Definition

EndDefinition

Each news article:

• Can be created:
  • Via a known error or by reporting a major incident in a ticket.
  • Individually.
• Can contain text, images or hyperlinks, etc..
• Can be displayed in one of the six standard languages shipped with the Service Manager setup.
• Can be displayed for a given period:
  • On the Home page of the Service Operation / Service Transition / Self Service menus.
  • In the ticket, specific to the category of the associated incident or request.
  • In the notification bar.
• Can be restricted to certain locations or departments using an application perimeter.

Examples

• Critical event: Internet access to the website interrupted from 12 noon to 2 pm
  • Application perimeter: Location Boston

• Information: Availability of HP LaserJet 6L printer roller replacement kit
  • Period: from Tue June 7 2016

• Information: New Illustrator version
  • Access to the software download link

Notes

• A news article is displayed:
  • On the Home page of the Self Service menu if it is a public news article available in the language and application perimeter of the logged-in user. In this case, it will also be displayed in the notification bar.
  • On the Home page of the Service Operation / Service Transition menus if it is available in the language of the logged-in user. In this case, it will also be displayed in the notification bar.
  • In the ticket if it is available in the language of the logged-in user, in the application perimeter of the recipient and with the same category (or higher-level category) as the current incident.
• You cannot enter the news article contents in multiple languages. However, there are different ways to get around this problem.   See Multilingual news management.
• A news article can be associated with a major incident. In this case:
  • The news article will automatically be displayed in the ticket for any new incident with the same category as the major incident.
  • If it is selected as the solution of a new incident, the new incident will automatically be linked to the major incident and managed by its workflow.
  • When it is closed, the link with the major incident will be deleted and all linked incidents will automatically be closed.
• You can create news articles in the Service Operation and Service Transition menus. They are systematically displayed on the Home page of both these menus. You cannot display a news article on the Home page of one of these menus without also displaying it on the other.
• The ticket displays:
  • Only news articles with the same category as the incident.
  • All news articles if the category of the incident is not specified. In this case, when you select a news article, you will also qualify the incident.

Best Practice

• Once an anticipated event is likely to cause malfunctioning, you should create a news article in order to avoid incidents being opened by the Technical Support team.
• If you want to disable the display of a specific news article, specify its publication end date.

Characteristics specific to versions 2016 and earlier

• You can enable or disable the display of a news on the Home page of the Service Operation / Service Transition / My Department / Home menus for a given profile.    See the procedure.

Menu access

Service Operation > Problems & Known Errors > News Articles or Service Transition > News Articles

Description of tabs

TabUpdateRules_After2016Versions

Alphabetical order of the tabs

QuickAccess

Details

Title: Headline of the news article displayed on screen.

News Articles: This automatically updated box is grayed out.

Priority: Used to define the order in which two or more news articles are displayed.

• The news article with the greatest value is displayed first.
• If you do not define any priority, the display order will be based on the title of the news articles.

Public: Used to indicate if the news article will only be visible in the Service Operation and Service Transition menus for Back Office users (box is not checked) or if it will also be visible to Front Office users in the Self Service portal (box is checked).

Display in Notification Bar: Used to indicate if the news article will be visible in the notification bar (box is checked) or not (box is not checked). When there are two or more news articles, they will appear successively in the scrolling banner.
         

• (1): Used to indicate the current news article number and the total number of news articles available based on profile and access restrictions.
• (2): Title of the news article.
• (3): Used to display the next news article.

Display Date: Used to indicate on the Home page if the creation date of the news article should be displayed after the title (box is checked) or not (box is not checked).
         

Publication Date/Publication End: Validity period of the news article.

• You must enter an end date different from the start date to ensure that the news article is displayed. 

Related Category (for a News Article form opened using the Service Operation menu) or Related Service (for a News Article form opened using the Transition menu): Used to indicate the incident/request category of the news article displayed in the ticket.

• If the category corresponds to an incident catalog entry, the news article will be visible on the Home page of the Service Operation menu and in the ticket.
• If the category corresponds to a change catalog entry, the news article will be visible on the Home page of the Transition menu.

Related Major Incident: Number of the major incident associated with the news article. You associate the news article in the ticket using Declare Major Incident or in the Incident form using the Report Major Incident wizard.

Description: Description of the news article which can contain text, images or hyperlinks, etc. 

•   See Multilingual news management.
• Click  to open the text editor.   See Specific procedures.

Languages: Used to indicate if the news article is available in a given language (the relevant language box is checked) or not (box is not checked).

• Six standard languages are shipped with the Service Manager setup.
• Based on their access rights, users will only see the news articles available in their connection language.

Location

Application perimeter of the news article, restricting its visibility to users at the selected location (or lower-level location), provided they are authorized to access the Self Service portal and Back Office.

Department

Application perimeter of the news article, restricting its visibility to users in the selected department (or lower-level department), provided they are authorized to access the Self Service portal and Back Office.

Related Known Errors

List of known errors linked to the current news article.

• Update: Use Publish Element as News Article in the wizard for creating a known error.

Incidents

List of incidents linked to the current news article.

• Update: Select the news article in a ticket.

Discussions

DiscussionTab

Procedure and Wizards

How to create and process a news article

Step 1: Create the news article

From an incident

1. Open a ticket.

2. Click Declare Major Incident.

or

1. Open the Incident form you want.

2. Run the Report Major Incident wizard. 

From a known error

1. Create a new known error.

2. Click Publish This Element as News Article.

or

1. Open the known error you want.

2. Select the News Articles tab.

3. Click .

From an individually news article

1. Select Service Operation > Problems & Known Errors > News Articles or Service Transition > News Articles.

2. Click .

3. Complete the form.

4. Click .

5. Define the contents and the formatting of the news article.

• Click  next to the Description field.
• Define the text.
• Open the text editor via .
• Define the formatting using HTML code.   See Specific procedures.

6. (Optional) Specify access restrictions in the Locations and Department tabs.

Step 2: Test the news article

1. Go to the Home page of the relevant menu.

2. Check that the news article is correctly displayed.

How to insert a link to a Service Manager menu option

Note: The login page is displayed if users do not have access to the menu option.

Step 1: Search the link information from the menu option.

1. Open the menu option.

2. Copy the URL displayed in the URL bar of the Web browser.

3. Open a text editor (ex.: Notepad).

4. Paste the URL.

5. Delete the PHPSESSID and Internalurltime character strings located at the end of the URL.

6. Copy this modified link.

Step 2: Configure the link

1. Open the News Article form.

2. Click  next to the Description field to open the text editor.

• Select the text you want to define as a link for the menu option. Note: You can select an image.
• Click  to configure a hyperlink.
           
  • URL: Paste the simplified link of the menu option.
  • Text to display: Text or image you want to define as a link for the menu option. Note: If you do not select any text or image, then the hyperlink will be inserted as a URL.
  • Title: Text displayed when the mouse hovers over the image and/or when the image cannot be found.
  • Target: Target window for opening the hyperlink. Select New window to open the menu option in a new tab or window.

3. Click  to save the news article. 

Step 3: Test the link

1. Go to the Home page of the relevant menu.

2. Check that the news article is correctly displayed.

How to insert a hyperlink to a full text search

Step 1: Configure the link

1. Click  next to the Description field to open the text editor.

2. Click  to switch to HTML mode. 

3. Use the <a> tag to define the hyperlink used to run a full text search. Caution: Do not modify the href="/fts.php" attribute because this redirects users to the full text search.

4. Click  to save the news article.

5. For security reasons, the session ID will automatically be added to the link. You should delete it manually in the AM_DOCUMENT table. 

Step 2: Test the link

1. Go to the Home page of the relevant menu.

2. Check that the news article is correctly displayed.

How to display news articles in a scrolling banner

Step 1: Configure the scrolling banner

1. . Click  next to the Description field to open the text editor.

2. Click  to switch to HTML mode. 

3. Surround the text to be displayed in the scrolling banner using the <marquee> tag.

4. Click  to save the news article. 

Step 2: Test the link

1. Go to the Home page of the relevant menu.

2. Check that the news article is correctly displayed.

How to insert a YouTube video

Step 1: Configure the display of the video

1. Click  next to the Description field to open the text editor.

2. Click  to switch to HTML mode. 

3. Use the <iframe> tag to add a hyperlink to the YouTube video you want (src="www.youtube.com/watch?" attribute).

4. Click  to save the news article.  

Step 2: Test the link

1. Go to the Home page of the relevant menu.

2. Check that the news article is correctly displayed.

Wizards

Archive

Multilingual news management

You cannot enter the news article contents in multiple languages. However, there are different ways of getting around this problem.

Solution 1: Enter the contents of the news article in a common language for all users

• Create one form only
• Enter the contents in the common language, e.g. EN
   

Solution 2: Enter the news article in each standard user language

• Create one form for each language
• Enter the contents in this language
   

Solution 3: Enter the contents of the news article in each user language

• Create one form only
• Enter the contents and concatenate the text in each language