Handle VIP Users in Service Manager

From a number of Service Manager customer I have received the question about VIP users. How can we mark incidents from VIP users? In this post I will show you one way to handle incidents incidents from VIP users. We will first extend the domain user class with a new VIP property, then use the default incident workflow to update incidents from VIP domain users.

Use the Service Manager Authoring Tool to extend the System.Domain.User class in the System.Library management pack.

1. In the Authoring Console use the class browser to find the “Domain User or Group” class. Right-click it and select View
2. In the Management Pack Explorer pane right-click “Domain User or Group” and select extend class
3. Select a management pack, for example create a new one named Contoso.VIP
4. Click Create Property
5. Input a internal name, for example isVIP
6. Select the new property, then in the details pane configure Data Type to BOOL
7. Save your management pack and import it into Service Manager

The next step is to configure the incident workflow. We will use the default incident event workflow so no more authoring console for now.

1. In the Service Manager console, navigate to Administration/Workflows/Configuration
2. Click on Incident Event Workflow Configuration, then click Add in the dialog box
3. Input a suitable name for example Contoso – Update VIP Incidents
4. Configure, Check for events: When an incident is created
5. Configure Event criteria according to the picture below

Choose to apply the default “High Priority Incident Template”. This template will change priority and urgency to high and also assign it to support tier 1. You could of course use any template here.

Choose if you want to notify anyone, that might be a good idea in some scenarios

Save your new workflow.

Now, update one of your user CI to be a VIP. The VIP property is on the Extension tab of a user CI. After that, when you create a new incident for a affected user that has VIP = TRUE the workflow will kick in and update both priority, support group and urgency of the incident. You could use the CSV connector to update this isVIP property based on some attribute in AD or a script that checks something in your environment.

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