I N C I D E N T A L S

New Features in LiveTime 5.5

Request Creation and Multi-Item Requests

In version 5.5, when you first create an Incident, or for those with Service Manager, a Change Request, you will notice an updated Request Creation process. From the outset, you will be able to view the Customer and Item details on the same page.



When you add the Item to the Service Request, you will notice the Add button. This allows Users to add more than one Item to the Request. Such functionality allows technicians to create and manage multiple requests for one customer simultaneously.

This capability is known as Multi-Item Requests. When these are created, they are listed as separate requests within the Incident or Change Tab, but can also be viewed as a group within the Incident Groups or Change Groups sub-menu option of the respective Processes.

You will also note that the related requests now appear in a Related Request sidebar, which allows Users to toggle to a related request by clicking the IP (ITIL Process) icon.

Where has the Quick Call button gone?

Users may wonder where the Quick Call button has moved to as it is no longer visible after assigning the Customer to the Request, and the Add button is now in its place.

After Customer details are assigned to the Request, a Quick Call can be easily created without searching and selecting an Item, by using the Next button to move to the Details tab. Then within the Request Type drop-down options, anything listed below the dashed line is a Quick Call Template.

These Quick Calls are context sensitive in that only Quick Calls related to the selected Item or Item's for the request are shown. If your Quick Call does not specify an Item then they are considered global and work across all requests.

Technician Scheduling and Availability

To enhance the efficiency of your support organization by automatically routing Requests to available service and support personnel, LiveTime now includes the ability to define Technician support hours on the Schedule tab of each User.

The Schedule tab allows Supervisor Users to set the work hours of the Technician, which LiveTime will use as part of the Technician Assignment logic when routing Requests to a member of the support team.

This is particularly important for global service and support teams that work across multiple time zones, as LiveTime will always ensure a new Request is automatically assigned to an available Technician.

The ability to also define User Vacations means Supervisors can schedule leave in advance and subsequently reassign any active Requests to other available Technicians when the leave window opens. (The reassignment being based on the basic Technician Assignment logic.)

To enable this feature the Administrator must select the following options within the Setup > Privileges > Technician tab:

1. Define Work Hours
2. Scheduled Vacations
3. Vacation Reassign

Supervisors can also view at a glance the Users' scheduled leave by selecting the Resource Calendar option within the Home > Events screen.

Public Holidays and SLAs

LiveTime 5.5 also introduces the ability to automatically adjust Service Level Contracts relative to Public Holidays. This ensures that SLA timers pause when a Public Holiday begins, and subsequently restart when the next working day commences.

Administrators may enable this feature within the Setup > Privileges > Technician tab. The "Observe Public Holidays" option must also be enabled within the Admin > Setup > Privileges > Technicians tab. Administrators can also control the Public Holiday schedule for any region of the world within the Setup menu.

Holidays can be applied across each SLA by selecting the "Pause on Holiday" option within any relevant SLA Editor. Further information about this feature is available within the 5.5 User Guide Appendices, in the "Public Holidays, SLAs and Technician Assignment" section.

Additional Features

Other Notable additions to LiveTime 5.5

LiveTime version 5.5 comes with over 100 additions and enhancements. Notable changes include:

• KPI Reporting. Supervisors and Managers can now monitor Key Performance Indicators such as the Call Distribution, Volume, Channel and Service Level achievements using the new reports.
• Service Level Progress. Requests now provide a service level progress bar as it proceeds to completion.
• Improved Performance. LiveTime has been further optimized in this release to provide improved response times and decreased latency.
• New Language Support LiveTime includes built-in translations for English, Spanish, Chinese and Romanian. Languages are automatically detected based upon the users operating system settings.
• Team Based Separation. New request filters provide access to all requests based upon each users Team membership. This enables further request separation across departments and business units without requiring separate instances.
• Parameter Based Email. Email base templates now include the ability to insert First Name, Full Name, User Name and Password parameters as required.
• Customer Quick Calls. Quick Calls can be optionally triggered within the Customer Portal. Common requests can be exposed directly to customers for rapid submission. These can be optionally tied to specific Items or require manual selection.
• Team Notifications. Default Notifications are now controlled on a per Team basis. When upgrading to 5.5, as the Supervisor, go to the User > Teams > Team Information screen and refine the default Request Notification setting for the Team as desired.

• Escalation and De-escalation Controls. Requests now have the ability to escalate and de-escalate as desired. If a request is escalated and subsequently de-escalated it will return to the original technician that escalated the call.

• Request Level Alerts. Any Request can now have associated alerts which can be published against individuals or against user roles as necessary.
• Impact and Urgency Driven SLA Priorities Item Criticality now drives SLA priority in combination with request urgency.

Partner Update

LiveTime Partners with MySQL

LiveTime has strengthened its relationship with MySQL by recently becoming a Gold partner. This enables LiveTime to better service its customers by providing important security fixes and performance optimizations for those using MySQL.

LiveTime 5.5 will also include the new MySQL Enterprise driver and begin supporting the MySQL Enterpise server as a part of this new relationship. Specifically tuned versions of the Enterprise Server will facilitate dramatic performance gains and optinally support data replication as required.