What's new in Control Desk Service Portal

This release provides enhancements for the optional Control Desk Service Portal user interface for ticket management.

On-premises customers can install Service Portal in their local environments

In previous releases the Service Portal user interface was available only in the IBM Cloud. With this release customers can install Service Portal in their local environments. While Control Desk can be installed on various platforms, currently Service Portal must be installed on Red Hat Linux.

Service Portal Self Service Center enhancements

The following enhancements are provided for Self Service Center:

• The Home page is redesigned to improve usability. You have quick access to key tasks:
  • search for solutions to issues that you encounter
  • chat with a service desk agent
  • report issues
  • view existing tickets
  • request service offerings
  • view the latest news
  • view solutions that you bookmarked
• Updated features are available for working with attachments:
  • You can now delete an attachment before saving a ticket. However, you cannot delete attachments after a ticket is saved.
  • A drag-and-drop feature is included that you can use to add attachments to tickets that you create.
• In earlier releases, tickets that were created in the Service Portal Self Service Center were added as incident records. Effective with this release when you report an issue, a service request record is created. Incident records that are created in the classic IBM Control Desk user interface can be displayed and managed in Service Portal if the incident is assigned to an agent or associated with a Service Portal user. However, incident records are not created in Service Portal.
• A virtual assistant is added to the Report an Issue page to provide dynamic assistance when you report issues. The assistant can look for existing solutions to an issue or recommend additional details that can be useful in resolving the issue.
• In Control Desk Service Portal you can rate and review service offerings.

Ticketing enhancements

The following enhancements are provided for ticketing:

• Agents can delete attachments both before and after a ticket is saved.

Updated administrative features

The following enhancements are provided for administrative use:

• Ticket templates are supported when reporting an issue. In the standard Control Desk user interface, administrators can create ticket templates for use in Service Portal. When creating the template, you can specify existing attributes that you want to display as fields. For example, you can create a network connectivity template that displays a field for the access method. When users specify a description that mentions network connectivity, the virtual agent can recommend the template that includes a field for access method.
• Administrators can add custom fields to the SR object, and the fields are displayed when Self Service Center users report issues. For example, if you want self-service users to specify a location when they report an issue, you can add a custom Location field to the SR object, and users are prompted for it when reporting issues.
• Administrators can customize the way that fields and sections are displayed in the user interface.
• Additional options are available when customizing themes for the user interface, including the ability to manipulate logo size and position and additional text and style options.