ITS staff, student workers, and service managers can create global issues in Jira to be posted to the IT Status page. Specified information in the global issue will be available for public viewing, including the type of issue, impacted service, and a brief message.
Employees should consult a supervisor before creating a global issue and pay careful attention to the information shown on the customer side.
Creating a Global Issue: Daytime Process
Creating a Global Issue Ticket in Jira
Global issues are similar to regular issues, with the primary difference being workflow and reporting. A global ticket will be needed when an issue is reported by multiple users affecting the same system or when an issue is directly noticed by Technology Support Center staff.
Check the Change Order calendar to confirm that the outage is not related to a change currently in process. If there is a change occurring for that system, do NOT post a GI during the maintenance window (between 5:30 am and 7:30 am).
If it is an unplanned outage, notify the team Team Lead of the team that manages the app/program. View the ITS Org Chart to determine the correct Team Lead at its.uconn.edu/about-its/.
Create a new issue by selecting the Create icon.
Set Project to ITS Service Desk (ISD).
Set Issue Type to Global Issue.
Write a Summary for the issue.
Set the Assignee to the technician working on it; leave this field blank if the issue is being sent to a team.
Write a description of the issue in the Description field. This field is for our internal use and will not display on the IT Status page.
Add the relevant Component(s) that are working on the issue and must be notified, and assign the GI to Technology Support Center.
Select an option for Incident Type.
Status “No" will not post to the IT Status webpage.
Status "Degraded": Issues that are causing services to be slow or issues that have deteriorated since the initial creation of the issue.
Status "Issue Reported": Issues that have been reported, and action is being taken for the issue.
Status "Monitoring": Issues that have been resolved but will not be removed from the IT Status page until further action is taken to resolve the Jira issue.
Status "Unavailable": Use to report complete unavailability of a service.
Choose an option from the Service Impacted category. Select the most appropriate service for the current issue or select Other.
The "Service Impacted (Other)" text field is optional. The IT Status page will use this field only if you selected "Other" in the Service Impacted drop-down.
IT Status Wording will be the message that is posted to the IT Status webpage. Message that should currently be posted: "Technicians are aware of the outage and are working to restore service." The Team Lead may want to modify this wording and will notify us.
Note: This note will be publicly available to all students, staff, faculty, and visitors, so discretion is advised in the wording of this message.Select Create.
Note: A regular workflow will be followed when working on a global issue. When necessary, update Incident Type and IT Status Wording to reflect the current status of the issue. To remove the posting, select the Close Issue button on the global ticket. This will remove the posting from the IT Status page.
Additional Information about Global Issues and IT Status
To remove the posting, select Resolve on the global ticket. Doing so leaves the posting on IT Status and will provide an exact timestamp. To completely remove the posting from IT Status, select Closed.
The issue will come off the IT Status page at midnight when it is automatically set to Closed.
Linking Tickets
You can link subsequent tickets for a global issue to the original ticket in two ways; however, linking is static. When the global is updated, the linked tickets will not update; each ticket must be manually updated.
Link is found under the More menu. It is recommended to select the relates to option, and then select the global issue ticket from the Issue field. Select the correct option (Respond to customer or Internal comment) for your comment. Click Link to link to the global.
Tickets can be searched and linked from this screen individually or in bulk by a JQL query.
Once the link is completed, a new section will appear on the ticket with the linked issue date and hyperlinks to all linked tickets.
In the case of major phishing or other incidents, the following linking procedure is recommended:
Create a new Global Issue (GI) with the IT Status posting field set to No.
Link all new incoming requests to the GI with a relates to link.
Updating and Resolving the Phone Line Message
Dial #6-4357 # 2 782887 # 1 (to listen to an existing message, if any) or 2 to record a new message. If there is already a recorded message, make note of it and add it to the new message you record. ( Note: 782887 is the numeric acronym for STATUS.)
Verbiage for the message: “Today’s date is [date] and we have X important notice(s).” Record all open global issues. Finish recording with “There are no other network or system outages at this time” (or “There are no network or system outages at this time” if there are no other issues).
Outside Hours (Nights and Weekends) Procedures
The procedural steps for responding to widespread issues (most often unplanned service outages) are outlined below. Issues of this sort usually affect multiple users, major University systems, or both.
1. Initial Diagnosis
The issue is reported by multiple users affecting the same system, or directly noticed by Technology Support Center staff. Gather information such as:
How many users or areas are affected?
What system(s) or applications are affected?
Test to verify outage, if possible.
Reporter's contact phone, NetID, building, and room location.
2. Escalation Contact order
Contact the following individuals in order (also through MS Teams):
Steve Fletcher: (860) 234-2408
Keith Parks: (860) 368-9103