Proactive Service Experience Workflows architecture

  • Release version: Washingtondc
  • Updated February 1, 2024
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Telecommunications, Media and Technology Assurance Architecture

    The Telecommunications, Media and Technology Assurance architecture comprises several key components that streamline incident management for network operations. This architecture facilitates efficient incident handling through workflows triggered by specific incident categories, ensuring timely resolutions and effective communication among teams.

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    Key Features

    • Flows and Subflows: Initiated by incidents categorized under SD-WAN, with five subcategories leading to 27 subflows, primarily designed for network operations.
    • Escalation Stages: Five defined stages (Triage, L1, L2, L3, Resolution) guide the escalation process and decision-making.
    • Decision Tables: The Incident Escalation Policy decision table determines the appropriate subflow at various escalation points.
    • Messages: Each subflow includes message files that provide troubleshooting and escalation instructions for agents.
    • Business Rules: Synchronization of incident information (description, priority, state) to incident tasks is managed by specific business rules.
    • Roles and Assignment Groups: Defined roles facilitate collaboration among network-related personnel, ensuring they have the necessary access to relevant information.

    Key Outcomes

    This architecture enables ServiceNow customers to effectively manage network incidents through structured workflows and escalation processes. By utilizing predefined roles and assignment groups, teams can respond promptly to incidents, minimizing downtime and improving service quality. As a result, organizations can enhance their incident resolution capabilities, streamline communication, and maintain better service continuity for their customers.

    There are multiple components that make up the architecture of the Proactive Service Experience Workflows application.

    The main components are as follows:

    • Flows and subflows
    • Escalation stages
    • Decision tables
    • Messages
    • Business rule
    • Client scripts
    • System properties
    • Roles
    • Assignment groups
    • Service Operations Workspace

    Flows and subflows

    A workflow is triggered when an incident is created with the SD-WAN category and one of these five subcategories:
    • Link Failure
    • Device Failure
    • Protocol Failure
    • Soft-WAN Link Failure
    • Software Failure

    Each category has subflows for each assignment group and a level of escalation for a total of 27 subflows. These subflows are a starting point created primarily for network operations outages, but can be reused and extended for other use cases.

    Escalation stages

    The five stages of escalation are as follows:
    • Triage
    • L1 investigation
    • L2 investigation
    • L3 investigation
    • Resolution
    Proactive Service Experience Workflows uses these stage values to trigger the appropriate decision in the Incident Escalation Policy [sys_hub_flow] decision table. This table triggers the correct subflow during incident escalation. During each stage of escalation, an incident task is created and maintained for that assignment group. The incident information synchronizes to the incident task from a business rule and includes the following:
    • Short description
    • Priority
    • State
    • Work notes that the assigned person in the assignment group adds to the incident
    • Message content that is embedded in the incident by the workflow

    Decision tables

    Based on the defined condition, Flow Designer works with the Incident Escalation Policy [sys_hub_flow] decision table to determine which subflow to generate at certain escalation points.

    Messages

    Each subflow in Proactive Service Experience Workflows is associated with a message file that provides instructions for agents to use to troubleshoot, escalate, and resolve network-initiated incidents. For more information about how to customize the default instructions for your internal troubleshooting processes, see Customize message files.

    Business rules

    The Sync to tsm incident task business rule determines the information that synchronizes from the incident to the incident task, including:

    • Short description
    • Priority
    • State
    • Assignment group
    • Assignee
    • Work notes that the assigned person in the assignment group adds to the incident

    Roles

    The sn_ind_tsm_core.noc_agent role is available with the Proactive Service Experience Workflows application. This role when added, ensures that the technical support agent can see the relevant information between ITSM and CSM applications. This role includes the following:
    • itil
    • wm_initiator
    • wm_read
    • sn_customerservice.case_viewer
    • sn_customerservice.customer_data_viewer

    Several assignment groups are included with this role and other groups can also have the admin role. The sn_ind_tsm_sdwan.ticket_integrator role can be used for trouble tickets created from the TMF 621 Open API use cases.

    Assignment groups

    Workflows involve network-related personnel, including network coordinators and engineers. All assignment groups have the base sn_ind_tsm_sdwan.PSEW_USER system role.

    Note:
    These assignment groups are a starting point, created primarily for network operation support.
    Network coordinator
    The network coordinator's tasks and responsibilities are as follows:
    • Manage and triage incidents from the network management systems
    • Assess the impact and define the incident priority
    • Refresh the impacted services and create cases for the affected customers
    • Correlate incidents with the open incidents or change requests using Agent assist
    • Assign incidents and coordinate with network engineering
    L1- Network engineer
    The L1 - network engineer's tasks and responsibilities are as follows:
    • Troubleshoot network incidents
    • Engage Field Service agents, third-party vendors, and OEMs to resume normal service operation
    • Trigger the Change Management and Problem Management processes
    L2 - Network engineer
    The L2 - network engineer's tasks and responsibilities are as follows:
    • Troubleshoot network incidents
    • Engage Field Service agents, third-party vendors, and OEMs to restore normal service operation
    • Trigger the Change Management and Problem Management processes to introduce beneficial change or perform root cause analysis
    L3 - Network engineer
    The L3 - engineer's tasks and responsibilities are as follows:
    • Troubleshoot network incidents
    • Engage Field Service agents, third-party vendors, and OEMs to restore normal service operation
    • Trigger the Change Management and Problem Management processes to introduce beneficial changes or perform root cause analysis

    Proactive Service Experience Workflows process

    The following diagram shows the steps involved in the Proactive Service Experience Workflows process:

    Proactive Service Experience Workflows End-to-end process