Begin initial setup
On this page
Introduction
To utilize Service Desk to maintain a single area of your organization, simply log in.
Order of initial setup actions
Action 1: Login
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Open Service Desk.
- Enter your account email (which is your login ID) and password.
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After accessing the Service Desk as an administrator, use the navigation pane on the left. Scroll down to the cog at the bottom and select Setup.
Welcome
Welcome to your Service Desk Setup Home landing page. You can navigate by using the pane on the left or by clicking a tile on the right.
Action 2: Set up sites and departments, time zone, and default language
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Navigate to Setup > Account > Organizations & Sites.
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Select your time zone and default language.
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Set up sites (your organization's physical locations).
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Set up departments (the departments within your organization).
Action 3: Set up categories and subcategories
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Navigate to Setup > Service Desk > Categories.
- Select the appropriate tab:
- Incident/Service Requests
- Changes
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Click Add category on the right. You can add subcategories by hovering over a category and clicking the + that displays. To edit, hover over a specific category or subcategory and click the pencil icon.
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Provide a name, select a default assignee and/or default group assignment from the dropdown lists, and add comma-separated default tags.
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Optionally, create an email dropbox.
An email dropbox can be used to directly route incidents to a specific email address. See Category dropbox emails for more information. -
Click Create.
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After creation is complete, refresh the Categories index page. The list of categories will automatically re-sort to alphabetical order.
Action 4: Set up users
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Navigate to Setup > Account.
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Click Users & groups to see information about setting up users and groups in Service Desk and links to the sub-modules.
You can choose to set up your users manually, via import from a csv file, or through integration with an Identity as a Service (IDaaS) partner such as Azure, Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS), OKTA, or OneLogin.
Action 5: Set up roles and permissions
Navigate to Setup > Account > Roles & Permissions.
You can choose to use only the four out-of-the-box roles and their permissions, or you can clone roles to create your own custom roles.
After all of your roles and permissions are in place, you need to assign a role to each of your user accounts.
Action 6: Establish email settings
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Navigate to Setup > Account > Email settings.
An email dropbox is set up for your organization after the account is set up.
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If your employees already have a company email address they use for submitting incidents:
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Set up a forwarding rule to send those emails to your dropbox.
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Navigate to Setup > Account > Email Settings, and add that same email address your employees are using to the reply email address field.
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Action 7: Set up multiple service providers
Optionally, companies that want to use Service Desk to manage non-IT services, for example HR or Facilities, can create multiple service providers.
For information about using Service Desk to manage non-IT services, see Enterprise Service Management (ESM)
The next step in the setup process
You have created the foundational building blocks for your service desk. Some customers like to use it a while to determine what to set up next. Others like to refine the setup more before they make it available for users. You can decide which features from the list below to implement for your organization.
Service Desk features
Service Desk offers these features that help you provide your end users, agents, and service desk managers what they need when they need it.
Comprehensive capabilities include:
- Incident management and Runbooks
- Intelligent incident management offering assisted responses, live collaboration, and multiple engagement channels:
- For agents
- Tools to help you manage:
- Assets.
- Changes. Change Management
- Configurations. Configuration Management Database (CMDB)
- Employee portal. Employee self-service portal
- Multiple service desks. Enterprise Service Management
- Operations. IT Operations Management (ITOM) integration with the SolarWinds Platform
- Problems. Problem management
- Procurement. Procurement management
- Releases. Release management
- Reporting. Analytics, Reporting, and Benchmarking
- Requests. Service Catalog/Request Management
- Service automations. Service automation
- Your service desk. Dashboards
- Options for organizations: