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. IMMS provides a universal way of capturing issue progress updates any time meaningful and applicable information is gathered or the issue resolution status changes.
The purpose of this document is to help you become familiar with the kinds of issue updates supported by IMMS and the information that may or has to be included when performing them.
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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 IMMS administrator. IMMS 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, IMMS 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
IMMS 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
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For example, if you were in the field where you cannot access IMMS, 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 IMMS, 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 IMMS 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.
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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
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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 IMMS 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
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