Week 7.2 - Chapter 20

Question 1

Summarize implementing best practice documentation.

Answer 1

• IT support depends of ticketing systems to keep track of issues as they are reported, investigated and resolved.
• You should also document the service environment so that each asset is identified and subjected to change-control procedures.
• Implementing this type of best practice documentation will help to ensure reliable and secure IT services.

Question 2

What is a policy?

Answer 2

An overall statement of intent.

Question 3

What does SOP stand for?

Answer 3

Standard Operating Procedure

Question 4

What is a SOP?

Answer 4

A step-by-step list of the actions that must be completed for any given task to comply with policy.

Question 5

In what situations are Guidelines used instead?

Answer 5

• Guidelines are for areas of policy where there are no procedures, either because the situation has not been fully assessed or because the decision-making process is too complex and subject to variables to be able to capture it in a SOP.
• Guidelines may also describe circumstances where it is appropriate to deviate from a specified procedure.

Question 6

What are Ticketing Systems?

Answer 6

A ticketing system manages requests, incidents, and problems.

Question 7

What groups of people can make use of ticketing systems for support?

Answer 7

• internal end-users
• external customers

Question 8

What is the general process of ticket management?

Answer 8

• user contacts help desk
• a unique job ticket ID is generated
• and agent is assigned to the ticket
• user supplies description of the issue
• agent asks clarifying questions
• ticket gets categorized, is assessed on how urgent it is and how long it will take to fix
• if the troubleshooting steps given by the agent does not resolve the ticket, it gets escalated to a senior or deskside support

Question 9

What basic information would a ticket need to capture?

Answer 9

User information: The user’s name, contact details, and other relevant information such as department or job role. It might be possible to link the ticket to an employee database or customer relationship management (CRM) database.

Device information: If relevant, the ticket should record information about the user’s device. It might be possible to link to the relevant inventory record via a service tag or asset ID.

Question 10

What are the two important aspects that need to be tracked at every stage of a ticket’s life?

Answer 10

• ownership of the ticket (who is dealing with it)
• status (what has been done)

Question 11

What are some reasons a ticket might be escalated?

Answer 11

• The incident is related to a problem and requires analysis by senior technicians or by a third-party/warranty support service.
• The incident severity needs to be escalated from minor to major or major to critical and now needs the involvement of senior decision-makers.
• The incident needs the involvement of sales or marketing to deal with service complaints or refund requests.

Question 12

What are the four tiers of escalation levels?

Answer 12

• Tier 0
• Tier 1
• Tier 2
• Tier 3

Question 13

What does a Tier 0 technician entail?

Answer 13

Self-service options for the customer to try to resolve an incident via advice from a knowledge base or “help bot.”

Question 14

What does a Tier 1 technician entail?

Answer 14

Connecting the customer to an agent for initial diagnosis and possible incident resolution.

Question 15

What does a Tier 2 technician entail?

Answer 15

Allowing the agent to escalate the ticket to senior technicians (Tier 2 – Internal) or to a third-party support group (Tier 2 – External).

Question 16

What does a Tier 3 technician entail?

Answer 16

Escalating the ticket as a problem to a development/engineer team or to senior managers and decision-makers.

Question 17

What are the three fields to reflect the ticket life cycle?

Answer 17

• Problem description
• Progress notes
• Problem resolution

Question 18

What does a problem description offer?

Answer 18

It records the initial request with any detail that could easily be collected at the time.

Question 19

What do Progress notes record?

Answer 19

• record what diagnostic tools and processes have discovered
• record the identification and confirmation of a probable cause

Question 20

What does Problem resolution entail?

Answer 20

• sets out plan of action
• documents successful implementation and testing of the plan
• documents full system functionality
• should also record end-user or customer acceptance so that the ticket can be closed

Question 21

What does AAR stand for and what does it mean?

Answer 21

• After-Action Report
• An in-depth incident report developed for critical and major incidents

Question 22

What does an incident report entail?

Answer 22

An incident report solicits the opinions of users/customers, technicians, managers, and stakeholders with some business or ownership interest in the problem being investigated.

Question 23

What is the purpose of an incident report?

Answer 23

The purpose of an incident report is to identify underlying causes and recommend remediation steps or preventive measures to mitigate the risk of a repeat of the issue.

Question 24

Asset management uses a catalogue of hardware and software to..?

Answer 24

To implement life-cycle policies and procedures for provisioning, maintaining, and decommissioning all the systems that underpin IT services.

Question 25

What would a tangible asset inventory include?

Answer 25

The tangible inventory should include all hardware that is currently deployed as well as spare systems and components kept on hand in case of component or system failure.

Question 26

What would an intangible asset inventory include?

Answer 26

The intangible asset inventory includes software licenses and data assets, such as intellectual property (IP).

Question 27

An asset-management database system can be configured to store details such as..?

Answer 27

type, model, serial number, asset ID, location, user(s), value, and service information