Documentation forSolarWinds Service Desk

General features and navigation for agents

On this page

Introduction

This page provides a list of the SolarWinds Service Desk (SWSD) personal profile settings you can customize. It also contains information about general features that often apply across the board in SWSD but are specifically for agents.

Your landing page

After you log in to SWSD you are taken to your landing page. You can set your preferred landing page from your user avatar.

The toolbar

At the top of the landing page are several icons that provide useful information.

  1. Search. Enter keywords into the search bar to navigate directly to areas such as:

    • Incidents
    • Catalog items
    • Solutions

See Advanced search and syntax rules for more information.

  1. What's new. See newsroom posts on the SolarWinds Service Desk Thwack site. Includes information about recent product updates and enhancements, as well as new features.

  2. Chat. Open an engagement channel between you and your end users that allows direct communication. This results in faster resolution times as you are able to obtain all the information you need quickly.

    Enterprise Service Management (ESM) customers: Chat functionality is available only for the service provider created as a result of your ESM migration, for example, IT Service Provider.

    Icon settings:

    • An outline icon signifies there are no active chats in the queue.
    • The blue background signifies a chat is waiting in the queue. Select the chat icon to accept the chat.

    • By accepting the chat, the chat is now assigned to you.  From here you can assist your end user, create an incident (which includes the chat transcription), or end the chat.

    • The number in red represents messages received from the end users.

  3. Notifications. If you have new notifications, you will be alerted by a red number. 

    Enterprise Service Management (ESM) customers receive notifications for tickets and tasks from all service providers. When a notification is clicked, the user is redirected to the service provider for that notification.

    Notifications are received regarding:

    • Incidents received.

    • Incidents resolved.

    • Incident new Incident index.

  4. New. Opens a dropdown menu where you can create new objects, such as asset, catalog item, change, computer, and others.

  5. Your avatar. By default, your avatar reflects your initials. When you click the icon, a dropdown menu displays, where you can select:

    • My Account

      • Profile tab. Upload a picture to your profile or change your password.

      • Settings tab. Create an email signature; select your default SWSD home page, type of display, and default opening tabs; and enable keyboard shortcuts. You can also set up an out of office message and assign new incoming records to another individual or group during your absence.

        See Out-of-office message for instructions. New incoming records can include objects such as incidents, tasks, and approvals.
    • Documentation. Opens the SolarWinds Service Desk documentation page.

    • Community - Opens the community resources site on Thwack.
      • Resource articles
      • Product announcements
      • A list of items we are working on
      • Access to the our support portal
    • Support - Opens the Service Desk Support Contact Information page. From there you can:

      • Search solarwinds.com for the information you need, including knowledge base support articles and additional guides.

      • Contact the SolarWinds support team via chat.

      • Get contact information to call your local office.

    • Go to Portal View. Open the Portal where you can create a new request, see a list of your requests and tasks, ask questions, and have valuable services and articles at your fingertips.

    • Keyboard Shortcuts. Open a list of the keyboard shortcuts offered.
    • Sign Out.

The rest of the real estate on your Dashboard is made up of several buttons and many widgets. Below we introduce you to the details contained within.

The SWSD navigation panel

On the left side of your screen is the navigation panel.

1. Home. By default, the home page displays content decided by your administrator. You administrator may opt to allow you to change this setting yourself. If your administrator has allowed you to change the setting, see User home page for instructions.
2. Dashboard. Displays information important to your daily work. You can customize the content on this page. See Dashboard.
3. Service Desk. Access incidents, problems, changes, the change catalog, releases, solutions, the service catalog, and the CMDB.
4. Assets. Access computers, software, printers, mobile devices, network devices, other assets, and a map of asset locations.
5. Tasks. Access a list of active tasks.
6. Procurement. Access contracts, purchase orders, and vendors, and reconcile records.
7. Risk Management. Access risks and compliance.
8. Analytics. Access out-of-the-box reports, create custom reports, and view and edit benchmarking information.
9. Help. Access documentation, the community forum, support information, and release notes.
10. Setup. For use by administrators in setting up your company's service desk.

Your avatar dropdown menu

By clicking your avatar in the upper right corner, you can do many things.

From the avatar dropdown menu you can:


My account: view and edit your user information and settings

Jump quickly to the:

Go to the portal view

See a list of keyboard shortcuts

Impersonate a user

Sign out

Set your availability status for queue round-robin assignment.

View and edit your user information and settings

Profile tab

Agents can edit some of the information stored in their user profile. Editing is not allowed for information managed at the company level.

Password tab

Create or update a password.

Settings tab

  • Customize an email signature.
  • Set a preferred display mode and display mode for object descriptions and service request inputs:
    • Compact: presents an abbreviated version of information on a detail screen, for example, a hardware record or user account, or on a workflow for service request inputs. Also provides an option to see more.
    • Full display: presents the complete description or screen with an option to show less.
  • Enable or disable keyboard shortcuts (see More about keyboard shortcuts).
  • Create and activate an out-of-office rule that includes start and end date, default assignee (individual or group), and a message.

Notifications tab

Email Notifications

You can enable or disable email notifications:

  • Receive an email when an incident is assigned to you, including assignment of supported items.
  • Receive an email when someone @mentions you.
  • Receive an email when an update is made to an incident you are assigned to or cc’d on, including updates to supported items.
  • Receive an email when I trigger updates on incidents, including updates to supported items.
  • Daily Digest (incident, tasks, problems, changes and releases): Stay on top of working items assigned to you/me and tasks that are near or past their due date.
  • If your company enables the daily email digest, you will receive a daily email that shows open items that are assigned to you and created within the past week (7 days from the date the email is generated). Items that are resolved or closed are not included in the email.
Chat Notifications

Customize chat notification preferences for new messages and new assigned messages.

  • Be alerted when there is a new chat in the queue.
  • Be alerted when there is a new message in a chat assigned to you.
Slack Notifications

Customize Slack notification preferences for new messages and new assigned messages.

  • Receive a notification when an incident, new task, or new approval is assigned to me.
  • Receive a notification when your incident is resolved as a requester.
Teams Notifications

Customize Teams channel or Virtual Agent notifications preferences to suit you.

  • Receive a notification when a new task or new approval is assigned to me.
  • Receive a notification when your incident is resolved as a requester.
Personal Response Templates

Create, edit, and delete personal response templates. See Response templates.

Set your availability status

Agents can set their availability status for two different types of assignment:

  • Availability for round-robin assignment queue

    Agents can set their round-robin queue assignment availability from their avatar when they are logged into SWSD. See General navigation for agents: Avatar dropdown menu.

    The only person who can see the Available toggle is the agent. When a requester opens a new chat, the requester cannot see which agents are available and which are unavailable.

    • Each time an agent logs in, the agent needs to set the Available toggle to Active.

    • While logged in, agents can manually change the state of their Available toggle to Active or Inactive.

    • When an agent logs out, the Available toggle is automatically set to Inactive and the agent cannot be assigned a chat to receive messages.

    • When an agent is signed out due to inactivity and then signs in again, the Available toggle resets automatically to Active.

More about keyboard shortcuts

At any time you can see a list of available keyboard shortcuts available for incidents and other areas.

  1. Click your avatar in the upper right.

  2. From the drop-down list, select Keyboard Shortcuts.

From an index page

When you hover over a row, that selected item is highlighted in grey.

Action Windows Mac
Next row Down arrow Down arrow
Previous row Up arrow Up arrow
Toggle index preview Space bar Space bar
Open selected Ctrl + Enter Command + Return
Open selected
(new tab)
Ctrl + Page Up + Enter Command + Shift + Return
Open selected in edit mode Page Up + E Shift + E
Open selected in edit mode
(new tab)
Page Up + Alt + E Shift + Option + E
Next page Page Up + Right arrow Shift + Right arrow
Previous page Page Up + Left arrow Shift + Left arrow
State (of selected item) S S
Priority (of selected item) P P
Category (of selected item) C C

Create new (if available) shortcuts

Action Windows Mac
Create new Page Up + N Shift + N
Create new (new tab) Page Up + Alt + N Shift + Option + N

Details page actions shortcuts

Action Windows Mac
Move to next tab T T
Move to previous tab Shift + T Shift + T
Attach related item Page Up + R Page Up + R

General actions shortcuts

Action Windows Mac
Available for Assignment Page Up + A Shift + Up arrow + A

Comments

For information on how comments work and how to use them, see Comments.