Trouble Ticket System Integration

StableNet^® Use Case – Fault Management & Root Cause Analysis

Discovery &
Inventory

Network Configuration & Change

Fault Management &
Root Cause Analysis

Performance &
Service

Trouble Ticket System Integration: An Automated Approach to Managing Your ITSM from a Single Network and Service Management Platform

Find out how StableNet^® can radically facilitate SLA-optimization by customizing and integrating your ticket system for less clutter, better control and improved customer service

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Background & Motivation – Why you should integrate your ticket system

A customer contacts you with a technical issue and a trouble ticket is created. This daily occurrence is one that enterprises and telcos must deal with immediately in order to meet the conditions of pre-existing SLAs. This single pebble triggers an avalanche of events like coordinating the information flow between departments and customer endpoints, identifying the root cause, solving the underlying technical issue, and clearing multiple tickets and alarms that have built up during the process. The response is, simply put, reactive. You may even already have a network management tool like StableNet^® in place that helps you automatically pinpoint the root cause for technical failures, thus speeding up the processing time until resolution. But your ticket system functions merely as a siloed and disconnected part of your entire Network & Service Management solution. Oh and by the way, the problem was a faulty switch in your network.

Most large enterprises and telcos have opted to use some form of Trouble Ticket System (TTS) for external customer support as well as internally for IT development. IT Service Management (ITSM) platforms provide an ideal way to manage occurrences and fulfill SLAs with processes and issues that must be dealt with across multiple departments. Incidents, problems, and service requests are part of the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) and are usually handled by a team with a company-specific workflow to guarantee resolution and satisfaction. This process must be coordinated and managed, with clear oversight and a well-defined separation of tasks and accountability throughout the lifecycle. Because each company has its own priorities and requirements regarding how trouble tickets are handled, tagging systems are critical in customizing the way that issues are communicated, categorized and resolved. An integrated, unified approach to TTS management under a network and service management umbrella radically simplifies and accelerates the entire lifecycle while simultaneously increasing operational efficiency.

Our Solution – How to integrate your ITSM with StableNet^®

Regardless of which ITSM you use (e.g. ServiceNow, BMC, OTRS, etc.), what you need is simple: Integration. Bidirectional ticket integration with StableNet^® begins first and foremost as a customer-tailored script (so-called “ticket daemon”) that is run on any number of distributed StableNet^® agents.

Defined by customer logic, agents are then able to manage (create, update or clear) alarms and send this information to the ticket system via one of multiple interfaces supported by StableNet^® (e.g. REST API, CLI, etc.). Users will then automatically receive notification of either new alarms or a change in alarm status, as well as the most current ticket status, via the TTS. In this way, your ticket system is conveniently managed by your unified network and services management platform. StableNet^®’s root cause logic is also integrated into the alarm handling. Users can align the mapping IDs of the ticket system with the root cause IDs in StableNet^®, thus guaranteeing that they receive a single alarm file which contains both the root cause alarm as well as any related symptoms, including affected elements and services.

With customizable, user-defined thresholds and alarm properties, StableNet^® allows you to determine when you get an alarm, set the priority, determine the severity and much more. In this way, you can make sure that tickets and alarms are providing the information you want and need, rather than overwhelming your team with superfluous or redundant notifications.

StableNet^® Ticket System Integration

Benefits & Results of Ticket System Integration

Whether you are facing a varied array of network technologies (from virtualization and cloud-based alternatives to legacy architecture) that you combine on a single platform, or 3rd party and proprietary software that you use to manage your multi-vendor network infrastructure, there is immense value in facilitating real-world workflows with automated processes. This requires that your platform is not only flexible enough to accommodate multiple use cases, but can then translate this customization to an automated, efficient and scalable solution.

Re-imagine, if you will, the previous example except this time you have ticket integration with StableNet^® . The same faulty switch has been immediately detected and a user-defined ticket daemon filters the information that you want (including severity) while creating a customized ticket. Automated root cause ensures that you are only receiving a single, meaningful alarm which contains information about the real-world impact on your network and services. Finally, your ticket system is instantly updated as soon as the issue has been identified, updated and resolved. With a proactive approach, resolution is quicker, SLAs are optimized, cross-departmental communication is facilitated and your network management solution works holistically.

With StableNet^® as your platform, all of your activities are bound together by a single tool that allows you to unify your fragmented infrastructure in order to work cohesively towards a single, strategic goal: superior customer value.

Key Benefits

Automatically create, update and clear trouble tickets based on monitored network performance
Improved management of Service Level Agreements
Fully customizable solution to facilitate company-specific workflows

Flexible interfaces for integration of various industry-leading ITSM platforms
Root cause trouble ticket creation to alleviate pressure on support resources
Single, consolidated platform for entire array of network & service management tasks

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