The ability to share the issue resolution status, progress updates, troubleshooting notes, and discovered problems and deficiencies are essential to effective collaboration among the project team members and to discovering and addressing systemic problems. InfraLink provides a universal way of capturing issue progress updates any time meaningful and applicable information is gathered or the issue resolution status changes. 

This article discusses the following topics, which will help you become familiar with the kinds of issue updates supported by InfraLink and the information that may or has to be included when performing them.

Basic Updates and Status Changes

Issue resolution follows a defined process, which goes through a sequence of milestones referred to as statuses. This sequence is reflected in the workflow configured for the contract by the InfraLink administrator.  InfraLink allows the project team to keep a complete and accurate history of the steps taken to resolve the issue by entering issue updates.

Since some of the project team actions may change the status of the issue in accordance with the configured workflow, while other activities do not result in the immediate status change, InfraLink supports two kinds of updates:

• Basic Updates, i.e. the updates that do not change the resolution status of the issue, are initiated using the aptly named "Update" button placed on the right hand side of the issue details panel;
• Status Changes, or the workflow actions, are initiated using the available workflow buttons named after corresponding workflow activities (e.g. "Acknowledge", "Suspend", "Complete", etc) placed on the left hand side of the issue details panel.

Entering an Update

InfraLink provides a universal, consolidated interface to enter issue updates, and you can enter or modify a variety of issue attributes using the update form, as shown below:

A general rule of thumb is to enter updates as the issue resolution progresses and to keep the related updates together. For example, if you performed a particular action and determined the cause of the issue, enter the description of the action and update the cause on the same update. Likewise, if you performed two different actions at different times, even if they were performed in sequence, enter them as separate updates. Keeping the information organized will help you and the rest of the team if you have to review the issue history.

The following sections provide additional practical recommendations.

Specifying Effective Time of the Update

In some cases it may be necessary to back-date the issue being entered. If you have sufficient privileges, InfraLink will allow you to back-date the issue by editing the Time Reported field, which is set to the current date/time by default. The reported time will be used as the creation date for this case when calculating handling metrics.

For example, if you were in the field where you cannot access InfraLink, and you started addressing the issue before you had a chance to get online. Note the time the issue occurred. When you get a chance to enter the issue in InfraLink, you would need to indicate the date/time when the issue was actually reported to you (and to also back-date the updates).

Note:  in order to protect integrity of the data and ensure accurate reporting, the InfraLink instance administrator may restrict who is allowed to back-date issues. If you are not granted the corresponding permissions, you will see the Time Reported field on the New Case form as read-only. If you need to back-date the issue, you will need to contact your project leader, so they can edit the case and modify the reporting date/time.

(Re-)Assigning the Issue

Most issues are assigned to one or multiple members of the project team who become responsible for bringing the issue to a resolution. Who is allowed to assign and reassign issues is controlled via user permissions and roles. Depending on the project, the assignment privileges may be granted to all technical members of the project team or only to the supervisory personnel.

In case your account has the privileges to assign work, InfraLink will allow you to save time by assigning the issue you're creating directly from the New Case form using the Assigned To control. The control is self-explanatory and will allow you to select one or multiple users to assign the issue to. Note that the user selection will be constrained to only those users who have the necessary role(s) to be responsible for work under the contract you selected on the New Case form. In other words, InfraLink will not allow you to select a user who cannot access or work on the issue.

Sometimes an account will be assigned an issue, however this may need to be changed. To remove or add an assignment to someone, you have to update an assignment. Use the update window and select on a particular user as seen below.

Updating the System Element Information and Diagnostic Details

You may need to add or remove system element from a particular issue, so you do this through the update window as well.

Handling Asset Replacement

Sometimes an asset or device may not work. In this case, you must replace it. Sometimes you need to install another asset. To do any of these tasks, you must use the Update Window. From the Update window, go to the "Update System Elements and Diagnostics" section and to the right should be the "Replace" button. Select it and fill out the Replacement Information as seen below. Usually, Uninstallation Information will come before Installation Information since you must uninstall something before installing its replacement. See the example below:

The nomenclature for the transition can be configured differently depending on the admin. “Replace,” “Uninstall” and “Abandon” could be totally different words such as, "Decommission" or "Deploy", but have the same meaning of "Install".

Also, the transition buttons will not always be in your Update Window because it depends on if the admin configures the statuses to allow these replacements via update. 

Adding a Comment (Description of the Update)

Issue Monitor → Update → Comment

On the Issue Monitor page, double click on the issue you want to add a comment for. A right side-bar should pop up, where at the top is an button. Select it and fill in the "Comment" section in the Update Window.

Providing Additional Information

The InfraLink instance you're using may be configured to capture additional information for each new issue. The information to be captured is defined by the InfraLink administrator for each contract and case category (i.e. different categories of cases may require different fields to be populated). Some of the additional data elements may be defined as required, while the other ones may be defined as optional.

Required fields, if any, are denoted with an asterisk (*).  If configured by the InfraLink instance administrator, a tool tip will be provided to describe the purpose of each field.

Using the additional information fields allows and reminds you to provide pertinent details to the project team without having to write an extensive narrative. Please take a moment to populate the fields with the available information to streamline issue resolution, as well as subsequent reporting.

Note: These additional information fields have specific behaviors defined by the InfraLink instance administrator. Based on these defined behaviors, the fields may be required, optional, read-only, or even hidden on the subsequent issue details and update screens.

See Entering a New Issue for examples of additional details/custom fields.

Notifying Other Users via Email

In some cases, you may want other users to receive email notifications pertaining to the resolution progress on the issue you are creating. For example, when entering an issue on behalf of the end-user/customer, you may want the end-user/customer to be notified. Likewise, when dealing with a complex technical issue, you may want to keep the engineering team members informed of the issue and the progress on it.

InfraLink will allow you to select one or multiple users to be notified of the issue and its updates via the Notify via Email control. The control is self-explanatory and will allow you select one or multiple parties and add them to the notification list. The following restrictions apply:

To prevent disclosure of sensitive information to unauthorized parties, InfraLink will generate notifications only to users with active InfraLink accounts. You cannot add external email addresses not associated with an InfraLink accounts to the notification list.

Furthermore, InfraLink will send notifications only to those users who have sufficient privileges to see cases under the contract you selected on the New Case form. The list of users presented on the Notify via E-Mail user lookup will be restricted accordingly, and InfraLink will not allow you to select a user who doesn't have sufficient privileges to see the information.