect user installed softwares
• Manage user softwares removal

Category and sub-category confirmation on incident resolution

• This option leads to better incident categorization by forcing the assignee to review category and sub-category updon resolution. It's also allows you to include more details in your reports and statistics. 

• Specify the time zone to use for users without assigned time zone. 

Request follow-up

• This option is used to specicify the request follow-up mode. For mode details, see here.

Remote access program

• Ability to remotely control computers on your network through Octopus.

• This is a useful option if the Send confirmation upon resolution of an incident/SR is enabled. Specify the desired delay and add this delay to the resolution confirmation email template. 
   

• Internal - by default, activities are internal (invisible to the user)
• Public - by default, activities are public (users can read them via Web Portal)
   

• This option greatly helps stakeholders follow best practices throughout the request lifecycle. It activates a bar for support directly in the assigned request.
   

• When enabled, the system will automatically resolve all service requests when the last task is completed or canceled.

• It is also possible to enable automatic resolution for certain templates only. Select the template, advanced tab, automatic resolution, enabled.

   

• This option indicates if users are allowed to add actvities via Web Porton incidents/SR that are resolved.

• This option indicates if users will see cancelled requests via the Web Portal.

Visibility of task progress via the Web Portal

• When enabled, this option allows users to view the progress of tasks within their service requests (SRs). This option is useful because it can prevent users from requesting updates.
• Note that you can select which tasks will be visible to the user or not when configuring them.
   

• When enabled, this option allows users to access the satisfaction survey from the Web Portal. It is also possible to add the survey to the resolution email template using the tags provided for this purpose. For more details, see here.
   

• You can display the images to see satisfaction levels.

• You can make comments mandatory for a certain satisfaction level. 

Delay before creating incidents from events

• When an event is created following a failed CI, you can specify the delay before the incident is created. For more details, see here. 

Incident creation from isolated events

This option allows to create only one incident when many ophan events are recieved at once. For more details, see here.
 

• ​During Service Hours
• Outside Service Hours
• Number of Targeted Events
• Responsible Group
   

• This option validates that the serial number of CI is unique.

• This option validates that the inventory number of a CI is unique.

• This option allows to configurer the sites levels on the web Portal. For more details, see here.
   
• Minimum level required
• Maximum level dispayed

Hide user field for request on the Web Portal

• This option hides the user field when creating an incident or service request (SR) from the Web Portal.  
  
  Please note that enabling this option will affect ALL incident/SR templates for which the default behavior has not been changed.
  
  You can hide the user field for certain templates only. Enable the option in the Web Portal tab of the template for which you want to hide the user field. 

Create incident/SR with the requester language

• This option allows in the Windows application to create the incidnet/SR with the requester's language instead of the assignee's language when generated from a form.

Copy request description to Change

• This option allows in the Windows application to copy the description of a request in the change when executing the action "create change from".  

Available languages in the Windows application and Web Portal

• This option allows to define waht languages the users of the Web Portal can select as well as the users of the Windows application.
  
  
  Attention : The language by defaut will be assigned to all users in all teams taht have an unvailable language.

Change

Templates to use

• For planned request
• For change

Status

• Status of the CI in the CMDB. If the status is Retired, the CI is no longer visible and must be searched for using the include retired option. 
  
   

Time range

• Information used by Event Management.

Types

• The types of CIs available in the CMDB.
   

​Configuration

• Is a document - type of CI that represents a document (procedure, policy, etc.)
• Is a  computer - can be detect with WMI in Octopus.
• Replacement time - can add a lifetime and a suggested replacement value.

Relationships

• Type of relationships that CI can have with other CIs.​

Attributs

• Attributes specific to each type of CI.

Category

• Categories associated with a type of CI.
   

• Indicates the Group and/or the person responsible for the type of CI.

Relations Type

• List of relationships used in the CMDB.​

Service request (SR)

• Service request types allow you to use SR templates to make requests. We recommend adding a form to complete the request. Some templates can only be used internally or are restricted to certain people on the web portal.
   

For each type, you can (optional) :
 

• Indicate the service level agreement.
• Add automated tasks, including approval tasks.
• Add a procedure for the technician. 
• Indicate whether it is visible on the web portal or not.
• Add instructions for the user.
• Add an alternative subject.
• Configure the web form and determine mandatory and conditional fields.
• Add an attachment.
• Automatically assign a group or technician.
• Choose not to send notifications for this particular type.
• Allow access to the request type for a group or site.

• Define it as Quick Call.

• And more!

To improve the search and use of SRs, it is possible to categorize the types of service requests and add an image and a brief description to them.

• Categories
• Rules

• Use this feature to invoke VBScripts, batch files, Powershell scripts, or any other program. In short, if it can be executed from the command line, it can be integrated into Octopus. For more details, see here.
   

• Imported with Active Directory and linked to users.
   

Teams

• Allows you to configure the name, image, rank, and description of teams in Octopus. This information is visible from the web portal and is useful if there is more than one team in Octopus.

Groups technicians

• Allows requests to be assigned to a group of technicians in Octopus without necessarily assigning them to a specific individual. 
• Average hourly rate for ressources - Approximate cost of using internal resources, which Octopus uses to calculate the costs of requests, IIs, etc. 

Users groups

• Option to create groups of approvers and groups of users with access to restricted requests, receiving specific notifications, etc. 

Value list

• Place to prepare lists to be used by drop-down lists, linked lists, or radio buttons within forms.
   

Manufacturers

• Added when importing ICs with WMI, DataImporter, or added manually. May also contain models. 

Permissions

• To add custom permissions.

Roles

• Place to prepare the list of roles associated with permissions in Octopus, the web portal, and on Webtech. 

Sites 

• Typically linked to groups in Active Directory.  If a site is associated with the CI, it will be automatically selected in the incident/SR, depending on the user's site being selected. 
• Generales information
  Name and address of the site. Association with the Service Desk if there is more than one.
• Available requests
  Allows you to restrict access to certain types of SRs and incident templates based on the selected site. 
• SLA
  Allows you to determine service level agreements (SLAs) by site.

Communication sources

• Useful for reports, allows you to see where requests are coming from. 

Funding source

• Field located in the Costs tab of the CI. 

Activity types

• Allows the creation of templates to speed up or standardize information in queries. For more details, see here. 

Service contract types

• Service contract used by the company, generally related to CI.
   

​Request relationship types

• List of all possible relationships between the various types of queries.

  ---

  ATTENTION : This information is shared among all Octopus teams. It is therefore very important that it is accurate and representative for everyone.​

Incident

Category/Subcategory

• Available in incidents if the option is visible and enabled.

Templates

Incident templates make it easier to create incidents. We recommend adding a form to facilitate creation. Some templates can only be used internally. 

For each template, you can (optional) : 
 

• Associate a category and subcategory.
• Add a procedure for the technician.
• Indicate whether it is visible on the web portal or not.
• Add instructions for the user.
• Add an alternative subject.
• Configure the web form and determine mandatory and conditional fields.
• Add an attachment.
• Automatically assign a group or technician.
• Choose not to send notifications for this particular type.
• Restrict access to the request type to a group.
• Define it as Quick Call.
• And more !

Impacts, Urgencies and Priorities

• If priority derivation is enabled in the options, the content of these three (3) fields will be used in incidents. In all cases, the priority field will be used in incidents / SR if it is visible. 

Reasons for cancelling

• Edit as needed
• Certain reasons are used by the system: refusal of approval, duplicates, team transfer and cannot be modified.

Reasons for pending

• Edit as needed
• To be used when the service or one of its suppliers is responsible for the delay.
• Putting on hold does not stop SLA calculations. 

Reasons for suspension

• Edit as needed
• To be used when the service is not responsible for the delay.
• The suspension stops the calculation of SLAs.

For more details, see here.

• If necessary, configure the categories for Parts Management.

• If necessary, configure categories for Scheduled Request Management.

• Reasons for canceling tasks to be edited as needed.