Customizing ServiceDesk Operations

The ServiceDesk application comes with some pre-set initial behaviors that can be easily modified. This section discusses them.

Case-Related Customizations

Change Case Notifications

These Rules cause case-related notifications to be sent automatically after a certain amount of time has elapsed. You can turn them off or modify them quite easily:

1. Go to > Case Automation > Business Rules > Timer Rules
2. There, you find two rules:

   • One sends a message 36 hours after a case is put into "Pending" status.
   • The other sends a message 3 hours after a new case is created, if the status hasn't changed.
     (By default, the status automatically changes to "Open" when someone sends a message from that case.)

3. Click the On/Off button next to either rule to disable it.
4. Or click the rule to edit it.
   (For example, by default the notification is sent to the record owner. But you can edit the rule to send the message to someone else--for example, the person the record owner reports to--or to take additional actions.

Specify who gets New-Case Notifications

When a new case is created, you may want a message sent to your entire support team, to ensure that someone sees it and picks it up.

1. Go to > Account Management > Company Information
2. Click [Edit]
3. Under ServiceDesk Case Settings, enter a comma-separated list of email addresses to which new-case notifications are sent. (By default, they are sent to the initial admin, as that is the only email address the system knows when it is created.)

Note: In this section you can also specify who gets an email when someone posts a new question to the Community--if that Service Portal feature is enabled.

Turn Off Automatic Case Assignments

By default, the first person to respond to a new Case becomes the owner of the case. To change that behavior:

1. Go to > Account Management > Company Information
2. Click [Edit]
3. Under ServiceDesk Case Settings, turn off the option to Assign Ownership on First Response
4. Click [Save]

Add SLAs

Service Level Agreements, or SLAs, are commitments you make to your customers. You can use ServiceDesk to define several levels of customer service, and set up automated escalation patterns that send email alerts, reassign cases, and take other actions at specified times, to ensure that SLA commitments are honored.

Learn more: SLAs