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Reveal Help Desk SOP

Reveal Help Desk SOP

Owned by Kyle Hutchinson (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Nov 29, 2022 by Anna Winters
5 min read

Table of Contents

Purpose

This Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) document details the classification of support requests; the process for escalating feedback from users of Reveal to project managers, product managers and developers; as well as actions to be taken to support users. 

Key Definitions

  • Ticket: Any individual request to the Reveal Helpdesk for an enhancement to an existing feature, a new feature request, or a bug fix.

  • Feature Enhancement: Changes to an existing feature. Changes may be cosmetic or functional. These will be linked to the original user story in the roadmap. 

  • New Feature Request: A request for a completely new feature that is not present in the roadmap.

  • Bug: A problem with an existing feature that is negatively impacting the usage of the application. The problem is caused by a code defect or by incorrect understanding of the user story or workflow as specified in the software specification document. 

  • Priority: How important it is for a bug to be fixed or feature to be enhanced or created (see Figure 1 for examples). 

  • Severity: How much of an impact the bug or feature request has on the usability of a feature or product (see Figure 1 for examples).

Classifications

Priority and Severity

Figure 1: Examples of tickets by priority and severity. High-priority, high-severity tickets may require an immediate release (e.g., dot release, hot fix). Other tickets may be scheduled into a future release or rejected in discussion with stakeholders, based on priority, severity, and level of effort required. 

Actors

The workflow is segmented into three support levels, each being handled by a different actor.

Level 1: Support Agent

Level 1 support will be carried out by the Support Agent. The support will be provided by an individual who has been trained in the basic functionality of Reveal, and who is able to assist with basic tool support. In the event that the bug or feature request cannot be attended to by the Support Agent, he or she will collate feedback from the user/s and escalate the ticket/s to the Technical Product Manager, including all mandatory information, as defined within ticket best-practices.

Tickets should be submitted as soon as a bug is reported or a feature is requested. However batches of tickets may be submitted using the group functionality in Zendesk, especially in the early stages of implementation. 

Level 2: Technical Product Manager

Level 2 support will be handled by the Technical Product Manager, who will triage and curate tickets received from Level 1, following consultation with project managers and software development teams, where necessary. Where possible, tickets will be resolved immediately by the Technical Product Manager with limited assistance from the relevant project managers and software development teams. Tickets identified as needing development work will be classified as new features, feature enhancements, or bugs, assessed for severity and priority and added to the Reveal backlog for level of effort estimation and scheduling. 

Level 3: Software Development Team

Level 3 support will be handled by the relevant Software Development Team through the normal software development lifecycle and may involve changes to the product in order to resolve a ticket. Priority and severity of the ticket will inform the urgency of the fix, and whether the fix can be released as part of the next scheduled release, or will need to be released as a dot release or hotfix.

Level 3 tickets may result in changes to the Reveal Roadmap. For example, the addition of new features as new user stories in the Roadmap may require a reprioritization of existing user stories and possible changes to the release schedule.

SOP: Ticket Reporting and Resolution

Workflow 

Level 1: Support Agent

Step

SLA

  1. Report issue or request: An issue or request will be reported by a user to the Support Agent. The issue or request should be logged and attended to according to the SOP workflow.

TBD

  1. Level 1: The Support Agent will attempt to resolve any issues by advising the user or assisting with troubleshooting. Unresolved issues and other requests should be escalated to Level 2 support. 

TBD

  1. Escalate ticket: The Support Agent should gather the required information and escalate the ticket.

TBD

Level 2: Technical Product Manager

Step

SLA

  1. Level 2: The Technical Product Manager will attempt to resolve the ticket by advising the Support Agent or assisting with troubleshooting. If it cannot be resolved immediately, it should be classified and prioritized.

TBD

  1. Classify & prioritize: The Technical Product Manager will classify the ticket as a bug, new feature request, or feature enhancement request, and determine its priority and severity in consultation with relevant project managers and software development teams. The ticket may be rejected if all stakeholders agree, and if so a notification and justification should be sent to the Support Agent, who will notify the reporting user.

TBD



  1. Assign ticket: The Support Agent or Technical Product Manager will assign the ticket to the relevant Software Development Team through the Jira integration and add any additional details in the product backlog.  

TBD

Level 3: Software Development Team

Step

SLA

  1. Schedule: The Software Development Team will estimate and schedule software development to resolve the ticket, in consultation with the Technical Product Manager, taking into account impact on existing feature delivery timelines as well as the priority and severity of the ticket. 

TBD

  1. Develop: New features or feature enhancements will be developed as part of the Reveal software development lifecycle.

Dependant on estimation and scheduling

  1. Fix: Bugs will be fixed as part of the Reveal software development lifecycle.

Dependant on estimation and scheduling

  1. Test: New features and enhancements will be tested by the Reveal team as per Test Case documents. Bug fixes will be tested by the Reveal team ad hoc using the instructions included in the ticket. 

TBD

  1. Scheduled Release: If the ticket is of low or medium priority or severity, the Technical Product Manager and Software Development Team should package it as part of the next scheduled release for the tool. 

TBD

  1. Dot Release: If the ticket is of high priority and severity, the Technical Product Manager and Software Development Team should schedule a dot release or hotfix as soon as possible.

TBD

Notify and Close

Step

SLA

  1. Notify reporter: Once the feature or fix has been released the Technical Product Manager will send a notification and any additional information required to implement the release to the Support Agent who submitted the ticket, who will then notify the user who reported the issue, if applicable. 

TBD

  1. Close: The ticket will then be closed by the Support Agent. A ticket may be reopened if later determined that a newly reported ticket is a recurring bug that has not been effectively fixed.

TBD

 

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