Using Reporting and Desktops to Provide a Status Page

This how to guide will help administrators to track and report on outages. The user must have the following settings enabled within the Security Role: Global Admin or App Admin in Client Portal and Access to the Analysis or Ticketing App for Reporting. 

Overview

When dealing with an outage it is important to keep your stakeholders informed as well as efficiently and swiftly restore services.  In TDX you can accomplish both by creating a process where you track outage tickets that will automatically provide selected data up to a public portal dashboard as well as seamlessly moving the data into a historical record. 

This process will review several elements across the TDX system that come together to provide an easy to manage status reporter.  The first section will discuss how to create an outage ticket and values you may want to consider adding in your design. The second element is the reporting tools to draw out your desired data and provide it on a dashboard.  The final step is providing paths to access that data. 

Creating a Outage Ticket

This demo is going to utilize a Problem Class of ticket.  You may choose an alternate classification (Incident, Service Request, etc.) but the Problem class has several benefits.  The first being the standard ITIL language around a Problem.  A Problem is a system misalignment that is the root cause of multiple Incidents.  An outage often is or has the capacity to cause cascaded Incidents.  For example if you have an internet outage at your organization you may get numerous incident reports ranging from inability to send/receive email to IOT devices failing to function properly.  Tracking an outage as a Problem ticket allows for good data tracking, audit reporting prep, and TDX Problem tickets can function as a parent ticket to host and cascade updates to child tickets (Incidents). 

  1. Start by creating custom attributes to use on your form
  2. Head to TDAdmin> Applications> Ticketing App> Attributes
  3. Click + New to create a new attributes
  4. Each of the custom attributes you are creating for reporting should have the "Updatable" box checked in their configurations and likely the "Client Visible" as this is meant to be externally facing data
  5. It is up to you to decide what data you want to release but for this example we are going to plan to report these four values:
    •  Outage Status - A dropdown with custom statuses
      • you could use the ticket status but this will allow you to use specific outage language for reporting to the public while maintaining ticketing language for the actual outage ticket itself and means you do not have to create additional (cannot be deleted) ticket statuses
      • The values we will use are: Investigating, Identified, Monitoring, Resolved
    • Last Outage Update - A Date/Time Selector
      • you could use the ticket update or modified values but in this example we are integrating isolated control to be able to push specific data to the public if and when you want
    • Anticipated Restoration - A Date/Time Selector
    • Systems Impacted - A Multiselect tool listing all the high level systems we may report on
  6. Keep in mind the "Sort Order" values on the attributes as those are respected on the actual tickets as well here in the attribute lists; you may want to define a specific order on your ticket
  7. Once these attributes are created head over to TDAdmin> Applications> Ticketing App> Forms to create the Outage form
  8. Click +New to create a new form or select an existing Problem form to edit
  9. Configure the basics of your form to fit your desired problem tracking and add an internal use attributes you may want for managing the problem ticket (start, due, type, location, etc.)
  10. With the rest of the standard elements setup on your form add the four custom attributes you created in step 5 to the form, you may want to add them to the bottom to keep them grouped together
  11. Save the form; the custom attributes may look something like this: Outage Form Example
  12. If you want to allow your team to log outages, you may want to adjust the Settings tab of the form to pin the form to make it even more easily accessible to technicians in TDNext 
  13. If you would rather limit access to certain persons, you may consider restricting access to the outage form to specific groups to limit who can create an outage with the Permissions tab
  14. When the form is set to your needs save the form and close it 
  15. It would be advisable to head to TDNext> Ticketing app and create a test ticket, making sure to select values for the custom outage attributes, so you have content to see when testing the reporting in the next step

Report Configuration and Public Desktop Setup

Now that you have the form created and data to present to your organization.  One of the best ways to do this is through a public desktop.  A public desktop does not require authentication so you can provide the URL as broadly as you would like to share it.  It is also important to know that reports are not interactive when on a public desktop; meaning viewers cannot click on items to open tickets or further information.  This allows you to control how much data you release.  We will be creating two reports in this example.  One to show active outages and another to show historical outages.  You may choose to add more or limit to one in your environment.  An important note about public desktops is they are owned by a singular "host", however the reports can be shared to allow multiple administrators to adjust/configure the reports that live on the desktop.

  1. Begin by heading to TDNext and opening the same ticketing application where you have built out the outage form; if the tab is not already open select the application from the application (waffle) menu in the top left
  2. Click +Report> Report to start the active outage report
  3. Select Ticket Report
  4. Name the report something like "Active Outages";  this name will be part of the information displayed to your consumers
  5. Add a description is desired
  6. In the next section adjust the data you would like to see returned, in this example we are using Title and our 4 custom attributes built earlier; Outage Status, Systems Impacted, Last Outage Update, and Anticipated Restoration
    • Your report may look like this:columns to see
  7. Next, move to the filtering section to ensure you return only tickets you want to report upon; this example will use 2 filters:
    • Status - is one of - New, Open, In Process
    • Form - is one of - Outage Form  (the form name you created earlier in this guide)
    • Yours may look like this:
  8. Set the ordering if desired
  9. You may add it to a report folder to keep your reports organized
  10. Review the ownership of the report, you can set the ownership as your self, someone else, or a group 
    • remember that only an owner can edit the report... so if you give the ownership to another user or a group you are not part of you will not be able to edit it after saving
  11. Set the visibility to you preference, you will likely want to use "Everyone with the Application" but it is not required to make the public desktop work
  12. You can skip charts and email delivery for this purpose
  13. Save and Run the report;  if you created a sample ticket in advance of this report you should see that ticket returned in your report
    • It may look something like this: active outage report
  14. If you want to also provide a historical report follow these next steps; if not skip to step 24
  15. Start your historical report by again clicking on +Report> Report and selecting a ticket report in your same ticketing application
  16. Name the report something like "Historical Outages" and add a description if desired
  17. Adjust the columns you want to see; for this example we will use Title, Systems Impacted, Resolved Date, and the KPI: Create to Resolve (Op)
    • It may look like this:columns to see
  18. Add your filtering to the report to control returned values; this example uses 2:
    • Form - is one of - Outage Form (your forms name created earlier)
    • Status - is one of - Resolved, Closed
    • It may look like this:historical filtering
  19. Adjust ordering, rows, and report folder if desired
  20. Review the ownership of the report, you can set the ownership as your self, someone else, or a group 
    • remember that only an owner can edit the report... so if you give the ownership to another user or a group you are not part of you will not be able to edit it after saving
  21. Set the visibility to you preference, you will likely want to use "Everyone with the Application" but it is not required to make the public desktop work
  22. You can skip charts and email delivery for this purpose
  23. Save and Run the report;  you will likely not have any record returned yet unless you built out more sample content
    • When you do have content it may look something like this: Historical Report
  24. Now that you have the report(s) you want to provide to the public we will work on the desktop itself; remember this is hosted by a single person
  25. In TDNext navigate to the primary Desktop application (tab)
  26. Click +New Desktop
  27. Name the Desktop appropriately and save; something like "Outage Dashboard"
  28. On the Desktop editor page select your desired layout with the green Edit Layout button;  for this example we are going to use 1 column/row
  29. With the layout selected you will now add content by scrolling down in the available content to the ticketing application you have been working in, click on the application name to open the content
  30. locate your reports by the names you gave them and drag them onto your column in the order desired
    • It may look something like this: Outage Dashboard
  31. Next you will click on the "Details" tab here in the desktop editor screen
  32. On the detail page feel free to adjust the name, description, or set the auto refresh if desired
  33. Check the box for "Public"
    • Public desktops may only be created by users that have access to Analysis
  34. This will result in a "Public Until" field where you can choose a deactivation date; we will leave this blank in this example assuming we want it available long term
  35. You will be provide a public URL at this point, Save this URL somewhere so you can utilize it later;  you can always return and find this URL in this same place if needed
  36. Save and close the desktop
    • It may look something like this in TDNext: Outage Desktop

Providing the Dashboard to your Consumers

Now that you have content ready to push out to you clients you need to decide how best to provide it to them.  You may choose to use the public desktop URL (step 35 in the Report and Desktop section above) and provide it on a space like an organization intranet.  You may also choose to provide it directly to a limited number of users.  In this example we are going to make it a prominent part on the main page of the client portal with a set of buttons.  

  1. Start by navigating to TDAdmin> Applications> Client Portal> Modules & Pages> HTML Modules
  2. Click +New to start building the module that is going to live on your home page
  3. Leave the category as the client portal
  4. Name the module so you can identify it, this name can also be displayed on the page if desired 
  5. Adjust the settings to your preference on Show Border, Show Name, and Sanitize Content if desired
  6. You can find some sample HTML content for a set of three buttons attached to this KB on the right hand side in the attachments section, feel free to use this sample to get started
    • If using the sample code remember to replace the URLs for each button with your own URL locations in your TDX environment (ex. link to your service catalog, KB, etc.)
    • You will also want to adjust the button title text in the code as well to define the words on the actual buttons
    • In this example we are using the third button to point to the public desktop URL and use the title of "See Current Outages"
    • You can remove button code to limit it to less or copy them over several times to add more
  7. To enter HTML code click the "Source" button on the upper left of the Content block then enter HTML code in the text area
  8. When done building content Save the module
    • Your module may look something like this:html module
  9. Once you have the module completed head to TDAdmin> Applications> Client Portal> Modules & Pages> Pages
  10. Select the page you want, in this example we are placing this on the Home page
  11. Select the Content tab
  12. Open the Client Portal content in the available content column, then locate your module and drag it onto the desired location on the home page
  13. Save the page and close
  14. Now that module is on your client portal it may looks something like this on your home page:
  15. Now when your consumers click on links to your public desktop URL they should see a view like this on the client portal: client portal dashboard

 

Client Examples:

 

Gotchas and Pitfalls

  • Public desktops may only be created by users that have access to Analysis
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