Related Articles

• Basic Configuration - Incident
• Basic Configuration - Service requests
• Create customized forms in Octopus

Introduction

From Octopus interface, all incident templates and service request types are accessible. However, to make them available on the Web Portal, they must be designated visible to users. 

Visibility of service request types

1. Go into Tools > Reference Data Management... > Service Request > Types
2. Select the type you want to make visible on the Web Portal
3. Go to Web Portal tab and select Visible on Web Portal checkbox

We encourage you to read Create customized forms - Available field types article for a better understanding of the benefits associated with the development of forms supporting service requests that may be submitted by users. 

Visibility of incident templates

1. Go in Tools > Reference Data Management... > Incident > Templates
2. Select the template you want to make visible on the Web Portal
3. Go to Web Portal tab and select Visible on Web Portal checkbox

Same as service request types, you can elaborate questionnaires using personalized fields to obtain appropriate information about the incident from the user submitting an incident from the Web Portal. 

Recommendations 

Note that questionnaires developed for incident templates have a very different approach comparing to the ones conceived for the service requests:

• Do not forget that the user may not be familiar with ITIL concepts such as priority, urgency, impact, etc. You must take care to ask wise questions that will gather maximum information about the incident
• Remind users that "urgent" incidents find a quicker way... by phone. Urgency is a relative concept that needs to be clarified and communicated. You could give guidance to users from the web form, in the instructions to the users. The objective is to encourage the use of the Web Portal, keep the phone for urgent requests in order to reduce waiting time
• Do not develop too many questions, and use drop down lists to suggest "symptoms"; you will get what you need to evaluate the situation and this will reduce the time spent to call back the user for missing information
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Examples of questions

• Did you report this problem already (by phone, in person, via the Web Portal)?
• Are you the only one with this problem?
• Is it the first time this happens to you?
• Did you get an error message? If yes, can you write it down?
• What did you try to resolve your problem (reboot, etc.)?
• Are you at a critical time delivery in your work (end of month, year, etc.)?