Author: Sophie Renshaw

Forms are a key part of every ticket. The forms differ between workflows and customers but they all have an important role in the tickets that they are assigned to.

ER Diagram:

To add a form to a ticket navigate to the forms section of the ticket at the bottom half of the screen. There you will see a dropdown menu and two buttons. Clicking the dropdown menu will allow you to select which form you would like to add. Once the forms has been added you will need to fill in all relevant fields and click Save Forms before it is saved to the ticket. If you want to remove the form that you just added (but haven't saved yet) or undo some changes that you made to a form you can click the Discard Changes Button.

Possibly the two most important and customer visible forms are the relevant NOC forms. For ExteNet it is the ExteNet NOC Form. These forms are added to all tickets that create as a result of us receiving an alarm into the Node Monitor. These forms are usually added automatically when the ticket is transitioned into a state of investigation by the NOC. The NOC forms can also be added to Manual Tickets.

The top half of both forms have very similar functionality. It allows the user to select the affected network element down to the Node Level. The dropdowns are populated with info related to what was selected in the previous dropdowns. The bottom half of the forms relates to Neutral Hosts.

ExteNet NOC Form

Another key form that customers use is the SNMP Trap form. This form is added when the ticket is automatically opened upon receiving an alarm. It is also auto-populated with relevant information.

ExteNet SNMP Trap Form

One type of support task that we receive is for the creation or modification of forms. To carry out these tasks we use the Form Architect in the Ticketer.

This allows us to build the forms using different types of components depending on what is requested, either by the customer or internally.

To build a form you can drag and drop the component into the white space below. You will need to provide it with a component name that will be used in the database to reference it. After that you can define the different necessary fields.

It is also possible to add groovy functionality to the components, using groovlets, and define validation on each component with either preset or custom validators.

There are a number of different components available:

• Text Label

• Text Box

• Dropdown List (Static options)

• Check box

• Text Area

• Dropdown List (Database Options)

• Date

• Time

• Hyperlink

Double clicking on a component will open it's properties window. From here you can fill in the Description Text, whether the component is Editable, Hidden or Tracked in Running Log, The initial Value and the size of the component. You can also define groovlets and validation in this window. Restrictions can also be set on the form component to allow the field to be editable to users with certain roles.

Selecting the Current Form dropdown in the top left corner of the Form Architect will allow you to set the role and market visibilities as well as managing the advance properties on the form.

Market Visibilities

Setting the market visibilities on a form will only allow the users with that visibility (or any visibility above that) to see the form. If the Strict Visibility checkbox is checked then only users with that specific visibility can see the form.

Role Visibilities

Similarly to the specific form components, role visibilities can also be set on the entire form. For the Role Visibilities there are two options: Hide Form and Editable. Hide form means that only users with the defined role can see the form (they must also have the market visibility as well) and Editable means that only users with that role can edit the form.

Advanced Properties

Selecting Manage Advanced Properties from the dropdown will direct you to a new page. Here you will be able to define if a ticket is allowed to have more than one of these forms added to it, either by the users or automatically by the system. This functionality can also be controlled using groovlets.

1. Open a ticket and select a new form to add to the ticket.
2. Populate the relevant fields with information. (S)
3. Click the discard changes button and confirm that the form is removed from the ticket. Click the Refresh ticket button to make sure of this.
4. Add another form to the ticket, populate and click Save Forms. Refresh ticket to confirm the form has been saved to the ticket. (S)
5. Make a change to a ticket that is already on a form, click the Save Forms button and ensure that your changes have applied
6. Open the Form Architect. Create a new form with different components. (S)
7. Open the properties of all components that you added and ensure that all have the necessary fields populated. Mark some as Editable, some as Hidden and some to be tracked in running log. (S)
8. Add validators to some and try to define a custom validator for one component. (S)
9. Publish the new form.
10. Re-open the form and define role and market visibilities. (S)
11. Publish the form and add your new form to a ticket. Populate all fields and make sure that the ones that you have marked as Hidden, Editable and Track in running log behave as expected. (S)
12. Close the ticket. Re-open the ticket and confirm that all your changes have been saved.

Please as your mentor to go through the relevant ticket numbers and screenshots (steps marked with an S require a screenshot) with you to ensure they are correct.