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Assignee
The assignee is an IT technician who is responsible for the resolution of a specific incident or request for change. The assignee can be a level 1 or a level 2 technician.

Change management
The goal of the ITIL-based practice of change management aims to ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all Changes, in order to minimize the impact of Change-related Incidents upon service quality, and consequently to improve the day-to-day operations of the organisation.

Configuration item (CI)
A configuration item is any physical component (hardware of software) of an IT infrastructure that needs to be monitored in order to ensure the convened level of service. See Configuration Management.

Configuration management
The ITIL-based practice of configuration management involves the identification, monitoring, maintenance, and verification of all physical components (CIs) forming part of an IT infrastructure. In addition to keeping an inventory, all relationships between CIs are recorded. For example, the relationship “is installed on” makes it possible to obtain the list of computers upon which a given piece of software is installed. The CIs are recorded in a configuration management database (CMDB).

Configuration management database
The configuration management database contains data regarding the physical components (hardware and software) of an IT infrastructure, as well as the relationships between them. This database is commonly referred to as the CMDB. See Configuration Management.

Incident
An incident is an event that is not part of the normal course of activities and which causes or is likely to cause a service breach or a reduction in the quality of services provided. For example, a user is unable to print or a given piece of software does not function.

Incident management
The ITIL-based practice of incident management aims to restore service as promptly as possible while generating a minimal level of impact upon current operations.

ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library)
ITIL is a reference in terms of best practices for IT Service Management (ITSM). Octopus supports the practices of incident management, configuration management, problem management, change management and service request management.
Click here to learn more about ITIL.

Known error
Condition identified by successful diagnosis of the root cause of a Problem, and the subsequent development of a work-around.

Level 1 assignee
The level 1 assignee provides the first level of user support. The level 1 technician forms part of the Technical support center. The level 1 assignee remains responsible at all times for the incidents to which he or she is assigned.

Level 2 assignee
The level 2 assignee forms part of a group of specialists. The Technical support center requests his or her services when an incident has failed to be resolved at the first level of intervention.

Open incident
An incident which is neither resolved nor closed.

Problem
Condition often identified as a result of multiple Incidents that exhibit common symptoms. Problems can also be identified from a single significant Incident, indicative of a single error, for which the cause is unknown, but for which the impact is significant. For instance, multiple incidents related to a specific printer happened in a short period of time. We create a problem because the cause is unknown. When we identify the root cause, our Problem becomes a Known Error. From now, we could decide to open a RFC to correct the issue or to live with a work-around.

Problem management
The goal of ITIL-based practice of problem management aims to minimize the impact of Incidents and Problems on the business that are caused by errors within the IT infrastructure, and to prevent recurrence of Incidents related to these errors. Problem management seeks to get to the root cause of Incidents and then initiate actions to improve or correct the situation.

Reference data
Reference data consists in data used to support managed elements such as incidents, CIs and employees. The application’s various drop-down lists (comboboxes) are generally “lookups”, that is, reference data. For instance, the list of categories and subcategories of an incident constitute reference data.

Request for change (RFC)
Requests for Change (RFCs) are triggered for a wide variety of reasons, from a wide variety of sources; for instance, required resolution of an Incident or Problem report, user dissatisfaction via the helpdesk, etc. Request that can be concerned with a change in any part of the infrastructure or with any service or activity : hardware, software, documentation, telecommunication, procedures, plans, etc. For instance, an OS change for the whole network, a major software upgrade for all computers.

Service breach
See incident.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)
SLAs represent the maximal delays for the resolution of incidents and for the processing of RFCs. The data derived from SLAs (represented in the form of graphs, statistics, etc.) serves to measure the service level provided to clients by the technical support center.

Service request (SR)
Request made by a user for service delivery, of which the associated tasks, costs and risks are known and convened. The service desk offers many standard services of that type such as: installation of a new workstation, creation of a user account, etc. A non-standard request that requires a controlled managed process is called a Request for Change (RFC).

Technical support center
The technical support center is the user contact point for any problem, request, or comment concerning IT services. ITIL proposes the implementation of a support center in order, among other things, to improve service to users.

User
The term “user” is employed in several contexts:
Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)
This component forms part of the Windows operating system and is used to obtain information regarding a computer’s configuration.
Click here to learn more about WMI.