Case metrics documentation for IBM Support Insights
Overview
Case metrics provides a simple and elegant way to gain insights into your IT support experience. It enables you to gain a deeper understanding of your IT environment through operational dashboards, and identify key performance indictors and trends using predefined metrics.
Case metrics is available in two levels:
- Standard subscription - the standard support case metrics level, available to all IBM Support Insights clients. The standard case metrics level provides a 3-months overview of your IT support experience and is the basic case metrics level of detail in IBM Support Insights. In the standard case metrics date selections prior to the 3-month period cannot be made.
- Pro subscription - a more detailed support case metrics level, available to IBM Support Insights clients for additional activation. The Pro case metrics level provides a full overview of data history and additional metrics. By default, 12 months worth of data is displayed, but using the calendar selector - start dates prior to 12 months ago can also be selected, as the Pro case metrics level allows you to view all of your currently available historical case metrics data. To learn more about what a Pro subscription offers you on top of the standard view, and for details on how to obtain Pro, please go to this page .
Please note, support cases are generally opened against a particular piece of hardware, therefore this section of the application does not include any virtual assets-related information, regardless what state the virtual assets toggle is in.
Components
The Standard tier of the Case metrics consists of the following elements:
Filtering the page's contents
At the start of the Case metrics page you will find various ways to filter the displayed content. The options are located in the right-hand side of the screen and are the following:
Case view dropdown
Case view is a filtering option, based on which you may choose to view all of your available support requests or only a subset of them, with the ability to select either those related to assets present in your IBM Support Insight's client account or SWXcel support cases. By default, the Asset-related cases option is selected, meaning by default your view is limited to the support cases related to assets that are currently present in your IBM Support Insights inventory. If you select the All cases option from the dropdown menu, you will be able to view all cases relating to your client account's customer number or GBG number, regardless if they concern an asset from IBM Support Insights inventory or not.
If you have the SWXcel cases option available and select it from the dropdown menu, you will be able to view SoftwareXcel-related support cases and their associated data and trends. Please note, the dropdown option is only visible to SoftwareXcel clients. If you are indeed a SWXcel client, you will also have access to your IBM Link usage statistics, located neatly in a separate page, accessible using the left-hand side navigation.
If a support request is related to an asset not existing in your client account's IBM Support Insights inventory, the Asset name column in the Case history table will only contain Unknown with no active hyperlink. The cases relating to assets from your IBM Support Insights inventory will contain hyperlinks and the assets' names in that specific column.
Selecting whether to have all cases displayed or one of the other two subsets impacts the view and numbers on the entire Case metrics page of the application - you will see different statistics, graph contents and case history entries depending on the amount of cases from the different filtering criteria.
Date & time-range selectors
You may adjust the viewed dataset according to a desired time-frame instead of the default time-frame.
At the top right-hand side of the page, you will find a calendar selector, which can be used for adjusting the desired time-frame of your case metrics view. The default period in the standard level is set to 3 months prior to today's date, and no earlier date is available for selection as a Start date. You may select an End date earlier than today, but as the standard level displays only the last 3 months worth of data - the start date will not be further in time than exactly 3 months ago from today's date. In the standard case metrics level, date selections prior to the 3-month period cannot be made. Whereas in the Pro subscription, selections prior to the 12-month period are possible.
Note, support cases in IBM Cognitive Support Platform (CSP) are logged in the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) timezone, which may lead to you seeing outliers when a date filter has been set. In other words, support cases with a date which is 1 day before or after your set time-frame may be observed when using a date filter.
Using local filters
Next to the calendar selector is a local filter button, which allows you to filter your view according to either the Number of days open (number of days passed between the creation and the closing of the support case, or number of days passed since the creation of the support case if it's currently still open) or Severity (the level of impact of the support case) or both simultaneously.
When a local filter is enabled, the content on all graphs and tables within Case metrics is adjusted accordingly, allowing you to focus on the desired piece of data. Case metrics local filters may be edited when you wish to correct the viewed cases data subset, or they may be removed when you wish to go back to the default view of the page.
Following the filtering button is a reset button, which is used to revert the page's view back to its default view. The reset button clears any local filters applied on the page, as well as sets the time-frame back to the initial one.
Widgets
Following the various display and content filtering options, you will find the three case metrics widgets - Created cases , Closed cases, and Closed or cancelled cases.
These widgets provide at-a-glance information of the specific client's support status. Each widget title contains a brief explanation available upon mouse hover.
- Open cases - this widget contains the total number of currently open cases, regardless of when they were created. Following along is a percentage value indicating the difference between today's count of open cases and the count of open cases from 30 days ago. The other values in the widget are also displayed as values and trends, and are clickable links which will apply the respective filters they represent only in the Case history table of the Standard metrics tier. The first two categories - Severity 1 and Severity 2 - are identical to all clients. Whereas the second two are the product families with the highest number of associated support cases for the specific time-frame.
- Created cases - this widget contains the total number of cases created within the specific time frame, followed by a percentage indicating the trend of created cases as a comparison between the current period and the previous period (of the same length). The other values in the widget are also displayed as values and trends, and are clickable links which will apply the respective filters they represent only in the Case history table of the Standard metrics tier. The first two categories - Severity 1 and Severity 2 - are identical to all clients. Whereas the second two are the product families with the highest number of associated support cases for the specific time-frame.
- Closed or cancelled cases - this widget contains the total number of cases closed within the specific time frame, followed by a percentage indicating the trend of closed or cancelled cases as a comparison between the current period and the previous period (of the same length). The other values in the widget are also displayed as values and trends, and are clickable links which will apply the respective filters they represent only in the Case history table of the Standard metrics tier. The first two categories - Severity 1 and Severity 2 - are identical for all clients. Whereas the second two are the product families with the highest number of associated support cases for the specific time-frame.
Case Volume graph
After the widgets in the header of the page, you will find the Case Volume graph.
This graph provides a month-to-month overview of the number of cases within the selected time-frame. It allows you to identify patterns and hot-spots that might be affecting system availability.
Case Volume by Severity graph
This graph provides a visual representation of the severity distribution of the closed cases over the selected time-frame, allowing for a historical analysis of each month's priority support needs.
Immediately before the graph you will find three viewing options, which will impact its visual contents like a filter, but will not impact the contents on the remainder of the page. You can switch between viewing the Open cases in this volume graph (in Open status in the time-frame), the Created cases (opened within the time-frame), or the Closed or canceled cases (closed/canceled within the time-frame).
Number of days Created-to-Closed graph
This graph provides a visual representation of the closed cases' average elapsed time from creation to closing, allowing for a better IT support performance analysis.
Case history table
This detailed table view of the support cases within the set time-frame allows for further insights into your IT support performance. The table includes the list of cases which were either Closed or Canceled within the time period, regardless of when they were created. As well as the currently Open cases, which could have been created either within or before the selected time-frame but remain Open.
The data may be exported in a .xlsx format by clicking the Export all button on the top right-hand side immediately before the table. Additionally, you may also download only a subset of the available data by selecting the rows that are of interest and clicking on the Export selected button which will then appear in the table's header. Furthermore, you may show additional columns in the table, as well as search within the table, by using the respective buttons located on the left-hand side of the exporting button.
Additional columns are also available in the Case History table and they can be added to the current view by clicking on the column configuration icon, located immediately on the left-hand side of the exporting button. You may also opt in to hide some of the default columns, as well as re-arrange the displayed columns.
Note, the Country field in the table references the country of origin of the support case, which does not necessarily match the location of the asset the case concerns. Therefore, the contents of the Country field of the support case could differ from the Country field of the asset's details page. Applying any location-based filter on the page will result in filtering according to the assets' location, not the location of the support cases' origin.
Note, the Case description field of the table requires additional processing time for all systems involved, hence a delay in its population should be anticipated. If you notice cases with missing description on one day, you may check back a day or two afterwards and the data will have been populated.
Altering displayed graphs
When working with IBM Support Insights' Case metrics, you may manipulate the ways in which the graphs are displayed in the following ways:
Filtering graph contents
Additionally, you may filter each graph's displayed contents by using the legend under the graph itself.
Note, this does not act as a data filter for the displayed page contents, but is rather just a modification of the particular graph's visually displayed contents.
Visual representation modification
All graphs in case metrics have the option to be viewed as either a line-area chart or a bar chart. The visual representation of the data can be changed by selecting one of the two view icons at the top right-hand side of each graph.
