Allow Users to add work items to a "Watchlist"

L_Schick

We have some users who have come over from a Service Now environment where they had the ability to add workitems to a "Watchlist" where they could quickly find and monitor tickets that they are not directly involved with. Perhaps a custom task to add themselves as a related user and a view that shows any tickets that they are related to.

[Deleted User]

This has been on my short list of wanted functionality for quite some time... I agree, let's see if the community does as well!  

Candice_Yeudall

This is so needed for any change request and most of the Service Requests

John_Fitzpatrick

I would love this feature. +1

Erik_Luth

I second this

German_Minicucci

Upper management has been requesting me this functionality.. basically for high profile tickets, they want to be able to tag the request so they can get notifications, kind of like the "alert me" function in SharePoint.

Chris_Keander

We're sadly moving from Jira which has this functionality built-in.  I can't upvote this suggestion enough.

Amanda_Hore

Would love this for the Console as well as the SSP. 

[Deleted User]

Hi all, just put this in review... thanks for the up-votes on the idea I'll see when we can get it into Dev!

Conner_Wood

This is a must, we moved from Jira and still really need that Watcher Functionality it had, this would be a huge first step!!

[Deleted User]

Conner_Wood said:

This is a must, we moved from Jira and still really need that Watcher Functionality it had, this would be a huge first step!!

Well, you are now the 2nd person who mentioned moving away from Jira... @Chris_Keander
and @Conner_Wood why did y'all move away?  

Conner_Wood

@chris_ross said: why did y'all move away?

We lost.

Chris_Keander

chris_ross said:  Well, you are now the 2nd person who mentioned moving away from Jira... why did y'all move away?

I point all fingers away from myself.  I lost the battle to stay with Jira as well.  SCSM is a silly beast, but thanks to Cireson, it's a little more tolerable

Candice_Yeudall

Chris_Keander said:

I point all fingers away from myself.  I lost the battle to stay with Jira as well.  SCSM is a silly beast, but thanks to Cireson, it's a little more tolerable

We sure lost that battle and that is for sure @Chris_Keander (SCSM is a silly beast...) management thought that Jira was to Development based to be using

Chris_Keander

Hopefully, if this does come to fruition, it will behave the same way that Jira does and automatically notify any watchers via email when the work item gets updated (or have similar controls in place.)

[Deleted User]

Well, now you are pulling SCSM into the picture, @Chris_Keander. That would require an update to the workitem class and a supporting MP/DLL, something we typically try to avoid as updating the WI causes last modified to be updated. Not may favorite thing about SCSM.  What if we made the Watch feature in the portal add a relationship to the workitem related CIs with the watcher's CI, thus allowing you to leverage your own notification from SCSM/PoSh/Orchestrator etc.? 

Chris_Keander

I lack the technical skills to know what the ideal answer is here, nor are we running Orchestrator, so ideally any solution that can be made that doesn't require it would be ideal.  I'm just happy that Cireson is considering developing this feature.

L_Schick

Completely feel your pain with the lack of being able to "do" things with stock SCSM. For us Orchestrator is the engine that makes SCSM move. Without it I am fairly sure we would have left SCSM along time ago. If you are not using Orchestrator with SCSM you are missing out, I come from a very limited batch file and Powershell background, but I can quickly build out some serious automation with SCORCH to do everything from reassigning tickets and email alerts, to now completely automating our onboarding process. To use a full car analogy, if SCSM is the car frame, SCORCH is the engine/powertrain to get it moving, and Cireson is the seats/steering wheel/dashboard and everything else that makes the car usable and driveable.

Conner_Wood

chris_ross said:

What if we made the Watch feature in the portal add a relationship to the workitem related CIs with the watcher's CI, thus allowing you to leverage your own notification from SCSM/PoSh/Orchestrator etc.? 

A custom WorkItem to CI relationship would also work (so we don't have multiple entries of a user where one version is a watcher). I think it'd be best to use the "System.User" class as that would cover custom created SCSM user CIs, such as an "SMInternal\Unknown.User" (which could send emails to specific people so they'd take a closer look saying why was this added as a watcher).  

I recommend having the CI as the target endpoint (we like to think of the ticket as the source endpoint and the target as the things that are added to a ticket).

I think it'd be much the same as the relationship "System.WorkItemAboutConfigItem" where the Source and Target Cardinality are zero to many [ 0:2147483647 ] so it will allow multiple watchers on a ticket, and these watchers will be able to be on multiple tickets.

Believe it or not this isn't off the top of my head, this was one of the first things our Jira team requested of us, however SCSM took up all the time in other ways as I'm sure others here are familiar with.

Now, if you meant that you'd instead only make logic exclusively in the portal to scan an existing relationship such as "System.WorkItemRelatesToConfigItem" and send out events to Orchestrator, would you allow filtering so it would only trigger on the "System.User" class.

As for SCORCH itself, I have been R&D into it lately regarding Custom Activity C# OIP Limitations.  Who knows, Cireson might think about creating their own OIP for the average SCSM Admin.  Afterall, SCSM workflows are rather limited even when using PowerShell or C# and are quite hard to create and maintain properly without functionality/data loss, but Orchestrator has runbooks which SCSM can sync across as a core function and runbooks are so much easier to tweak, you don't have to worry about the Data Warehouse breaking from one too many MP imports

Candice_Yeudall

The other thing to consider here is that often there are groups of people who should be added a watchers not just individuals. It could get very frustrating trying to add every person to a WI that needs to be a watcher. Furthermore there is the consideration that people who have nothing to do with the request would need to be added in, either with the ability for them to add themselves or someone within IT. The ideal would be for the person to add themselves and reduce the amount of make-work that is passed to IT. 

Conner_Wood

Just out of curiosity, can someone from Cireson let us know if they are still considering this option or have they decided to put it on the back burner.

The reason I ask is I do plan to have some form of Watcher List implemented by 2017 due to the fact it is very much needed.  Seriously, the amount of stress caused by the loss of the functionality is still taking its toll which is not a good thing at all.  It is delusional to think 'everything is fine' and trying to undo the damage already done is a full time job in itself, one which has not been staffed appropriately for.

Chris_Jordan

This functionality was in our old free solution, I have many users asking where the CC functionality is in the new solution. Doesn't seem very ITIL compliant not to have functionality to keep related people informed.

Jonathan_Boles

A custom task would be nice to add work items to a watchlist or "hot list" as it's called within our former ticketing solution (Frontrange HEAT). This is something that is desperately needed!

As @Candice_Yeudallmentioned, it would super helpful if there could be (maybe a separate task?) that would allow specific group of users (ITSM Leadership/Service Desk) to set a group of users that would see the added WI such as a Regional Desktop Team, IT Managers, etc.

Brad_McKenna

@chris_ross Would it be possible to receive an update on the stage of this feature request? It would be ideal to understand if this request is parked/backlogged/actively pursued. I believe I may be in a situation similar to others, where management understands this is a popular feature enhancement but without having any update in quite sometime it has proven difficult to prevent an internal design and implementation.

Conner_Wood

@Brad_McKenna is right on the money, an update from Cireson would be nice.  After all, look at how many votes it has, it deserves the attention!

..... surely there's something I can contribute to boost this thread morale......

A rap for Watchlist, what a twist!
Cireson, we want this at the top of your checklist
Don't tell us this request is doomed to be dismissed
You cannot resist
The people do insist
The Watchlist needs to exist!

~ohhh Watchlist, Watchlist~
~ahhh Watchlist, Watchlist~
~Cireson for the assist~
~Watchlist, Watchlist~
~oooooo yeeeeaaaah~
~Watchlist, Watchlist~
~Make it permanent, make it persist~

Cause We want that...  Watchlist! 

......
I tried everyone, I really tried!

[Deleted User]

Brad_McKenna said:

@chris_ross Would it be possible to receive an update on the stage of this feature request? It would be ideal to understand if this request is parked/backlogged/actively pursued. I believe I may be in a situation similar to others, where management understands this is a popular feature enhancement but without having any update in quite sometime it has proven difficult to prevent an internal design and implementation.

Hi Brad/Conner, et al; 

Forgive the delay on my part here. This definitely has not fallen off our list. 

We are currently working on compatibility for the upcoming SCSM 2016 release, for all our products.  As you can imagine that's a bit of an undertaking.

Once we complete the SCSM 2016 milestone I will be reevaluating the timeline and priority for this feature and many other feature requests.  Stay tuned, and thanks for your patience!

Chris

[Deleted User]

Thanks for this feature request.  Updating status to Accepted.  Will update as it progresses from here.

shaun_ericson

Update from Team Cireson here, we are going to move this into actual development over the next few weeks after talking with a few customers on the core requirements. Remember we are an agile shop, so R1 may not be everything everyone wants, but after we drop R1 and everyone uses the feature we can tune R1 accordingly.

Here is a breakdown of R1 for the Cireson Watchlist which we would love your feedback on:

- Workitem forms (IR, SR, CR, RR, & PR) will contain a new multiple user picker input for the group of users that are "Watching" this workitem.

- When users are added to the user watch list for a workitem, a record will be added to a ServiceManagement table so that the data is accessible by SCORCH for notification purposes. This product will NOT implement notifications, that will be up to the clients.

- Endusers will be able to edit the user watch list only for workitems where they are the affected user

- Analysts may edit the user watch list for any workitems

- WorkItem Search will be modified to show a new boolean checkbox called "Use Watch List", when this is checked the search they create will be based on their workitems in the Watch List

- An out of the box dashboard will be added that contains a saved search table widget which has the Use Watch List boolean checked and no other filters applied - essentially just showing their list

--

With that said, we decided to not include "notifications" out the gate as this is a core function of SCSM and is not baked into the Cireson Portal. In talking with a customer, they stated that creating the SCORCH Runbook for this shouldn't be too difficult and after created would be happy to share with everyone. I won't call him out , but he knows who he is!

Anyways, would appreciate your feedback on the above.

Thanks.

- Shaun

Amanda_Hore

Shaun - these features sound great.  Will they only be added to the Portal?  or will Watch-list feature be added to the console as well?  All of our users only use the console currently and would love this feature

shaun_ericson

HI @Amanda_Hore, good to hear from you! Sadly this will be only available via the Cireson Portal in the current release definition. Curious after I make that statement how this thread will respond : ).

Also, looking forward to seeing you on our Cireson Australia Tour on Thursday: http://go.cireson.com/cireson-in-australia, maybe we can discuss then as well!

Brad_McKenna

Thank you for the update and providing a layout of the first release Shaun!

Interesting design concept. My perception from what I have read is that Service Manager (and Operational db) will essentially be removed altogether from this feature. With the a record being written to a ServiceManagement table, I would assume this means the only 'storage/recording' of the relationship/list values is within the ServiceManagement database?

If this is the case, do you see foresee Cireson building a relationship to the workitem within Service Manager in a future release? Or subsequently a mechanism to create a relationship or transform this data into a customization within Service Manager?