Last Updated on March 25, 2026 by maximosecrets

Good morning and welcome to Maximo Bite Size, a podcast on the functionality of Maximo Manage. Today is the twelfth episode in the series on Service Management, and today we will look at the three Self Service – Service Requests applications, they are Create Service Request, View Service Request and Search Solutions.

The Self Service applications can be used by all users without increasing your AppPoint license count, it is intentional that these applications have limited functional scope and if you give greater access, for example to allow fields to be updated after save, then you will be breaking those license terms.

In MAS 9.1 there are role-based applications for Create Service Request and Service Request, which allows you to view service requests. These also exist in Maximo Mobile. We should not say that the classic user interface applications described in this episode have now been entirely replaced by these role-based applications, there are some features like support for Linear Assets and applying a solution which do not yet exist. But for most clients the role-based applications or Maximo Mobile will now be used instead.

Create Service Request

When you open the Create Service Request application a Service Request will already have been created for you, and the Reported By details, name, phone, and email, will have defaulted from your profile, the phone and email are those marked as primary. The Reported Date will have defaulted to date/time now, and if your profile has a work location then the Location field will have been populated as well. The work location is found in the user’s Personal Information and the two Workplace Information fields Person’s SiteA structural element of a Maximo database that is used for data separation. More and Person’s Location. If the location does not appear then it is probably because the “Default Location to Service Request?” field found at the top of the Workflow and Work Order section in the People application, is unchecked.

The Affected User will also be filled by the Person Identifier of the logged in user, but if you are reporting a Service Request on behalf of someone else, then you can either use the Select Value to look them up, or if there is no Person record for them, then you can enter their name.

Apart from the Location there is also a field for Asset and Configuration Item, a CI is a location, asset, item, or service that is under configuration and change control, think of software or a document. If CIs are being used, then the Location or Asset might derive the CI for you.

The Select Value for the Asset and Location filters by a user’s User and Custodian associations. Note. It is filtered by the Affected User’s user/custodian associations and not that for the Reported By person, therefore if you entered a name rather than looking up a person, then the Select Values will show no records. You can always use one of the other search actions or use the Go To action to find the location or asset and return it to the field. The default for this field is defined by the SR attribute ASSETFILTERBY.

If you change the Location or Asset before submitting the record you may find that you get some warnings, for example a warning that the Service AddressA Service Address is a postal address and/or a record that positions a point on a map. More or the GL Account may change. These are the same validations as you would find on the Service Requests application, it is indicative of some fields being set which are not visible in the self-service application, this is standard, you just need to instruct your user audience of what to expect and what actions to take. If the Public or All option is used, then the locationsA physical place where assets exist and where work can be performed. More and assets will be restricted to the user’s Default Insert Site.

The Reported Priority is in the range 1 to 4 where 1 is the highest priority. The Reported Date is created at the point when the application is launched and the record created. The hidden Status Date and Affected Date are created based on first save, when the Submit button is used. Service Level Agreements use the Reported Date, so that if someone starts to create a new Service Request and then gets disturbed before they submit it, they have already consumed some time against the SLA commitments.

The next section down allows the user to enter, a Summary and Details, a long description field with a rich-text formatting toolbar. You may want to make the Summary field read-only, because the section to the right allows the user to classify the request using either a classification drilldown or by typing into the Class Description field and using the Select Value which provides the result from the word search. Classifications provides a feature that will generate the description of the record being classified, hence if this is turned on, after selecting the Classification, the Summary field will be overwritten.

Classifications may also have attributes that form what is called a Specification in Maximo. In the context of a Service Request the attributes are typically questions which appear below the Details in the Attributes table. The questions are to be answered by the person who is creating the service request. For example, a facilities-based classification hierarchy, buildings \ fabric \ windows \ broken – might ask the question – “Will access equipment be needed to make the repair?” or “How high up is the window?”. The attributes can be made mandatory, and an attribute may contain a domain set of values to select from.

A user can also add attachments or web links to the Service Request before they submit it, the actions Attach Files or Attach Web Page are used.

I should also mention that for common requests an administrator can set up a Quick Insert portlet on a user’s Start Center or a Quick Action card on the user’s Operational Dashboard, both of which can launch the app CREATESR with a Ticket Template applied. This would already fill out the Classification and Summary if description generation is turned on and has the benefit of defaulting other fields and making sure the request is directed to the right team or person using the templates Owner or Owner Group fields.

After submitting the Service Request, you will be notified of the Service Request number in a dialog with three buttons, View Details, Return to Start Center, and Create Another Service Request.

View Service Request

The View Service Request application will be where you are taken if you chose View Details after submitting the Service Request. This provides a subset of the fields you entered, plus new ones, the SR Status and the three target dates, Target Contact, Target Start, and Target Finish. If an SLA has been applied, then one or more of these dates will have been populated. The three Actual dates would be usefully configured and displayed alongside as read-only fields.

Below this set of fields is a table of Attributes and their values associated with the Classification, the Service Request Specification.

The whole View Service Request application is read-only except you can create further attachments and you can communicate with the owner or owner group by creating a Work Log record. The Type of this new work log record will be CLIENTNOTE. The work log details long description also has a rich text formatting toolbar. The Attachments and Log records are shown in two tables below the Specification Attributes. At the bottom of the View Service Requests application is a table displaying any Solutions that have been applied to the Service Request or its linked Incident or Problem, there are no New Row or Delete Row actions.

At the top right of the View Service Requests application are next or previous service request buttons and a search button. Using the Search opens a page with search fields at the top, and a table of results from the search at the bottom. This Search page is where a user arrives when launching the View Service Request application from the application menu. The service requests which you can view are those which you created yourself (Reported By) or those which were created on your behalf (Affected User).

In the MAS 9.1 user interface the Advanced Search and Save Query buttons are no longer displayed, a pity because this allowed a date range search on the date fields. The good news is that you can add a System Property and they will reappear, I’ve added the instructions at the bottom of the transcript. IBM Support has raised a defect for a future fix; the current version is Manage 9.1.11. When you add the System Property the same buttons are also added to the Search Solutions application, they were missing there as well. The System Property does not affect other apps like Assets, Locations or Work Order Tracking.

The Create Service Request and View Service Request applications support Maximo’s Linear Assets functionality. Various fields will appear if the asset is a linear asset, for example to reference a Feature or Feature Label and to enter the Linear Segment Details.

Search Solutions

The Search Solutions application opens a page with some search fields and a table of active Solutions which are marked as Self-Service Access. To find the right solution you will need to either filter by the solution description or use the Classification field to find a solution that has been classified. The Solution Description field search across five fields, the Description and its Long Description, and the Long Descriptions of the Symptom, Cause and Resolution fields.

You can view the solutions and use Next and Previous buttons to go between solutions. When viewing a solution, you can see and navigate to any of its attachments.

When you have found a solution that may help to resolve your Service Request then at the very bottom of the page are three buttons for the question – Did this solution help you resolve your issue? The buttons are Yes, No – Create a Service Request, or No – Return to Solution Search.

Using the Yes button will create a new Service Request at RESOLVED status, the Reported By person is the user who pressed the Yes button. The Summary field on the Service Request will be set to the solution’s description. Apart from this it is difficult to see that a solution has been applied unless you unhide the two fields Originating Record Class and Originating Record. The Solution field on the Service Request, which is normally hidden, is not updated using this method.

If an Incident or Problem has a solution applied and the Self Service Access field is checked, then a Solution record will show up in the Solutions table at the bottom of the View Service Request application for the originating Service Request. The details of the Solution can be viewed by the user. The user would then create a log note to confirm (or not), that the solution resolved their issue.

If an Incident is marked as a Global Issue and the Solution applied to the Incident, then any Service Request linked to the Global Incident with a relationship type of RELATEDTOGLOBAL will also see the same Solution as that for the Service Request that created the Incident as a follow-up. They will also see the solution details if the Incident did not have a solution record applied but the Symptom, Cause and Resolution had been added directly to the Incident record.

There is a setting in the OrganizationsA structural element of a Maximo database which is used for data sharing. More – Service Desk Options – Global Ticket Solution Options – Apply solution to related global tickets? – which if set will copy the Solution reference to all the Service Requests related to the Incident with a RELATEDTOGLOBAL relationship. Note. The Solution is not copied to the originating service request that created the Incident that was marked as a Global Issue. The reason that the solution is copied to these service requests is to make it easier to calculate the number of service requests that have been resolved by a solution, to measure the solutions effectiveness. You will need to consider the originating service request to get an accurate analysis.

The Service Request has a field HASSOLUTION which is set to 1 when the Solution is copied to the service request with a RELATEDTOGLOBAL relationship to the Incident marked as a Global Issue. The originating service request is not marked as having a solution applied.

I hope you enjoyed this podcast and I look forward to seeing you back on the next episode when we will look at Configuring Service Levels Agreements.

The music is called Duck in the Alley from the talented group called TrackTribe, please check them out on TrackTribe.com, all one word.

Until another time, goodbye.

Links

Self Service Service Requests – https://maximosecrets.com/2021/10/01/self-service-service-requests/

Solutions – https://maximosecrets.com/2021/11/23/solutions/

System Property for Advanced Search

To enable the Advanced Search and Save Query buttons on the View Service Requests and Search Solutions, then follow these instructions:

1. Go to System Properties.
2. Select New Row.
3. Configure the property as follows:
   • Property Name: mxe.webclient.searchMenubar
   • Description: Search Menu Bar
   • Global Value: 0
   • Maximo Default: 0
4. Save the property.
5. Run Live Refresh on the property.
6. Log out and log back in.

This is a workaround until Defect DT457427 is fixed.