Documentation

{{docApp.title}}

{{docApp.description}}

INDEX

Documentation Library

Search for information on Hornbill Documentation.

{{docApp.searchError}}

{{docApp.searchResultFilteredItems.length}} results for "{{docApp.currentResultsSearchText}}" in {{docApp.searchFilterBySpecificBookTitle}}

Have questions about this site?


What is this site?

  • This website is Hornbill's new product documentation website and is currently under development.
  • It is intended that all existing and future public-facing documentation we produce will be available to search, browse and share.
  • Hornbill's current documentation is available at Hornbill Wiki but over time this content will be migrated to this documentation site.
  • Please feel free to have a look around at any time.

Why has Hornbill created this site?

  • Hornbill's products have moved on considerably since we introduced it almost 10 years ago. At the time, the MediaWiki tool was sufficient, but we have outgrown it.
  • Our customers are more enterprise focused and more self-sufficient than ever before, so for 2023 and beyond we have established a new documentation platform and team to drive our documentation initiative forwards.
  • We are aiming to deprecate the use of Hornbill Wiki for most Hornbill related documentation.
  • We want to enable our growing partner network with product resources and information, documentation beyond our Wiki approach is required.
  • We could definitely do with some help, and may even pay for some! If you have domain knowledge and would like to help, please check out our Hornbill Docs Contributor Guide and contact the Hornbill docs team at docs@hornbill.com.

What will this site be good for?

  • Community contribution will be facilitated, encouraged, and most welcome.
  • High quality documentation, will be kept up to date as rapidly as our products evolve.
  • Real-time content search and discovery.
  • Articles organized into books, books into libraries, creating a more natural and logical structure to our documentation.
  • Legacy API documentation and various other documentation sources will all be consolidated into a single unified documentation system.
  • Documentation available in browser as well as printable/viewable as PDF on demand.
  • Personalized documentation experience, allowing dark/light mode, article subscriptions, social media sharing and other useful features.
  • Almost all publicly available documentation on docs.hornbill.com will be open-source and available to fork on GitHub, allowing customers to derive their own custom documentation around Hornbill products should they wish to.

What is the timeline for this site?

  • We have taken the decision to publish and make available early, there is very little content at this time.
  • As and when we have completed/usable documentation, it will be published here.
  • We have a host of additional features we wish to add over time, so please watch this space.
  • We expect most of our existing documentation should be reviewed/migrated to docs.hornbill.com over the coming months.
  • The documentation project will be ongoing, will continue to expand, evolve and improve day-by-day.

{{docApp.libraryHomeViewProduct.title || docApp.libraryHomeViewProduct.id}}

{{docApp.libraryHomeViewProduct.description}}

  1. {{book.title}}

{{group.title || group.id}}

{{group.description}}

  1. {{book.title}}

{{group.title}}

General Request Automation

The Service Manager Workflows are used to automate the processing of the requests that have been raised. This page contains information on the Service Manager automated tasks that can be used in the Workflow Designer to build unique and powerful workflows for your requests.

Access Control

Use the Access Control to lock or unlock the Details section or the Actions on a request. Only users with the appropriate application right (update locked requests) will be able to modify the details or use an Action once locked. This right has been added to the following roles: Incident Management Full Access, Change Management Full Access, Problem Management Full Access, Release Management Full Access, Service Request Full Access, and Service Desk Admin.

  • Lock / Unlock Request Actions
  • Lock Request Details
  • Unlock Request Details

Assessment

Use the Assessment node to initiate an Impact Assessment on a request

Impact Assessment

Assets

Use these Hornbill Automations for managing assets that are associated to the request

  • Add All Owned by Customer
  • Add Generic Assets Owned by Customer
  • Add Computer System Assets Owned by Customer
  • Add Computer Peripheral Assets Owned by Customer
  • Add Mobile Device Assets Owned by Customer
  • Add Network Device Assets Owned by Customer
  • Add Printer Assets Owned by Customer
  • Add Software Assets Owned by Customer
  • Add Telecoms Assets Owned by Customer
  • Create Generic Asset
  • Create Computer System Asset
  • Create Computer Peripheral Asset
  • Create Mobile Device Asset
  • Create Network Device Asset
  • Create Printer Asset
  • Get All Assets
  • Get All Generic Assets
  • Get All Computer Peripheral Assets
  • Get All Mobile Device Assets
  • Get All Network Device Assets
  • Get All Printer Assets
  • Get All Software Assets
  • Get All Telecoms Assets
  • Update All Assets - General Information
  • Update Computer Assets - Additional Properties
  • Update Computer Assets - General Information
  • Update Computer Peripheral Assets - Additional Properties
  • Update Computer Peripheral Assets - General Information
  • Update Mobile Device Assets - Additional Properties
  • Update Mobile Device Assets - General Information
  • Update Network Device Assets - Additional Properties
  • Update Network Device Assets - General Information
  • Update Printer Assets - Additional Properties
  • Update Printer Assets - General Information
  • Update Software Assets - Additional Properties
  • Update Software Assets - General Information
  • Update Telecoms Assets - General Information

Assignment

Use the Assignment node to automatically assign a request to different Service Manager users or teams.

  • Assign to Service Team
  • Assign to Team
  • Assign to Owner
  • Assign to Owner (Variable)
  • Unassign Owner
    This automation can be used to remove the current owner from the request without affecting the team to which the request is assigned.
  • Assign to Request Creator
  • Assign to Most Available Analyst
  • Assign on Round Robin Basis

Authorization Decision

Use the Authorization Decision node to mark on a Change or Service Request form if an authorization decision has been made.

  • Approved
  • Rejected
  • Clear

Collaboration

Use the Collaboration node to post an automated update onto a public workspace at any stage in a workflow. This will be visible to members of the specified workspace, on the timeline of the workspace and their News Feeds.

  • Comment on Existing Public Workspace Post
  • Comment on Request Source Post
  • Post to Public Workspace

Email Notifications

Use the Email Notification nodes to send email templates to different Request stakeholders. Configuration options include recipient, which email template to use and which mailbox to send the email from.

  • Email Contact
  • Email Co-worker
  • Email Customer
  • Email Customer Manager
  • Email External Address
  • Email Request Owner

Get Request Information

Use the Get Request Information node at any stage in a workflow and preceding another workflow node when you want to make the variables of the Request available. Variables may include Customer, Status, Site, Priority, or any Answers to Customer defined questions from different Progressive capture forms or attributes of the customer or organization of the request the workflow is running against.

  • Category Details
    This is designed to get information about both the request category and the resolution category. Ideal for making decisions based on the selected category.
  • Customer Details
    Get more information about the customer to help drive the workflow. Find out who their manager is. Check the custom fields for things like VIP status.
  • Source Email Details
    If the request was raised from an email, you can use this to get details such as the email of the sender. This is particularly useful when the contact or user does not exist in your system.
  • Organization Details
    Use when supporting external organizations. This can be particularly useful to check for information stored in the custom fields of the organization. Find out the location of the organization to determine which service desk or team to assign the request to.
  • Owner Details
    Can be used if you need more detail about the request owner than what the Request Details provide. A commonly used output is the owner’s manager.
  • Raised By Details
    Gather information about who raised the request. This can be particularly useful on request types that don’t include customers. For example, you may want to include some automation on a change workflow that communicates back to the person who raised the change.
  • Request Details
    This returns all the key information about a request. Possibly one of the most used automations in a request workflow.
  • Progressive Capture Answers
    This lets you interrogate the answers that were provided during the capture phase of a request. Make decisions based on the provided answers to drive your workflow.
  • Service Details
    Get the details of the associated service. When a request is first raised you may want to check the status of the service and send an automated email to the customer about the service not being available.
  • Site Details
    Your workflow may have location specific responses to an issue. Use the Manager IDs to help communicate issues at a site. You could add the managers as a connection or send them a notification of high priority incidents.
  • Team Details
    Get information about the team that the request is currently assigned to. Two useful outputs are the IDos of the team’s manager and leader, allowing you to send notifications, escalate, or add as a member.

Integration

Use the Integration node at any stage of a workflow, where you wish to invoke specific actions against a 3rd party application from the available list of applications.

  • Create Jira Request
  • Add Jira Request Comment
  • Log New Service Request

Linked Requests

Use the Linked Requests node to automatically post updates and resolve linked Requests. Linked requests are those that have been linked using the Link Action Item on a request form.

  • Resolve Linked Requests
  • Update Linked Requests

Log Requests

Use the Log Request to automatically raise another request at a particular point in the workflow.

  • Log New Change
  • Log New Incident
  • Log New Known Error
  • Log New Problem
  • Log New Release
  • Log New Request

Note

Using these options in your workflows, please be aware of where you are invoking them / placing them in the workflow, and in turn which workflows are going to be invoked against the new Incident or Service Request raised. Please avoid scenario’s where one workflow may invoke the logging of a new request, where the new request’s workflow immediately is configured to log a new request which again has a workflow which again logs another request immediately creating a loop. The result of which may be a lot of unwanted requests. In the event this occurs, disable the causing workflow and resolve the issue.

Questions

  • Delete Questions

Request Service

Use the Request Service node, if you wish to automate the availability status setting of the service associated to a request, or to automate adding related services of the request service to the request.

  • Add Related Services
  • Update Service Status

Suspend

Use the Suspend nodes if you wish to suspend the progress of the workflow until a defined action is performed manually on the Request. This could include waiting for a Priority to be set, a Customer added, Ownership set or the Resolution defined. Configuration options include the ability to specify the context (which Action Bar icon) the Request will appear in whilst waiting for the Suspend (manual action) to be performed.

  • Await Expiry
  • Wait for List of Request Authorizers
  • Wait for Attachment
  • Wait for Request Closure
  • Wait for Request Closure Category
  • Wait for Request Connection
  • Wait for Custom Field
  • Wait for Customer
  • Wait for Feedback
  • Wait for Request Description
  • Wait for Document
  • Wait for Request Email
  • Wait for External Reference
  • Wait for Impact Assessment
  • Wait for Linked Assets
  • Wait for Linked Request
  • Wait for Linked Requests Completion
  • Wait for Linked Request Update
  • Wait for Linked Services
  • Wait for New Request Owner
  • Wait for Request Off Hold
  • Wait for Request Owner
  • Wait for Request Priority
  • Wait for Request Category
  • Wait for Request Resolution
  • Wait for Request Site
  • Wait for Status Change
  • Wait for Request Summary
  • Wait for Request Team
  • Wait for Request Update
  • Wait for Urgency Assessment

Update Request

Use the Update Request node to automatically update the values of specific Request attributes at any stage in the workflow. Examples being updating the Logging or Closing Categories of a Request.

  • Logging Category
  • Closure Category
  • Update Customer
  • Update Custom Fields
  • Details
  • External Reference
  • First Time Fix
  • Place On Hold
  • Priority
  • Resolution Text
  • Service
  • Service Level
  • Site
  • Site (Customer’ Site)
  • Source
  • Status / Sub-status
  • Timeline

Request Timers

Use the Request Timer nodes at any stage in the workflow to either start or stop the Response and or Resolution timers. It is not a perquisite to have to use any timers within workflows or to have to use both Response and Resolution timers when timers are used.

There are some settings that control the default behavior of the Service Level Timers. The settings provided to pause or stop the resolution timer when resolving a request are as follows:

app.request.pauseResolutionTimerOnResolve (Default OFF) app.request.resumeResolutionTimerOnReopen (Default OFF) app.request.stopResolutionTimerOnResolve (Default ON) app.request.stopResolutionTimerOnClose (Default OFF)

Using settings to control resolution timers You should choose the relevant settings to meet your needs, but note that app.request.stopResolutionTimerOnResolve will take precedence over app.request.pauseResolutionTimerOnResolve so ensure only the one you want to use is enabled. Using BPM nodes to control resolution timers If you are using this BPM node to control resolution timers the four settings above should all be turned off; If any settings are enabled then they will take precedence over BPM actions. To enable pause/resume of a resolved request you can add the Timer > Pause Resolution Timer or Timer > Resume Resolution Timer BPM nodes as required in your workflow.

  • Start Resolver Timer
  • Stop Resolution Timer
  • Start Response Timer
  • Stop Response Timer
  • Pause Resolution Timer
  • Resume Resolution Timer
In This Document