Getting help

The help features answer the "do" and "ask" questions: order what you need, report what is broken, follow it through, and solve common problems yourself. Everything raised in the portal lands in the service desk; see Service requests and the catalog and Service desk for the agent side.

Services and requests

Services (/portal/services) opens What can we help you with? with:

• search;
• common actions: Track my requests, Report an issue, Submit a request, Browse guides, My activity;
• services grouped by area, All services and Helpful guides.

Each service has Submit request, which opens its request form. Only services you are allowed to order are listed.

Request types can have form fields, approval steps and fulfilment tasks. A catalog item can be a bundle (flag request_bundles) that creates one parent request and one child request per team. Each ordered catalog item becomes exactly one service request, created by a background job; retries never create duplicates.

Partially available. The catalogue, bundles and fulfilment are available. The request form labels are not yet translated into German.

Planned — not yet available. A Service Shop with a cart and two-step checkout, a rule engine that shows, hides and requires form fields based on answers, department catalogues and order guides.

If a request type needs approval, the request waits for the approver. In the portal you see the state as Waiting for approval; see Lifecycles and processes.

Report an issue

Report an issue asks:

• What isn't working? — a short summary;
• Tell us what happened — what you did, what you expected and what happened instead;
• a Category;
• optional Additional questions and the affected service, app or device (you can search your devices and published services).

While you type, TENSOR suggests matching help articles.

After submitting, a receipt shows the Reference and Status and promises a notification on updates.

If the connection breaks, your text is kept so you can try again, and TENSOR warns you if an earlier version may already have been sent.

Tracking and conversation

Every issue you reported has a page with:

• its status;
• What you reported;
• the Affected items;
• the public Conversation with the service desk. Messages from the service desk are marked Service desk; only agent replies marked public appear here.

Use Reply to the service desk to add information. Check for updates refreshes the conversation.

Replying to a closed issue reopens it, or starts a follow-up request if it was closed a while ago.

You can only open your own requests. A request that does not exist and one that belongs to someone else look the same ("Request not found").

My activity

My activity (/portal/activity) gathers everything about you:

• a summary: Needs attention, Open requests, Open incidents, Unread updates;
• the acknowledgements waiting for you;
• the table Requests & incidents with the filters All, Open, Waiting and Completed;
• your change proposals;
• Recent updates.

It shows only your own data.

Partially available. My activity shows acknowledgements, requests, issues and updates; pending approvals are not yet shown there. The You badge in the header counts mandatory acknowledgements; counting approvals and replies awaiting you is planned.

Request a change

If something should be changed rather than fixed or ordered — for example "give the finance team access to the payroll drive" — use Request a change under Services (flag change_portal_proposals).

• You describe what should change, why it is needed and optionally a date.
• IT reviews it. Accepted proposals become a draft change with you as requester; declined proposals show the reason.
• You can withdraw a proposal while it waits for review.

Change managers decide proposals; from the draft change onwards, the normal change approval rules apply. See Changes.

Knowledge base

The Knowledge base (/portal/knowledge) lists the articles you are allowed to read, with search and categories.

• At the end of an article, Was this article helpful? lets you rate it.
• When you describe a problem, suggested articles may solve it faster than a ticket. This solved it — don't file a ticket records that the article helped, and no ticket is created.

Live chat

With live chat switched on (flag live_chat), you start a conversation under Live chat (/portal/chat) with a subject.

• If the service desk needs to work on it, the conversation becomes an issue with the full transcript, and you continue there.
• You can also end the chat without creating an issue.

Related

• Step by step: Guides for employees
• States employees see: Lifecycles and processes
• If something does not appear: Troubleshooting and FAQ