Work Order Creation from Help Desk Applications

You can integrate PeopleSoft CRM Help Desk and third party help desk applications with PeopleSoft Maintenance Management using the Integration Broker. You must perform the normal setup procedures for PeopleSoft Maintenance Management, as well as set up assets in the PeopleSoft Asset Management asset repository. This provides the foundation to enable you to create work orders from help desk applications.

When a help desk agent receives a call or a self-service notification that involves a problem that the agent cannot resolve without the intervention of one or more technicians, the agent can create a PeopleSoft Maintenance Management work order directly from the help desk application. The help desk application can access the assets in PeopleSoft Asset Management and the problem tree, shops, work order statuses, and work order priorities in PeopleSoft Maintenance Management using PeopleSoft Integration Broker. In addition, the help desk application maintains a history of all transactions that are sent to PeopleSoft Maintenance Management.

When a help desk agent creates a work order, the system sends a series of messages between PeopleSoft Maintenance Management and the help desk application using PeopleSoft Integration Broker. The help desk initiates the first message to create a work order to PeopleSoft Maintenance Management. Then, PeopleSoft Maintenance Management responds by sending a message that contains the new work order number and the status. If the system fails to create a work order, then the response message contains the errors that are relevant to the failure.

Once PeopleSoft Maintenance Management creates the work order, the system notifies the help desk of key events, which include a change in the work order header status, a change in the work order description, or a request for additional information. A request for information is usually sent to the agent in an email containing an embedded URL, and the technician's workbench in PeopleSoft Maintenance Management indicates that the technician is awaiting a reply to this request. If the agent responds to the email through the URL, the work order workbench indicates that the agent replied to the email.

A technician assigned to a work order can also add a note to which the agent can respond within the work order without using email. After the work order is completed, the system updates the help desk application with the status change and notifies the agent of this status.

If nothing else is necessary to complete the work order, the agent indicates that the problem is resolved and notifies the requester. If the requester is satisfied with the solution, then no further action is required. The agent can close a case without affecting the work order. The technician can manually close the work order or the work order will close automatically within a given time period. However, if the solution was not satisfactory, the requester can instruct the agent to keep the help desk case open. The help desk agent might then respond by creating a new work order.

To create a work order from a help desk application, you can assume that:

• All systems sending information track their requests or cases by business unit.

• Person data used for help desk case creation is part of the help desk system and is not related to person data used in PeopleSoft Maintenance Management.

  Because the help desk agent's contact information displays in the work order header, the help desk agent must also be set up in either the PeopleSoft FSCM or HRMS source data tables.

The help desk application is responsible for retrieving all asset information from the PeopleSoft Asset Management asset repository and for maintaining the history of all transactions sent to PeopleSoft Maintenance Management.

PeopleTools Integration Broker is used to issue a series of asynchronous messages that are sent between the help desk application and PeopleSoft Maintenance Management. PeopleSoft CRM Help Desk and third party help desk applications must be set up to successfully send and receive the required Integration Broker messages. Activities that you must perform include:

• Setting up Integration Broker and activating application messages from PeopleSoft Maintenance Management to the help desk application on both the help desk application and PeopleSoft Maintenance Management databases.

• Setting up Integration Broker and activating all application messages from PeopleSoft Asset Management to the help desk application on both the help desk application and PeopleSoft Asset Management databases.

• Setting up problems in the PeopleSoft Maintenance Management Problem Tree.

• Selecting the Publish Data flag for the problems you want to be available to the help desk application.

• Entering work order default values (business unit, service group, type, & priority) for all problems to be published to the help desk application.

• Executing the COPY_* messages to populate the corresponding tables in the help desk application.

The following table describes the messages that are sent between the two products by means of the Integration Broker:

Message	Processing	Function
COPY_PROBLEM_TREE	Outbound	Publish All Problem Tree information for problem trees set up in PeopleSoft Maintenance Management. The Problem Tree page (WM_PROBLEM_TREE) in PeopleSoft Maintenance Management has a Publish Data check box in the top level of the tree, which, when selected, sends a problem's branch information to the help desk, which uses it to identify and classify a problem.
COPY_SHOP_LOC	Outbound	Publish All Shop Location information. This message copies all shop locations to the help desk application. These are the shops (service locations) available to the help desk agent when creating a work order.
COPY_WO_STATUS	Outbound	Publish Work Order Header Status Code information. This message copies the work order statuses to the help desk application. These are the work order statuses returned to the help desk from PeopleSoft Maintenance Management when a work order is added or updated.
COPY_WM_PRIORITY	Outbound	Publish all Work Order Priority information. This message copies the work order priority codes to the help desk application. These are the priorities available to the help desk agent when creating a work order.
SYNC_REQ_WORK_ORDER	Inbound	Subscribe to work order add/update request from help desk. This message enables the help desk agent to add or update work orders. This message creates a work order in PeopleSoft Maintenance Management when the help desk agent invokes the Create Work Order related action on a case. The message updates a work order in PeopleSoft Maintenance Management when the agent changes the contact information on the case.
SYNC_RSP_WORK _ORDER	Outbound	Publish to work order create/update response. This message returns an Add or Update status to the help desk application. If the Add work order is successful, this message returns the new work order number and its initial status. If unsuccessful, this message returns the errors encountered trying to create the work order.
SYNC_WM_WO_KEY_EVENT	Outbound	Publish to key event reporting. Send work order key events to the help desk application. Key events include: work order status change, work order description change, and request for more information from the work order technician.

See documentation PeopleTools: PeopleSoft Integration Broker

You cannot create a PeopleSoft Maintenance Management express work order from the PeopleSoft CRM Help Desk

Requests for Information

A technician can request more information from the help desk application by email if a valid employee ID or email address for the help desk agent is available on the work order header. The technician accesses the Notes link in either a work order's header or task, enters a new note, indicates that a reply is needed, and sends an email to the contact person (usually the help desk agent) identified in the work order. This email contains an URL that points to a reply page where the help desk's contact person can reply to the information request. When the help desk agent replies, the system automatically sets the note indicator in the technician workbench to Replied so that the technician knows that a reply to his request has arrived and is awaiting review. For a work order header note, an email is sent to the scheduler, supervisor, and lead person, indicating a reply was received. For a work order task note, an email is sent additionally to the technician. A technician can deselect the Request for Information check box in the work order's Notes page, which cancels the need for a reply to the note. This resets the note indicator in the technician workbench from Pending to Cleared. If the technician deselects the Reply check box, this resets the note indicator from Replied to Cleared.