1. Using Maintenance
  2. How You Manage Work Requests for an Asset

How You Manage Work Requests for an Asset

Work requests are typically used to report facility and asset related maintenance discrepancies. They contain information about the nature of the discrepancy, asset (if known), and a description of the problem. Work requests are assessed and then assigned for resolution using maintenance work orders. When resolved, the original requester is updated on the outcome of the work request, providing the feedback loop. Oracle Maintenance supports work requests for installed base assets using the Oracle Help Desk offering. The Help Desk supports work requests for only internally-owned assets. For more details about the setup and use of the Help Desk can be found in Oracle B2B Service guides.

Help Desk Setup for Maintenance Users

The help desk offering must be enabled and all the necessary setups completed:

  • Enabling the Help Desk offering for Internal Service Requests (ISRs).

  • Reviewing the seeded lookup types and optionally define custom values. For maintenance users, these include categories, severities, status values, outcomes, and resolutions. The out of the box values are useful for most customers to begin with.

  • Reviewing, adding, and setting profile options.

    • For maintenance users, it's critical that you review the documentation in the Help Desk implementation guide to Associate Assets and Work Orders to Help Desk Requests. You must also create and set the profile option (SVC_NG_ENABLE_MAINTENANCE_HELPDESK) to create work orders for an asset within the help desk request pages.

  • Review the process for enabling the Maintenance Help Desk Profile Option for REST API. You must perform this step to enable the profile option in the REST API.

  • Reviewing how scheduled processes are used and configured.

  • Reviewing how to setup assignment objects and assignment rules are used for request queues.

  • If you wish to manage work requests for installed base assets, then internally owned assets must be created and enabled for maintenance work orders. This includes optionally defining work definitions in the same organization where your assets operate. You can create, submit, and resolve a work request without an asset. However, if your business process utilizes a maintenance work order to manage the repair of an asset, then either the requestor or agent will need to identify the asset prior to work order creation.

  • It's also recommended that you enable the advanced installed base asset search for a help desk request. This allows you to perform full-text searches for assets across dozens of related attributes. You can learn more about this search capability in the section How You Use Smart Search to Search For and View Assets in the New Assets UI of the Implementing Manufacturing and Supply Chain Materials Management guide. If you don't enable the smart search, then you can still search for assets using the default search capability in a help desk request.

Note: User licenses are typically required for the Help Desk administrator and agent roles. Licenses are typically not required for Help Desk users who create and submit new requests. Additional details are covered in the Oracle Fusion Cloud Licensing online help guides.

Help Desk Users

The help desk functionality supports these user roles:

  • Employee: internal user requesting support to resolve their questions and issues about an asset discrepancy.

  • Help Desk Agent: individual responsible for creating Help Desk tickets on behalf of employees and managing Internal Help Desk tickets

  • Help Desk Manager: individual responsible for managing a group of Internal Help Desk Agents. They also have responsibility for reviewing and analyzing Internal Help Desk metrics.

  • Help Desk Administrator: individual responsible for managing setup and configuration for Internal Help Desks.

Create a New Request

Employees can create new requests using My Help and Help Desk Agents can create requests using the Help Desk Requests subject areas. On the he My Help page, employees can create and manage their work requests. Click the Create Request button to open the Create Help Desk Request page. Here's what employees can do on this page:

  • Define the subject of the request (required)

  • Set a severity

  • Select a category (used for routing to queues for triage)

  • Select an installed base asset

  • Define a detailed description

  • Add an attachment or URL

When submitted, you can check on your open requests for feedback from the Help Desk Agent using My Help. The status of the request will guide you as the request is assessed and assigned for resolution. You can reject a request if you determine it as an issue that requires resolution

Manage Requests

Help Desk Agents:

  • View and Assess Requests: After a new request is submitted, the Help Desk Agent can manage the requests using the Help Desk Requests subject area. Agents can use the All Open Internal Service Requests page to view newly created requests. New requests are routed into queues by the category selected on the request. An Agent can then choose to assign the request to themselves for triage and resolution using the Assign To Me button.

  • Triage Requests: The Agent reviews the discrepancy details and may send messages to the employee who submitted the request for additional details. The Agent may also need to select or update the asset identified on the request. When the Agent determines that a maintenance work order is required to resolve the request, they can create a new work order for the asset directly within the Edit Request page.

  • Assign Requests to a Work Order: Agents can assign the request to an existing work order that's open for the asset. They can also assign additional requests from other employees to the same work order for resolution. Then, the Agent updates the request status from New to In-Progress or similar. The status update provides beneficial feedback to the employee who created the request that it's progressing toward resolution.

Maintenance Manager and Technician: The work order is managed by the Maintenance Manager and reviewed, updated, and then released for execution by a Technician. The work order contains key details about the request on the References tab on the Edit Work Order details page. This tab lists the Internal Service Request number and provides a snapshot of key details about the request. After the work order is completed, the request is assumed as resolved. The Help Desk Agent can update the request status from In-Progress to Resolved or similar. They may also choose to send a message to the requester to confirm the issue has been resolved.

When resolved, a request is set to closed status by a scheduled process.

Request Status Changes

A help desk agent manually progresses the status of the request over its lifecycle from New > In-Progress > Resolved > Closed. However, if a request is associated with an asset and maintenance work order, then the help desk request status will be automatically progressed based on the associated work order status changes.

Here are the coordinated work order and help desk status update steps:

Work Order Status Request Status Description
Not applicable New Newly created requests begin at a status of New. At this point in the process, there's no maintenance work order associated.
Unreleased New > In-Progress Requests status changes from New to In-Progress when a new maintenance work order is created and associated to the request. The same status update happens if it's assigned to an existing maintenance work order.
On-Hold In-Progress If the work order is changed to an On-Hold status, then there’s no status update in the request. Also, when the status changed back to Unreleased or set to Released, there’s no status update needed as the status of In-Progress is correctly reflecting the request is associated to a work order for resolution.
Released In-Progress When the work order is changed to a Released status, then there’s no status update in the request.
Completed In-Progress > Resolved Requests status changes from In-Progress to Resolved when the last operation of a maintenance work order is completed.
Closed Resolved or Closed You can close a work order to prevent any further transactions. You can use the Close action from the Mass Actions menu in Maintenance Work Orders page or run the Mass Close Maintenance Work Orders scheduled process. Regardless of method, there’s no change in the request status as the status is already Resolved or Closed.
Completed or Closed Resolved > Closed Requests status changes from Resolved to Closed when the request closing scheduled process is run. The work order status isn’t validated but should be in either completed or closed status.

To support automatic status updates, there are several profile values. Each profile value will be set to use the default help desk statuses. Therefore, you only need to adjust the profile values if you are using custom help desk status values. Theses profile values are accessed in the Functional Setup Manager > Manage Administrator Profile Values:

Profile option Description
ORA_MNT_ISR_INPROGRESS_STATUS Used to progress the internal service request from a status of New to In-Progress during maintenance work order creation or association. The default status uses the predefined status of In-Progress. Optionally, it can be changed to a user-defined status value.
ORA_MNT_ISR_COMPLETE_STATUS Used to progress the internal service request from a status of In-Progress to Resolved during maintenance work order completion. The default status uses the predefined status of Resolved. Optionally, it can be changed to a user-defined status value.
ORA_MNT_ISR_CANCEL_STATUS

Used to progress the internal service request from a status of In-Progress to New during maintenance work order cancellation or direct closure without work order completion. The default status uses the predefined status of New. Optionally, it can be changed to a user-defined status value.
ORA_MNT_ISR_DEFER_MODE Profile option that determines if internal service request status updates are process synchronously or asynchronously. If selected, then status updates only happen when the Progress Asset Transactions to Downstream Systemsschedule process is run.

The help desk request status updates are processed synchronously or asynchronously, depending on the method of work order update. By default, most status updates from the user interface or REST API will be processed synchronously by invoking the help desk request REST API. For asynchronous transactions. like file-based import, the status updates are performed by submitting the Progress Asset Transactions to Downstream Systems scheduled process on a desired frequency. Additionally, for synchronous transactions, if status updates aren’t required in real-time, then you can set a profile option to defer the status updates until the scheduled process for asynchronous transactions is submitted.

The profile option is ORA_MNT_ISR_DEFER_MODE:

  • The default value = N, meaning that ISR updates are synchronous for user interface or REST API work order updates
  • If set = Y, then ISR updates will be completed by running the scheduled process for both synchronous and asynchronous work order status updates

There could be scenarios where multiple actions are taken that don’t result in an automatic status update in a help desk request. The help desk agent must always manually monitor the requests in their queue and update their status as needed. The Help Desk also supports the creation and use of configured help desk request status values. If defined, you can optionally reference these custom values by setting several profile values that are used during certain work order transactions.

Asset Transaction Records

During the creation, cancel, completion, and closure of a work order, new transaction history records are captured for each asset in the CSE_TRANSACTIONS and CSE_TRANSACTED_ASSETS tables.

The asset transaction history includes four new transaction codes:

  • ORA_CSE_MNT_WO_CREATE (Maintenance Work Order Created)
  • ORA_CSE_MNT_WO_CANCEL (Maintenance Work Order Cancelled)
  • ORA_CSE_MNT_WO_COMPLETE (Maintenance Work Order Completed)
  • ORA_CSE_MNT_WO_CLOSE (Maintenance Work Order Closed)

Additionally, during work order creation, a transaction is logged in the History tab for the asset. On the History tab, you can view the high-level details of the transaction. You can then drill into the transaction to view more history details. There’s no transaction history for the help desk request, only their associated work orders.

Extensibility and External Integration

The Help Desk pages can be extended using Application Composer and Visual Builder. For more details, refer to the Implementing B2B Service guide.

The Help Desk Internal Service Request is also enabled for REST API. This includes the ability to create, edit, and resolve requests. For more details, refer to the REST API for CX Sales and B2B Service guide.