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Journal

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Overview 

Journal Input Control is a useful way to add and manage comments section on the page layout and keep the history of important changes:

journal_example2..png

By default, the Journal Input Control can be used in the following page layouts:

  • Dialog
  • Wizard
  • Preview

To add the Journal control to other types of layouts modify the Supported Widget Types settings in the Administration application → User Interface → Control Descriptors → Edit action → Advanced tab. These settings are available for users with Administrator rights. 

There are two types of journal entries:

  • manual: posted by the application users as a comment or an attachment;
  • automatic: generated as a result of a specific action, e.g. pause an incident and automatically create a journal entry.

Both types of entries are created based on the pre-configured templates.

Journal entries management: comments and attachments can be added to the journal, but can not be edited or deleted by any user. 

This page explains how to configure the journal section displaying on the layout and:

  1. Enable posting comments and attachments manually;
  2. Manage existing journal entries visibility for the Self Service Portal Users;
  3. Manage automatic comments posting from a template and automatic comments default visibility for the  Self Service Portal Users.

Journal Properties & settings

Journal section is added to the page layout via the following path: 

Administration application → User Interface → Layouts → choose a Dialog/Wizard/Preview → Customize the page template in the Layout Designer → Toolbox → Input Controls → Journal → drag&drop the Journal Input Control on the canvas:

journal_layout_designer.png

Proceed with configuring journal properties:

Property group Settings Description

Model

Entity

Manually enter the Configuration Item name.

Entity field is required for the proper management of the attachments uploaded to the journal and serve as a reference of the attachment to the specified entity. This approach guarantees that the attachments will be appropriately processed and retrieved as the uploaded files are not stored as a part of the main data object (e.g. directly as a part of Incident data), but as a stand-alone record of a journal that has relevant reference to the corresponding data object.   

Object ID

identifier of the data object referenced by the journal entry:

  • not set: object ID is automatically retrieved from the default Configuration Item of the edited layout;
  • set: choose the necessary data model property of a GuId type.

The same as for attachments, as all the journal records are stored in the stand-alone database table. the Object ID serves as a reference of the journal entry to the appropriate data object.

Common

Help

help icon and tooltip for information displaying as:

  • ❌  not set: help icon is not displayed;
  • model: displayed data is retrieved from a specified data model field;
  • localizable:  plain text specified per each available in the system locale. Shows appropriate localized help message according to the currently selected by the user language profile settings;
  • static value: manually entered text displayed in a pop-up window. The text of the prompted message is edited in a standard text editor and can include plain text, headings, links, and lists.

Enabled Help message is always shown on the latest journal entry:

journal_help.png

Label

 obsolete

Read-only

manages the ability to view, add and change the visibility of the journal entries. Overrides the Set Section New Comment in Bottom and Visibility properties.

Specify a boolean value from one of the following sources:

  • model: choose a value from the suggested in the data model properties;
  • static value:
    • true: editable elements are defined by the Set Section New Comment in Bottom and Visibility properties.
    • false (default): journal entries are available in the preview mode on any type of the page layout. All features like commenting (even if it was enabled) or changing entries visibility are disabled:
      journal_read_only.png
      Read-only false: the enabled comments section is hidden and the entry visibility management is disabled

Name

 the auto-generated internal name of the control used in the layout

Appearance

Show all journal records

allows managing public and private comments visibility in the journal section. 

Public comment is a journal entry that can be read by anyone who has access to the page with the journal section, for example, ticket comments posted by the Self Service Portal user.

Private comment or internal journal entry is visible only to agents, for instance, Service Desk users who handle and process the ticket or request.

Existing public and private comments can be made internal-only or vice-versa if needed (see Hide "Visible In Portal" checkbox) .

Specify a boolean value from one of the following sources:

  • model: choose a value from the suggested in the data model properties if all journal records should be shown or hidden due to certain conditions;
  • static value:
    • true: both public and private comments are shown on the page layout. Additionally allows configuring Hide "Visible In Portal" checkbox.
    • false (default): only public comments are shown on the page layout.

Hide "Visible In Portal" checkbox

allows managing the existing journal entries type from the application page. 

This property can be configured only if the Show all journal records field is set to static value true.

Specify a boolean value from one of the following sources:

  • model: choose a value from the suggested in the data model properties;
  • static value:
    • false (default): journal entries type cannot be changed;
    • true: allows managing journal entries type for each comment. The type of the existing comment can be changed from private to public as follows:
      journal_visible_in_portal1.png

Set Section New Comment in Bottom

managing journal comments area displaying, intended for manual adding of the new comments and attachments. 

Boolean values from the following sources:

  • model: choose a value from the suggested in the data model properties;
  • static value:
    • false (default): area for posting comments and attachments is not shown on the page layout;
    • true: new comments and attachments can be posted manually from the comments area, placed in the bottom of the journal section:
      journal_comment1.png

Comments have rich text formatting: you can add links, inline images, apply text formatting such as italics, bolding, or bulleted lists.

Attachments maximum allowed size is 10 Mb. 

For proper attachments storage and retrieval make sure that Entity property is specified.

Items per page

specify an integer value for a number of entries shown in the journal section by default.

By default,  the journal shows 5 latest entries:

journal_default_items1.png

Visibility

manages journal section visibility on the page layout.

Specify a boolean value from one of the following sources:

  • model: choose a value from the suggested in the data model properties if the journal should be shown or hidden due to certain conditions;
  • static value:
    • true (default): the journal section is always displayed on the page layout;
    • false: the journal section is not shown even if it was added to the page layout and configured.

Margin

obsolete

Padding

obsolete

Flex option

obsolete

Device Visibility

Desktop

This property allows improving user experience by managing device visibility options. For instance, the journal entries can be hidden from the preview when it's considered as redundant information that cannot fit the small screen of a mobile device.

The application checks the user device's screen resolution and shows or hides grid preview based on the selected check-box options settings:

  • disabled: the journal entries area is not displayed;
  • selected (default): the journal entries area is shown on the page.

Tablet

Mobile

 

Journal entry templates

All default journal entries templates are listed in the Administration application → Schema → Data Definition → Pickups → SPSJournalEntryPickupType:

journal_pickup.png

SPSJournalEntryPickupType properties:

  • Visible In Portal: defines whether the automatically created journal entry is visible for the Self Service Portal users. Possible options:
    • disabled: the entry is added to the journal as a private comment that is visible only to agents (e.g. Service Desk users);
    • enabled: the entry is added to the journal as a public comment that can be read by anyone who has access in the Self Service Portal.

Manually posted comments are created based on the journal entry template with Value "0" and Display string "None", so that the same comment's header and body are used when posting a comment from any application and by any user.   

Visible In Portal property for this template is applied only to the comments posted by the agent, while all the comments posted manually by the Self Service Portal users are always visible on the portal.

  • Value: technical information of an internal identifier of the template;
  • Display string: display value for the pickup;
  • Color: comment's font color;
  • Header Template: text and dynamic values used in the comment's header;
  • Body Template: text and dynamic values used in the comment's body;
  • Portal Body Template (optional): 
    • not set: comment's body is generated from the Body Template data;
    • set: text and dynamic values are used in the comment's body specifically for the Self Service Portal.

 

Journal: user mentioning 

 Available from 12.0.5 version. This feature is available for all customers that use "ITSM Advanced"

In the New Look, a new functionality was added that allows users to mention someone in the Journal.  subscription. This functionality is activated for all Previews/Dialogs visible in the Service Desk with the Journal (Ticket, Incident, Service Request, Change, Problem, etc.).  In the previews/dialogs in the journal, the user will see a hint about how to mention somebody. 

clipboard_eb6a925f62c008b87c95c61b32349d285.png


When the user types @, a list of all available users who can be mentioned in the journal will appear. 

clipboard_efe1f89a0384a1c6b8d2b70fae3a6e041.png

When a user mentions someone in a journal comment, the mentioned user receives a notification in the notification monitor, which includes information about who mentioned them, when it happened, and the document number and type. The notification monitor will automatically refresh every 10 minutes and display the current number of items where the user was mentioned.  The mentioned user can immediately navigate to the document where they were tagged directly from the notification by clicking on the corresponding item number.
flow.png

For convenient handling of items where the user was mentioned, the notification monitor will indicate when the notification was received as: "Recently", "N hours ago", or "N days ago".
journal1.png

If the user no longer needs a specific notification, they can delete any notification in the notification monitor by clicking on the "X". Alternatively, they can delete all notifications at once by clicking on the "..." button followed by the "Delete all" button.

clipboard_e906d27ac2e622ea6ebf1cb2e3d069e0e.png                                clipboard_e997028637fc460bbb709bed152c3a2e8.png

The notification monitor includes a Pin/Unpin function, enabling users to keep it permanently open and monitor received notifications persistently.
clipboard_e0d26cfc17a99a147c54ae3c947270c26.png

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  2. Tags
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