Documentation forSolarWinds Service Desk

Labs

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Introduction

This document explains how the SolarWinds Service Desk (SWSD) Labs module works and how administrators can use it to their advantage. With Labs you can allow your IT teams to test new features prior to a general release.

Using Labs, you can get feedback from your user community about the benefits and challenges of each Labs feature.  If a feature does not behave as expected, you can toggle it off until the matter is resolved or removed. 

Navigation

ITSM customers ESM customers
Setup > Global Settings > Labs

Organization > Global Settings > Labs

How to use Labs

Features in Labs are temporary. You do not need to test each feature. If you feel your organization would benefit from a new feature and/or enhancement, go to Setup > Labs. In the list of available features, toggle the feature to On.

Some features in Labs are interconnected. You may decide to activate more than one feature simultaneously to maximize the benefit of new Labs offerings.

As new features prove successful they will be permanently integrated into the platform. Likewise they will be deleted if they are not found to benefit end users.

Features currently in Labs

Automatic mapping of SolarWinds Platform (previously Orion nodes)

SWSD offers many capabilities to help streamline processes. Automatic mapping of SolarWinds Platform nodes combines two features that offer insight.

  • Discovery of SolarWinds Platform assets and bringing them to SolarWinds Service Desk Change Management Database (CMDB).

  • SolarWinds Platform alerts (that meet certain predefined conditions) are automatically converted into Incidents in SWSD.

SWSD supports automatic mapping of the relevant Configuration Item (CI) to an Incident record created from an SolarWinds Platform alert. For example, if Node 348 goes down, and Node 348 is listed in SWSD as a CI, SolarWinds Platform will generate an alert and automatically attach the Node 348 CI to the Incident during its creation.

For more information, see SolarWinds Platform Integration: Automatic Mapping of SolarWinds Platform nodes.

Generative AI

Premier plan only.

SolarWinds Service Desk (SWSD) uses Generative AI (GenAI) to provide agents with information in incident tickets. Currently, information includes suggested solutions, draft responses, and drafts of ticket summaries.

AWS services used for GenAI are currently available in the US only. When it is available everywhere through an Amazon release planned for Q2'24, SWSD can enable the feature for all customers.

GenAI searches within your existing tickets to generate suggestions. For ESM customers it searches only within the specific service provider's tickets. All GenAI suggestions are identified by the Generated by AI icon.

Suggested solutions and draft responses

Suggested solutions and draft responses can help agents reduce Mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR). Suggested solutions can contain detailed instructions for quicker resolution. By using those suggestions and draft responses, an agent can eliminate the need to search for resources and obtain feedback suggestions for requesters.

  • Suggested solutions initially provide a list of missing ticket information (not provided by the user when the ticket was created) and information the agent can perform to resolve the incident.

    In tickets, suggested solutions appear to the right. You can click the drop-down arrow to see the list of solutions, or a reason why no solutions are generated.

    Here you can see (1) the suggestion was generated by AI and (2) agents can rate the suggestion. The displayed rating is an average but the current agent can rate add a rating.

  • Initially, draft responses include a request for missing ticket information and actions the requester can perform to attempt to resolve the incident. Draft responses appear in a comment.

    As needed, agents can go to the text box and click Generate Response.

    • Resolve AI populates the text box with a draft response, which agents can follow or ignore the suggested solution. They can modify or ignore (delete) draft responses or use them as-is.

    • In some cases the agent may see a pop-up at the top of the screen that reads: Unable to Generate Response. Either no description exists or the ticket was created before AI was enabled.

Ticket summaries

GenAI drafts ticket summaries that provide key insights and information in a format that requires minimal edits when logging resolutions. Summaries facilitate faster resolution of future incidents, contribute to knowledge building, and enhance the responses generated by Resolve AI.

When you click Generate Summary, Resolve AI creates a summary based on the ticket summary generation criteria. In addition, if the agent clicks Regenerate Summary after a summary is already posted, information is added to the summary.

Generate Summary
Regenerate Summary

  • Ticket handovers from one person or team to another. The summary provides information on what has happened up to the point of handover so the new assignee can start with a clear understanding of the context. This facilitates faster resolution.

  • Tickets that take a long time to resolve. A summary helps agents gain key insights into the ticket conversation and helps IT leads and managers understand why the ticket is taking longer to resolve. This can be especially helpful with critical or escalated tickets.

  • Tickets that contain a lot of information. A summary can help agents quickly get up to speed on ticket conversations by saving them time when trying to assess a ticket that contains a lot of information. This can be helpful for ticket sharing.

  • Ticket resolution. A summary assists agents in documenting ticket conclusions. This can save agents time in providing a resolution description. It can also help prevent them from skipping the resolution description, which is sometimes caused by the constant queue of incidents they need to manage daily.

Ticket summary generation criteria

Ticket summaries are generated by AI if the option is enabled in Global Settings and if all the following conditions are met:

  • The ticket is not in a Resolved state.
  • The ticket conversation has:
    • More than 3 comments with 3 or more rows each
    • At least a 200+ word count, excluding HTML

If criteria is not met, a pop-up message appears at the top of the screen similar to: Unable to Generate Response. Either the description or the ticket was created before AI was enabled.

In addition, if nothing has changed since the last summary was generated, the agent is notified via pop-up alert.

Navigation

ITSM customers ESM customers
Setup > Global Settings > GenAI

Organization (or Service Provider) > Setup > Global Settings > GenAI

Enable GenAI

 Step 1: Enable in Labs

Before you can use GenAI and its features, an organization administrator or an IT administrator must enable it for all users in Labs.

  1. Navigate to Labs.

  2. Click Enable next to Resolve AI. (Resolve AI is the temporary name for the group of features.)

    When GenAI is enabled in Labs, machine learning is automatically enabled.

  3. Refresh the browser page.

    ESM customers: When the enable toggle turns green for an organization-level administrator, the feature becomes available in each service provider's Setup menu. Each service provider's administrator can then submit a request to enable GenAI for that service provider. To submit a request, a service provider administrator needs to navigate to Service Provider > Setup > Global Settings > GenAI, and then click Submit Request.

Step 2: Configure GenAI Settings

An administrator must perform the following steps. If you are an ESM customer, each service provider administrator can complete the remaining steps.

  1. Navigate to Global Settings > GenAI Settings.

    You can only navigate to GenAI Settings if Resolve AI was enabled in Labs. See  Step 1: Enable in Labs.

  2. You can see that Resolve AI is available. Click Request GenAI.

    By requesting GenAI you activate the machine learning process. When it concludes, GenAI capabilities are available and the administrator receives notifications via the notification bell and email. The enable toggle in Global Settings > Gen AI Settings also changes to green to show the feature is enabled.

    The results are confined to that account, ensuring compliance with the SolarWinds data security policy.

  3. Under Incidents, notice that both the AI Case Summarization and AI Suggested Solution & Draft Response feature are available and can be enabled per decision.

    You can select the specific GenAI features you wish to enable. You can also activate learning mode for each of the features.

 Step 3: Add or restrict GenAI permissions for the Service Agent User role

After enabling GenAI, to allow agents to view auto-generated content for incident tickets, you need to set the permissions. Permissions should be applied at the object level and the setup level.

  1. Navigate to Settings > Users > Roles & Permissions > Service Agent User.

  2. Click Add Permission.

  3. From the Action dropdown, select Manage.

  4. From the Subject field, click to see a list of options. Notice the list is divided into three sections: Objects, Setup, and Gen AI.

    From the list of options:

    • If you select All at the top of the list, GenAI is automatically included.

    • If you wish to exclude GenAI, scroll down the list until you reach the GenAI section and then disable the specific features you wish to exclude.

Disable GenAI

GenAI can only be disabled by an organization or IT administrator. When GenAI is disabled in Labs, it is also disabled for all ESM service providers.

Navigate to Labs and toggle the Resolve AI button to Off.

All GenAI features are disabled, but SWSD retains the learned data for future feature enablement.