The Tickets application is a new Graphite application introduced in MAS 9.2. The primary reason for it is to provide a modern user interface for Alerts which is a new class of Ticket which was also introduced in MAS 9.2. The Tickets application is also the host application for three areas of AI which I will write about later this year.

This article will show the functionality of the Tickets application without the additions for alerts, as this makes the article relevant to clients who use Service Requests. I’ll follow-up with another article for how Alerts are handled in the Tickets application and then another one focusing in on the AI.

In Maximo, when someone is using Service Requests the data that they enter is stored in the TICKET table. SR (Service Request) is one class of a ticket, and a database view is provided to filter tickets with the class of SR. There are other ticket classes, INCIDENT, PROBLEM and in MAS 9.2 ALERT, which also have database views to the TICKET table. If you have the Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) add-on installed you will also find a ticket class of DEFECT which uses the Incident view and INVESTIGATION which uses the Problem view.

List View

The Tickets application will be found in the Service Desk module. When it is opened the List view will show records from all classes of ticket. I’m using a MAXDEMO database at Manage version 9.2.4 and I have HSE, Transport and a few other add-ons installed. The application opens with a query called Default View and as you can from the Class column it is showing SR, Incident and Problem records.

There is a series of buttons on the right, Search, Manage Columns, Filter and Download. In the screenshot I have the Filter bar open, and you can then filter by each column or combination of columns. The button to the right is called Edit Filters and it opens a sliding draw pane on the right, a bit like the Advanced Search in classic UI applications, but the fields are the same fields as the table columns and so has little practical use unless it is configured. In the table columns there are no lookups, a lookup on Status and Class would be useful. When filtering by Class then type SR, filtering for Service or Ser will not work. Similarly, Alerts will not work as the class is Alert, without the ‘s’.

The second button is Manage Columns which allows you to add or remove fields, you use the (x) button to remove a column. I’ve filtered for site found siteid and added it to the Selected columns pane on the right after class. The button on the left of this pane allows you to drag a column to a different position.

The change made shows that the Default View has been modified, the pink Edited icon shows to the left of the View and Queries drop down. The SiteA structural element of a Maximo database that is used for data separation. More column is now displayed at the end of the column list for the Default View.

The Default View can also be filtered. I want to filter for tickets of class SR or Alert and only the records for the BEDFORD site, 44 tickets have been found including some alerts which I created in my last article. As you filter in the columns the filter criteria are displayed in blue above the filter row, which allows you to quickly and easily clear part of the filter criteria. To clear all the filters there is a button with a black background – Clear all filters.

The drop down next to Default View, called the Overflow Menu, has four options, Manage View and Queries, Save as New View, Open Lookup, and Save Changes, the Save Changes is sometimes hidden, but I’ll explain that in a second.

The Save as New View option allows you to save the query created by the filter criteria, and the column layout as a new view. You can give the new view a title – SRs and Alerts – Bedford, you can make it a public view so that it is available to others, and you can also save the view as your default view so that this view is used when you next return to the Tickets application. If you uncheck the Public View, it will be a Private View and only you will be able to see it.

The Open Lookup option allows you to navigate to a different view.

The Manage Views and Queries option shows all the views both public and private. Each view has three buttons Edit, View and Delete. Edit allows you to change the title, make the view public or private, and to make it your default. The View button allows you to hide the view and there is also a button to delete it, if it is not your default view and you were the person who created it. On the left is a button which allows you to change the order of the views displayed in Open Lookup, if you dragged a view to the top of the list it automatically becomes your default view.

In the Manage Views and Queries a private view is displayed as Private in red text on a pink background, but when displayed in the List page it is blue text on green background the same as for Public. This is consistent with other Graphite applications, for example Work Orders.

I have made the SRs and Alerts – Bedford view a Private View and have then filtered the view with Status of QUEUED. The Edited button appears (pink background), and this is when the Overflow Menu shows the Save Changes option, it is used if you want to modify a view.

Notice the SiteID column has a title of #siteid and the column does not show any values. I’ve reported this to IBM Support.

Create Ticket – Service Request

At the top right of the Tickets application is the Create Ticket button with two options to create a Service Request or to create an Alert. We will create a Service Request.

At the top of the Create Service Request page you enter the Summary Description – Broken Window in Office 401, and there is a field to enter the details, a long description field, this has a rich text formatting toolbar. The little formatting I did was also found when reviewing the same record in the classic Service Requests application long description, except for the tab to indent the second row was not applied.

There are two fields Internal Priority and Reported Priority; I would have positioned the Reported Priority on the left above the Reported By person. When the Service Request is being created, I can see the need for a Reported Priority, but the Internal Priority wouldn’t be assessed at the time you are creating a service request, more likely this is a secondary step based on the classification, asset type or other factors, it may also be set by applying a Ticket Template. I don’t think it is warranted on this screen.

The Reported By person will only accept someone who is registered in the Persons application, it ought to allow a name to be entered, an operator may not be a Maximo user or a person registered in Maximo but they are likely to call into a control centre or service desk to raise issues. I have raised an IBM Idea for this – https://ideas.ibm.com/ideas/MASM-I-2018

The Asset and Location lookups are simple Select Values, you cannot navigate to the applications to find a record, and to be honest these dialogs are a bit small and you are likely to need to make the description columns wider, but they are the same on the Work Orders application. I have raised an IBM Idea to correct this as well – https://ideas.ibm.com/ideas/MASM-I-2019

Scrolling further down you can select a Classification. The Overflow has two options, Select From Hierarchy and Select From List which is much more like a normal Select Value lookup.

• Select From Hierarchy only shows the classification and not the description which will make it difficult to use, perhaps you might be OK if you have text-based classifications, but you won’t be able to navigate with a numeric coding structure. I have raised an IBM Idea to correct this – https://ideas.ibm.com/ideas/MASM-I-2020
• Select From List shows a table with Classification and Description taken from the ClassStructure, i.e. it shows the classification path and path description. The description needs to be much wider and the Items Per Page should be set to at least 50 records. Classifications for Tickets can be several levels deep and as you are showing the path, the description field needs to be much wider. I have also raised an IBM Idea to correct this – https://ideas.ibm.com/ideas/MASM-I-2021

If the Classification has a Specification set of attributes, then these are not displayed as part of the Create Service Request page. They are not shown after the Service Request has been created and you are viewing or editing the record. I’ve created an IBM Idea for this – https://ideas.ibm.com/ideas/MASM-I-2022

There are two Scheduling fields, Target Start and Target Finish, a Service Request also has a Target Contact, but this could be added through configuration. However, if Service Level Agreements (SLA) are being applied they calculate target dates based on agreed commitments, and there would be some clients who would not want Target Dates to be shown at all. I’ve raised an IBM Idea to display (or not) the three Target dates based on whether an active SLA exists for the Site. https://ideas.ibm.com/ideas/MASM-I-2024

The Actual Start and Actual Finish dates are superfluous because when you are creating a Service Request these fields imply that the ticket is already in progress or has been resolved. If you had an SLA being automatically applied, then you might find that you had breached the SLA at the same time as the Service Request was created, which can’t be right. I’ve created an IBM Idea to have these fields removed – https://ideas.ibm.com/ideas/MASM-I-2023

Incidentally, the Create Alert action does not have the panel that shows Target and Actual dates.

I did find an issue when looking up a person in the Owned By field. WILSON appears multiple times, as did HIMES, KAZMIER, LOU and MILLER, this is correct because WILSON as with the others belong to multiple Person Groups and you should be selecting a person in the context of the person group team that owns the service request being created. The issue is that the Person Group is not displayed. This has been reported to IBM Support.

The lookup on Reported By is different in that it is a lookup on the Person object, but it also shows the same number of records as that for the Owned By field and WILSON, HIMES and the others appear multiple times, they should not. This has also been reported to IBM Support.

When you use the OK button, you do get a green message in the top right corner to say that the Ticket was created with the number of the ticket created, I wasn’t fast enough to take a mental note of the number.

List View – Actions

I’ve searched for the ticket just created using the phrase – broken window. It looks as if the default search is searching for tickets where the description contains either broken or window. The search bar is searching across any of the fields displayed, you could search for WILSON, and it will find records where he appears in the Reported By or Owner columns.

The blue text in the Ticket column will navigate you to the View Ticket page (see later).

When you highlight a record the More Actions button appears on the right, it has three vertical dots.

Currently the More Actions menu has two options Select Owner and Change Status.

The same actions appear in the Actions bar when you select one or more Tickets.

The Select Owner allows you to select a person in the context of a Person Group, you can see Mike Wilson belongs to the three Person Groups MAINT, 1001 and TELECOM. You can also select a Person Group from the Person Groups tab. I changed owner to REVIS and checked that the ownership history was updated.

On re-entering the Select Owner dialog, I checked that the Open Work column for Revis was now set to 1 and that for Mike Wilson was now 7, he had been the previous owner of SR 1185. Incidentally, the Open Work column shows the number of tickets and work orders the person owns where the ticket has not reached resolved state and the work order has not reached completed state.

The Change Status dialog allows you to select the Status and add a memo. The memos will be shown in the Comments section, a vertical scrollbar will appear, and each record shows the status history and memos except it doesn’t show you the status the ticket was changed to only who changed it, when, and the related memo. This has been reported to IBM Support.

As the Tickets application has multiple classes of ticket and each ticket class has its own status, I wondered what would happen if you inadvertently selected records from multiple ticket classes before choosing the Change Status action, you receive the error – Bulk actions require the same ticket class. Select tickets of the same class to apply bulk actions. The blue actions bar is not removed but the actions to Change Status and Select Owner disappear.

View Ticket

When you activate a ticket from the List View, it opens the View Ticket page with the Description at the top with the class of ticket and the ticket identifier below – Service Request 1185.

Below this is a ribbon of statuses relevant to the ticket class. Service Requests have statuses for NEW, QUEUED, INPROG, PENDING, RESOLVED, CANCELLED, REJECTED and CLOSED. There is no PENDING status with an Alert, instead there is SUSPEND, and instead of QUEUED on alerts ASSIGNED is used and alerts only have CLOSED and there is no CANCELLED and REJECTED.

The status ribbon shows the status date below each status; this is the last time the ticket was at this status. You can also click a status, and the Change Status dialog will appear with the Status you selected; this is the same dialog as the previous screenshot.

There is no History button which on the graphite Work Orders application appears below the Attachments button and opens a sliding window on the right with two tabs the Status History and the Ownership History. I’ve raised an IBM Idea to have the Ticket History shown in a similar manner – https://ideas.ibm.com/ideas/MASM-I-2031.

The Owned By field on the graphite Work Orders application opens the Select Owner dialog. The same dialog exists in the Tickets application, but it is only available from the Actions menu at the top right. Again, to be consistent with the Work Orders application it should be possible to change ownership from the Owned By field. I’ve raised an IBM Idea to be able to change ownership from the Owned By field – https://ideas.ibm.com/ideas/MASM-I-2032.

There are four tabs shown on the left, Summary, Related Records, Work Log and Communication Log, no doubt this will expand over time.

In the Summary section at the top are the Internal Priority and Reported Priority, these are not buttons although the cursor changes when you hover over them. Below this is the long description in plain text and then a button View Long Description which will show the long description with its rich text formatting.

The summary section has a series of fields, all of which are read-only, you need to use the Edit button to change them. Each field title is underlined, press it and it shows the field help. When I changed status to INPROG you can see that Maximo added the Actual Start date.

The Actions are Create Work Order, Create Service Request, Create Alert, Change Status, and Select Owner.

The Create Work Order action opens a dialog which looks similar to the same dialog in the Work Orders application, but you’ll notice that none of the fields from the originating Service Request have been copied. You will never want to enter the details again.

To remind ourselves of how this works on the Service Requests application, it just creates the work order and gives you a message to tell you the work order number created. It is the same with Create Service Requests, Create Incidents, etc. When you are on a Service Desk or in a Control Room you may be raising 100 records per shift, you do not need to go and check the details, you just need to verify that the record has been created which you do via the Related Records tab, in case you missed the message. The configuration which has been added to the crossover domains TICKET2WO or TCKT2TCKT ensures that the data that needs to be copied to the work order, service request or incident is copied. There might be other information added to the work order like the work type, or a job plan, but that is often by a different role/person, a planner or maintenance supervisor.

I’ve added an IBM Idea to have the Create Work Order, Create Service Request and Create Alert actions changed so that they create the required record applying the crossover domain without opening any dialog. https://ideas.ibm.com/ideas/MASM-I-2033

I noticed in the Create Work Order action that if you selected a Classification, it populates the Classification Description, but if you then clear the Classification, it doesn’t remove the Classification Description, and when you submit the work order it will apply the classification. This works OK for Create Service Requests and Create Alerts. I raised an IBM Support case for this.

In case you missed the message with the work order number that was created after using the blue Create button on the Create Work Order dialog, then the Related Records tab will show you the Tickets and Work Orders that have been created or related to the ticket. In my case work order 1308 was created with a relationship type of FOLLOWUP. The drop-down details show you the Asset, Location and Classification, but without their descriptions. This is also the case on the Tickets tab. I’ve raised an IBM Support case for this.

The Work Log tab shows existing log notes (there are none to date), and there is a button – Add Comment which opens the dialog shown. You can select the Type of log note and whether it will be Visible to Self Service Users. You enter a Summary and the log note Details which supports rich text formatting. You use the blue Post button when you have finished.

After posting, the log note will be shown in the Work Log, not as plain text as I have seen elsewhere in the graphite applications but as rich text.

I did a test by creating a log note on the follow-up work order, this should be visible on the Ticket record, it isn’t and I’ve raised an IBM Support case for this. If you navigate to the Service Request application you would be able to see that there are two log notes, one from the SR and one created against the follow up work order with a class of WORKORDER.

There is no action to Create Communication from the Tickets application, but I wondered whether emails sent from the Service Requests (classic UI) application or from workflow or an escalation would be viewable. I used the Create Communication action from the Service Requests application, I received the email and the communication log record was visible in the Tickets application.

I did not test whether attachments or imbedded images in the body of the message would be visible. I did test bind variables in the message :TICKETID – :DESCRIPTION were translated to 1185 – Broken Window in Office 401.

I also tested some Communication Log functionality around using a special Communication Template set up for Tickets marked as a Global Issue. The Communication Template IRTGTEMP is used on an Incident that is marked as a Global Issue to send an email to all the people who raised a Service Request that has been related to the global issue.

In the Service Requests (classic UI) application I created an Incident, marked it as a Global Issue, associated our Service Request 1185 with the Incident and then on the Incident I used Create Communication and used the IRTGTEMP Communication Template. The email was added to the Communication Log on the Incident record, and it was also visible from Service Request 1185 and visible in the Tickets application for that service request.

The View Source Record button will give you a choice of applications to launch if you have multiple industry solutions and add-ons. In my system I have Transport, HSE and Service Provider and for Service Request 1185 it gave me the choice of launching Service Requests, View Service Requests, Service Requests (SP) or Service Requests (HSE). These are only the classic user interface applications and not the role-based applications, there was no option for Service Requests (Mobile), although my security profile gives me access.

If you do not have security privileges for one of these applications, as was the case for Service Requests (SP) you will be dumped completely out of Maximo, I received a Firefox error that it couldn’t find the page. I’ve raised an IBM Support case for this, as the list of applications should only be the ones which you have security privileges to read.

If the asset has an image, then it will be displayed. Clicking on the image will open a full screen page with buttons for Zoom Out, Minimize, and Zoom In.

Edit Ticket

The Edit page seems identical to the Create Service Request page; it has the same fields and the same lookups with the same issues that I found for Reported By and Owned By fields.

At the bottom of the Edit page is a button Add Attachments. This opens the normal file search capability that you see in other Maximo applications. It is only file attachments you can add and not Web Page URL links.

I added a few different attachments. Photos will show a thumbnail; file attachments will give you a download button. I added a web page to Maximo Secrets using the Service Requests applications (classic UI) and this provides you with a button – Open Link – which opens the link in a new browser tab.

Notice the button on the left to delete the attachment. I have just added a 4^th attachment, and it shows the four records shown. When you open the Edit page the attachments are not displayed, you must use the blue Add Attachment button and add a new attachment, so that you can see the attachments that already exist. Currently if you want to delete an attachment you must first add an attachment. I’ve raised an IBM Support case for this, when you enter the Edit page any existing attachments should be displayed, you will then be able to easily delete them.

When you add an attachment, it doesn’t activate the save button, you need to use the Close button, a little disconcerting because you are wondering whether the attachment can be saved, until you realise it has already been saved to the ticket.

Incidentally, photo attachments must be less than 10MB.

On the View Ticket page, the Attachments field will show the number of files, and when you click this a sliding window appears on the right-hand side with the attachments. There is no ability to delete an attachment from this sliding window.

Summary

MAS 9.2 was the first release of this graphite application, and you can expect that it does not contain all the functionality that the equivalent classic user interface applications have. Its purpose is a single application to show all classes of Ticket, which is a great concept, an application to demonstrate new AI capabilities.

There are currently no Activities, Solution Details or Failure Reporting tabs. You cannot see or enter the attributes of a classification, the Specification. There is no ability to display the Service AddressA Service Address is a postal address and/or a record that positions a point on a map. More or see where on a map the Service Request exists even if the service address was defaulted from the location or asset. There is no ability to apply a ticket template, apply an SLA, work with global issues, or to report time through the Start/Stop Timers or by adding Time Tracking records. Several of the fields you would find on one of the classic UI applications are missing, for example there is Reported By but no Affected Person, no ability to enter the phone or email of the person reporting the ticket, no ability to associate multiple asset and locationsA physical place where assets exist and where work can be performed. More, or to associate a service group or service, etc.

This was expected; a first release is never complete. However, what was released had what I would call defects, probably some of these will end up as enhancement requests (IBM Ideas). It was disappointing to see that there appears a lack of quality assurance, a status history that doesn’t show the status, create actions like Create Work Order that creates a follow-up record but instead of just creating the record opens a dialog with no fields pre-populated from the originating ticket. If this was the show case application for new AI services, then the base application needs some remedial work, and quickly.