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White Paper
Remedyforce Notifications
Getting Started with Remedyforce Series
Hugo R. Gracia
31 March 2015
Remedyforce Notifications
Getting Started with Remedyforce Series
Welcome to the “Getting Started with BMC Remedyforce” Series
Today’s IT departments must drive business growth and innovation, while coping with less resources and increasing complexity. To do this, they
require an IT Service Management solution that provides best practices while minimizing costs. BMC Remedyforce is built on Salesforce—the world's
most widely used cloud platform—to deliver complete IT service management functionality with the secure social, mobile, and collaborative capabilities
users expect.
With the “Getting Started with Remedyforce” white paper series, our aim is to help you leverage BMC Remedyforce to improve the effectiveness and
efficiency of your ITSM operations. Each paper addresses a specific area of interest and provides you with conceptual, functional and technical best
practices to make configuration decisions and take action to gain value from your BMC Remedyforce investment.
Remedyforce Notifications
In today’s world of electronic communications, we have a dependency on just-in-time information to complete our daily work. Remedyforce, built on the
Salesforce platform, is equipped with a very robust email notification capability that provides us with many choices as to what, when, and with whom we
want to communicate.
Remedyforce allows us to not only communicate with our customers on the initiation, progress, and closure of incidents and requests, but also with IT
and other supporting staff as needed. This can all be done through the configuration of workflow rules, email alerts, and email templates. The purpose
of this white paper is to explain some of the most common notification configurations in Remedyforce, and how we go about setting them up.
Notifications to Clients
Client notifications to clients is a very important topic, and it warrants a thorough vetting before making final decisions about who, what, when and
where to notify. It can be very easy to get carried away with notifications to clients to the point that it may be deemed as “Spam” if they are being
bombarded with emails every time they open a ticket. Email fatigue is a real problem that should be avoided if notifications are going to be effective as a
communications tool.
It is imperative that notifications going out to clients serve a purpose for both the client and the notifying organization. Your choices regarding
notifications will be different from other companies, or maybe even within your own organization, and only you know the true expectations from your
end user community. Nonetheless, our experience shows that organizations that have deployed the model of “every time a ticket is touched, notify the
client” have often had to revisit the strategy and re-configure to scale back the number of notifications that are being sent out to clients.
The recommended times that a client should be notified are:

When an Incident / Service Request is created

When an Incident / Service Request is closed

When a Service Request is approved

When a Service Request is rejected
Limiting the notifications to end users to these milestones eliminates a lot of “clutter” in their inbox. When a ticket is created and the client receives the
first notification, it confirms to them that a record exists and their request/incident is going to be worked on. Once work is completed, the next notification
serves to let them know their request/incident has been troubleshot and the issue has been fixed or their request has been fulfilled. At this time the
client has the option of providing feedback in the event the issue is not fixed or the request is not fulfilled to their satisfaction.
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Copyright BMC Software, Inc. 2015
Remedyforce Notifications
Getting Started with Remedyforce Series
It is also important that clients have reasonable expectations set as early as possible on key information, such as how long their ticket will remain open
before it is closed. This is highly critical because of the variance in duration which is dependent on the type of ticket and its complexity. Without setting
expectations accurately and pro-actively, end users are going to expect work to be done right away, which unfortunately is not always the case.
With service requests that require approvals before being fulfilled, clients should be notified of its approval or rejection. Upon approval, the client knows
their request is moving forward and will have some additional time added to the timeline. In the event of a rejection, the client should be notified about
any missing information, incorrect request type, or other issue that resulted in the rejection. This could result in a re-submission.
Arguments have been made for notifying the client each and every time the ticket is touched, so that they are aware their ticket is actively being worked
on. This however leads to potential inundation of their inbox and notifications to be perceived as a nuisance more than a welcomed alert. By all means,
it is up to the individual organization to implement this solution as it is strictly dependent on client expectations and directions from IT leadership. If
notifying each time the ticket is updated, be aware of some potential feedback:

End user complaints about too much “useless” email coming through.

End user complaints about inconsistent communication. For example: “Opened a password reset ticket and only received 3 emails, today I
opened a ticket for a access into the HR Salary Drive in SharePoint and I have received more than 5 emails!! Why can’t you be consistent?”
The recommended notifications outlined here are those that have been proven in the field time and time again with consistent and repeatable success
and as such your organization at a minimum should implement these during your Remedyforce deployment.
Notifications to Staff
Similar to clients, staff also receive copious amounts of email on a day to day basis. It is even more important that staff are not subjected to volumes of
email that make them desensitized to critical notification alerts. Ignoring a notification could lead to missing important communications about an outage
or assigned work that needs to be performed in a timely manner to restore service. Email alerts for staff can also be configured in Remedyforce to fit the
needs of the organization without becoming overbearing to the staff members.
In BMC Remedyforce, the recommended communications to staff are:


Service Desk (Single Point of Contact)
o
When a ticket is re-assigned to the service desk
o
When a ticket has been updated by the client; Either through email or a note via Self Service
Non-Service Desk (Desktop Support, Network, Application Development, etc.)
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o
When a ticket is assigned to the queue
o
When a ticket is assigned to the individual for processing
o
When the ticket is re-assigned to the queue
o
When the ticket is re-assigned to the staff member for processing
o
When the ticket has been updated by the client
Copyright BMC Software, Inc. 2015
Remedyforce Notifications
Getting Started with Remedyforce Series
Email notifications to IT staff are a crucial tool for their day to day job functions. Whether they are part of the service desk team fielding all calls from the
end user community or a Tier 3 engineer developing advanced application functionality to improve business deliveries, email notifications serve to alert
staff of new work in the pipeline.
Actively Logged-In Staff vs. Escalation Staff
The needs differ between staff that is actively in the tool all day long (such as a Service Desk team member) vs. someone who is mostly engaged with
only as needed, (such as a Network Engineering team member). The service desk staff will always be in the tool monitoring the queue for any new
tickets they need to work on as well as creating new tickets as the phone calls, emails, chats, chatter, and self-service tickets are coming in. Therefore,
flooding their inbox with emails every time a ticket is created and assigned to their queue will for the most part be a waste of time. The staff will more
than likely ignore these alerts, set a rule to auto-delete them, or have to go into their inbox periodically to remove them so they can get to their “actual”
email.
Members of teams that do not actively work in the tool all day long need the notifications to let them know of new tickets in their queue. These teams
are usually Tier 2 and above. Their work is a lot more involved and requires time away from the tool so they can troubleshoot and/or develop a solution.
They may only be called upon to interact with Remedyforce in the event of an escalation, and spend the remainder of their time on other project tasks.
The number of tickets that go beyond Tier 1 are fewer, and spread out between multiple groups as opposed to being concentrated to one group
(Service Desk) resulting in fewer email notifications to their inbox.
With the Salesforce platform, Remedyforce is able to take advantage of various email services. In particular, the Email Conversation service is a
helpful tool that allows for email to be sent to the client or other recipients from within the ticket itself. The replies from the recipients will then be added
directly to the ticket in the action history section of the ticket. This allows for a fluid view of the entire conversation. This is where the notification to the
staff when a user updates the ticket via email or via a note in self-service comes in handy. It allows for a ticket to be out of view and the technician will
be notified of any changes. Otherwise, the technician would have to open each and every ticket looking for any updates.
As with the client notifications, the staff notification best practices described above are recommendations based on tried and true solutions that have
been deployed with consistent and repeatable success. Your needs may differ somewhat based on your support model.
Email Notifications– Configuration Steps
Emails are configured through the use of workflow rules, email alerts, and email templates. These three components work in unison to ensure that the
notification goes out at the proper time and with the correct message and information, as designed.
Workflow Rules
Many of the tasks you normally assign, the emails you regularly send, and other record updates are part of an organization's standard
processes. In Remedyforce, instead of doing this work manually, you can configure workflow and approvals to do it automatically. In this
case, our focus is on email notifications.
Each workflow rule consists of:

Criteria that determine when Salesforce executes the workflow rule. Any change that causes a record to match this criteria can trigger the
workflow rule—even changes to hidden fields.

Immediate actions to take when the workflow rule executes. For example, Salesforce can automatically send an email that notifies the staff when
an update has occurred via self-service or through an email from the client.

Time-dependent actions that Remedyforce queues when the workflow rule executes. For example, Remedyforce can automatically send an email
reminder to the engineering team if a high-profile ticket is still unassigned after a specific amount of time after the opened date.
When Remedyforce triggers a workflow rule that has time-dependent actions, you can use the workflow queue to monitor and cancel pending
actions.
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Copyright BMC Software, Inc. 2015
Remedyforce Notifications
Getting Started with Remedyforce Series
Workflow automates the following types of actions:

Email Alerts—send an email to one or more recipients. For example, automatically send sales management an email alert when
a sales representative qualifies a large deal.

Tasks—assign a new task to a user, role, or record owner. For example, automatically assign follow-up tasks to a support
representative one week after a case is updated.

Field Updates—update the value of a field on a record. For example, automatically change the Owner field on a contract three
days before it expires.

Flow Triggers—trigger an auto launched flow. Flow trigger workflow actions, formerly available in a pilot program, have been
superseded by the Process Builder. Organizations that are using flow trigger workflow actions may continue to create and edit
them, but flow trigger workflow actions aren’t available for new organizations. For information on enabling the Process Builder in
your organization, contact Salesforce.

Outbound Messages—send a secure configurable API message (in XML format) to a designated listener. For example,
automatically initiate the reimbursement process for an approved expense report by triggering an outbound API message to an
external HR system.
To create a workflow rule, navigate to Remedyforce Administration > Manage Workflows and other Processes > Workflow Rules
Figure 1 - Workflow Rule Screen
Once there, you can select which object you want to create the workflow in and proceed with the configuration steps. The steps outlined
below are direct links to the Salesforce site.
1.
Select the object to which the workflow rule applies.
2.
Configure the workflow rule settings and criteria.
3.
Configure the workflow actions.
4.
Activate the workflow rule.
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Copyright BMC Software, Inc. 2015
Remedyforce Notifications
Getting Started with Remedyforce Series
Email Alerts
Email alerts essentially bridge the workflow rule and the email template. Within the workflow rule you are specifying which action to take. In this case,
you would be selecting an Email Alert. As outlined in the configuration steps for workflow rules, you specify the name of the email alert that you want to
trigger. Within the email alert, you will need to specify who the recipients of the email notification are.
To create a new email alert navigate to Remedyforce Administration > Manage Workflows and Other Processes > Email Alerts
Figure 2 - Email Alert Screen
Once in the email alert window, you can edit existing or create new email alerts. To create new email alerts follow the steps outlined via Salesforce:
Creating Email Alerts for Workflow Rules
Note: The email template that will be sent out is specified during the creation of an email alert. The email template will be the message that you are
sending based on the work flow rule and email alert.
Figure 3 – Email Alert Detail Screen
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Copyright BMC Software, Inc. 2015
Remedyforce Notifications
Getting Started with Remedyforce Series
Email Templates
Email templates contain the message that you are sending but also information regarding the ticket. Within the body of the template you can choose to
include fields from within the object.
As an example, if you are sending a notification to the end user that a ticket has been created for their incident/service request you can include fields
such as Short Description, OwnerID, Status, and Due Date.
Although some email templates come pre-configured with different fields such as impact, urgency, and priority, it is recommended to omit these from
the message. The reasoning behind this is simply that end users who receive a ticket with a low urgency and low priority tend to take offense to being
categorized as such. Rather than imposing such feelings on your end user community, it is best to simply communicate the target due date to them to
set the expectations.
Remedyforce comes with many pre-configured email templates that are ready to use. The can be accessed by navigating to Remedyforce
Administration>Configure Email>Email Templates.
Once here change the folder to BMC Remedyforce Emails for a complete list of email templates included in Remedyforce.
Figure 4 - Email Template Screen
There are three types of email templates, and again, here are links to articles with additional detail:
1.
Text - Creating Text Email Templates
2.
HTML - Creating HTML Email Templates
3.
Visualforce - Creating Visualforce Email Templates
It is recommended that you go through the email templates themselves and wherever possible add some additional language that makes it “your own.”
This information can be a signature line with your help desk phone number and self-service site, or a personalized greeting to the end user. Creating
email templates is the easy part. Agreeing on what should be included in the email is where you will find some challenges. Be sure to check with your
marketing department before you embed any logos into the communications as there could be internal rules to follow.
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Copyright BMC Software, Inc. 2015
Remedyforce Notifications
Getting Started with Remedyforce Series
In Summary
Email notifications can be a powerful tool and when designed with informative and useful messages can be an IT organization’s best friend.The
recommendations outlined in this document are based on successful Remedyforce deployments that have endured the test of time. As with any
recommendations, there will be exceptions to the rule. These exceptions are going to be based solely on your particular business requirements and
services you are providing.
BMC Remedyforce has an extremely active user community where you can get answers to additional questions on this topic. We encourage you to
take a look at bmc.com/communities.
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Copyright BMC Software, Inc. 2015
BMC delivers software solutions that help IT transform digital enterprises for the ultimate competitive business advantage. We have
worked with thousands of leading companies to create and deliver powerful IT management services. From mainframe to cloud to
mobile, we pair high-speed digital innovation with robust IT industrialization—allowing our customers to provide amazing user
experiences with optimized IT performance, cost, compliance, and productivity. We believe that technology is the heart of every
business, and that IT drives business to the digital age.
BMC – Bring IT to Life.