News Articles

Last modified on 2023/07/03 18:08

Definition

A news article is an occasional item of information that highlights a topical issue: announcement of a critical event, which may generate incidents, communication of an informative message, .... It can be made available to users in the Self Service portal or only to the Technical Support team.

EndDefinition

Each news article:

  • Can be created:
  • 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. Open url.png  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.  Open url.png  See the procedure.

Menu access

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

Description of tabs

         News.png

TabUpdateRules_After2016Versions

Create a new item Delete an item or association with a related item

Run the New wizard at the top of the tab

Fundamentals - Form - New wizard.png

Move the cursor over the corresponding item and click Trash icon.png

Fundamentals - Form - Delete wizard.png

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.
         News - via Notification bar.png

  • (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).
         News - Display date example.png

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. 

Best Practice icon.png  To display a news article permanently, specify the start date without an end date.

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.

Best Practice icon.png  If you want to display the news article on the Home page of both the Service Operation and Service Transition menus, you should not specify its category.

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. 

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.

Discussions

DiscussionTab

List of discussions which users can access based on their domain and the visibility of the discussion.

  • Enter the keywords you want in the Search field and press Enter
  • To cancel the search criteria and return to the complete list of discussions, provided you have the relevant rights, click within the box and then click Discussion - Delete icon.png.

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 Add icon.png.

From an individually news article

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

2. Click Add icon.png.

3. Complete the form.

4. Click Save icon.png.

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

  • Click Edit icon.png next to the Description field.
  • Define the text.
  • Open the text editor via Switch Source code icon.png.
  • Define the formatting using HTML code. Open url.png  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.

example  

  • Menu option: Service Operation > Assets > Equipment
  • Corresponding URL:
    http://evo2009_1:8081/index.php?theme=%7B8C971D2C-AC44-42AC-86BC-C949A1E1466A%7D&eventName=InventoryItem&PHPSESSID=18b9347061b8bb2eb42e7f3ded6b7862&internalurltime=1265367183460
  • Modified link after the deletion of the PHPSESSID and Internalurltime instructions:
    http://evo2009_1:8081/index.php?theme=%7B8C971D2C-AC44-42AC-86BC-C949A1E1466A%7D&eventName=InventoryItem

Step 2: Configure the link

1. Open the News Article form.

2. Click Edit icon.png 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 Hyperlink - insert edit icon.png to configure a hyperlink.
             News - via Hyperlink.png
    • 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 Save icon.png 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 Edit icon.png next to the Description field to open the text editor.

2. Click Switch Source code icon.png 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.

<a href="/fts.php" target="_blank">Clickable link</a>

4. Click Save icon.png 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. 

example  You want to manually delete phpsessid="f60bca9d98acddb2b3031b1d199eec87"

<a href="/fts.php" phpsessid="f60bca9d98acddb2b3031b1d199eec87" target="_blank">Clickable link</a>

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 Edit icon.png next to the Description field to open the text editor.

2. Click Switch Source code icon.png to switch to HTML mode. 

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

example  

<marquee> Internet access will be down tomorrow at 11AM. It will be restored at 12AM. </marquee>

4. Click Save icon.png 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 Edit icon.png next to the Description field to open the text editor.

2. Click Switch Source code icon.png 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).

example  

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZKlgrGtK38" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

4. Click Save icon.png 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
     
News Article Communication languages News article contents Text seen by English users Text seen by French users
No Internet Access EN; FR No Internet Access Friday Afternoon No Internet Access Friday Afternoon No Internet Access Friday Afternoon


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

  • Create one form for each language
  • Enter the contents in this language
     
News Article Communication languages News article contents Text seen by English users Text seen by French users
No Internet Access EN No Internet Access Friday Afternoon No Internet Access Friday Afternoon (non-visible news article)
Pas d'accès Internet FR Pas d'accès Internet vendredi après-midi (non-visible news article) Pas d'accès Internet vendredi après-midi


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
     
News Article Communication languages News article contents Text seen by English users Text seen by French users
No Internet Access EN; FR

English flag.png No Internet Access Friday Afternoon

French flag.png Pas d'accès Internet vendredi après-midi

English flag.png No Internet Access Friday Afternoon

French flag.png Pas d'accès Internet vendredi après-midi

English flag.png No Internet Access Friday Afternoon

French flag.png Pas d'accès Internet vendredi après-midi

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