9 ways ServiceDesk Plus

simplifies your life as an IT

service desk manager
CONTENTS
Introduction 04

Streamlining core
01
service management operations 05

a. Gathering comprehensive, precise

information using custom templates 06

b. Automating ticket triage:

categorization, prioritization, & assignment 07

c. Designing efficient workflows for

ticket handling 09

02 Enhancing service desk productivity 12

a. Enforcing accountability through SLAs 13

b. Accelerating technician response with

resolution & response templates 15

c. Automating request approvals using

a multi-stage approval process 15

d. Facilitating team collaboration

with effective task management 16
03 Fostering a knowledge-centric culture 18

a. Speeding up resolutions with a well-curated

knowledge base 19

b. Empowering users through a self-service

knowledge base 20

04 Elevating employee experiences 21

a. Building and launching a self-service portal

for employees 22

b. Providing on-demand support with a chatbot 25

c. Collecting end-user feedback through

advanced custom surveys 26

05 Deploying unique custom automations 28

a. Automating announcements for planned

downtime or incidents 29

b. Establishing a robust automated communication

mechanism for tickets 30

c. Automating the ticket abort process 31

d. Optimizing the process of closing the tickets 32

e. Orchestrating IT services with a single touch 34

 Connecting your IT and business
06
systems on a single platform 35

a. Leveraging native integrations 36

b. Implementing business integrations 38

07 Driving efficiency through AI capabilities 40

08 Complimenting ITSM with ITAM 42

09 Driving decisions with granular insights 45

a. Demonstrating the value of IT service desk

with insightful scheduled reports 46

b. Providing a quick overview of ITSM operations

with custom dashboards 46

Conclusion 48
9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Introduction
As enterprises evolve their digital services, IT infrastructures are
becoming increasingly complex. This evolution leads to a rise in ticket
volume, a faster change cadence, and an expanding asset estate.
Consequently, IT service desk managers, who are at the forefront of
IT service delivery, must transition from traditional roles to become
strategic enablers of business services. This shift requires them to
embrace automation, AI-driven analytics, and intelligent workflows that
not only handle service demands efficiently but also foster innovation,
optimize resource use, and align IT operations with the organization’s
broader goals. The role of IT service desk managers is critical in
transforming IT from a cost center into a strategic enabler that supports
innovation and growth within the enterprise.

ServiceDesk Plus was created with this reality in mind. It is a

comprehensive ITSM platform designed to be simple to deploy and
packed with powerful AI and workflow automation capabilities. This
e-book, 9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service
desk manager will help you understand and leverage the numerous
capabilities of the platform to improve the productivity of your IT service
desk. Each chapter delves into the specific features and functionalities
that make a significant difference in your day-to-day operations. This will
help you focus on what truly matters: Delivering exceptional service and
driving your team towards peak productivity and excellence.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Chapter 1:

Streamlining core
service management
operations

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

As an IT service desk manager, your plate is always full—juggling tickets,

managing teams, and keeping everything on track. ServiceDesk Plus enables
you to set up a well-oiled machine that helps you run core IT service desk
operations on autopilot. Here are the set of features in the platform that helps
you streamline service management.

a. Gathering comprehensive, precise

information using custom templates

• ServiceDesk Plus offers a simple drag-and-drop template editor

(Fig. 1) to create custom templates that accelerate ticket logging while also
capturing precise data on incidents, service requests, problems, changes,
releases, projects, contracts, and more. You can configure these templates
with custom sections and fields, and even prefill them as required.

• To enhance control, you can configure permissions for requesters

to view or edit specific fields on incident and service request templates
while also publishing them to designated technicians
and user groups.

• You also have the option to encrypt certain fields and mark sensitive data
as PII, thereby complying with data protection regulations such as GDPR
and HIPAA.

• The Form Rules feature helps generate interactive forms that dynamically
adapt and change depending on the user’s responses.

• Zia, the native AI assistant, intelligently predicts field values, automating

categorization, prioritization, and assignment of requests. Zia’s predictive
intelligence is powered by powerful, proprietary ML models.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Figure 1: Template editor in ServiceDesk Plus.

b. Automating ticket triage: categorization,

prioritization, & assignment

• Apart from AI-powered ticket triage, you can predefine categories,

sub-categories, and other essential fields for every incident and service
request template. When creating the default request template to ensure
categorization and assignment of the technician to the right issue. This
ensures that the right IT team or technician can start working on them.

• Ticket categorization and assignment can be further refined by leveraging

the Business Rules functionality (Fig. 2), which facilitates criteria-driven
actions. This empowers you to perform field updates, send notifications,
and execute custom functions. Furthermore, you can set conditions
to automatically abort ticket creation for known issues. This reduces
unnecessary ticket volume and minimizes duplicate requests, allowing
your team to focus on resolving new and unique problems

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Figure 2. Business Rules in ServiceDesk Plus.

• While the Priority Matrix feature assigns ticket priorities based on

urgency and impact, the Technician Auto Assign feature (Fig. 3)
evenly distributes incoming tickets using round-robin and load
balancing algorithms to ensure a fair workload. Additionally, you
have the option to exclude specific technicians and requests from
the auto-assignment process.

• Zia can analyze incoming tickets and assign them to specific

technicians based on historical ticket data that factors in the
technicians’ ability to resolve them.
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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Figure 3: Technician Auto Assign.

c. Designing efficient workflows for ticket handling

• Build customizable workflows (Fig. 4) on a visual canvas to create

a structured approach for managing various ITSM processes,
such as incidents, requests, problems, changes, releases, and asset
management. You can design multi-path workflows using action nodes
to manage approvals, tasks, notifications, conditional checks, and path
transitions. At any point in your workflow, you can incorporate low-code
custom actions to enable a wide array of automated functions.
Additionally, workflows can be associated with templates for efficiency
and consistency in managing processes.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Figure 4: A sample workflow in ServiceDesk Plus.

• Guide your technicians through the service delivery process with

recommendations and automated ticket handling, from initiation to
closure. By configuring a life cycle (Fig. 5), you can define the precise
path that a request or asset should follow. Technicians can see clear
next steps at each phase, based on preconfigured transitions, ensuring
a smooth flow through the life cycle. You can automate actions such
as updating details, adding tasks, sending notifications, or executing
custom functions before, during, or after a request or asset transitions
to a new state or status. Associating a life cycle with multiple templates
makes tracking and closing requests more efficient, providing you with
greater control and visibility over the request handling process.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Figure 5: Incident life cycle.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Chapter 2:

Enhancing service desk

productivity

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

As the demands on service desks continue to escalate, it becomes essential to

identify effective strategies for enhancing both efficiency and responsiveness.
Let us delve into how you can utilize ServiceDesk Plus to significantly boost the
productivity of your service desk team.

a. Enforcing accountability through SLAs

• With ServiceDesk Plus, you can establish SLAs to enforce timely resolution
of incidents and service requests. This ensures clear expectations around
service delivery, helping you meet them consistently. SLAs also serve as a
performance benchmark, allowing you to monitor, measure, and optimize
your service desk’s efficiency.

• SLAs (Fig. 6) can be customized to define specific response times and

escalation rules to ensure timely resolutions. For critical incidents, you can
configure SLAs to extend beyond regular business hours, covering holidays
and weekends. This guarantees continuous attention to high-impact
issues, preventing delays and minimizing business disruptions even outside
standard working hours.

• Escalations can be configured to act either proactively or reactively. You can

achieve this by choosing to escalate before or after SLA violations occurs. In
the event of an SLA breach, escalations can be triggered for both response
times (at one level) and resolution times (up to four levels). This flexibility
allows you to designate specific individuals or roles for escalation, customize
notification methods (email or SMS), and perform other service desk actions
like raising the priority level, reassigning the ticket to a different group or
technician—all of which help expedite ticket resolution.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

• SLAs can be applied based on specific ticket attributes such as

priority, impact, urgency, department, requester profile, service
category, or VIP status. Your service desk technicians can also place
tickets on hold while awaiting a response from the end-user or input
from another team, effectively pausing the SLA timer and preventing
unnecessary SLA violations.

Figure 6: SLA for incident in ServiceDesk Plus.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

b. Accelerating technician response with resolution

vand response templates

• Set up response and resolution templates to enable your team

to send quick, consistent replies with ease.

• Additionally, leverage the ChatGPT-powered Reply Assist (Fig.

7) in ServiceDesk Plus, which suggests relevant responses
and refines drafts based on the request’s content, optimizing
communication and saving valuable time.

Figure 7: Reply assist in ServiceDesk Plus.

c. Automating request approvals using a

multi-stage approval process
• Enable up to five levels of approval stages for service requests, designating
specific approvers by roles such as CEO, reporting manager, CIO, etc., or by
individual users. You can configure multi-stage approval either in the service
request templates (Fig. 8) or within the incoming requests.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

• Configure automatic email notifications for approvals and specify whether

the request requires consent from all approvers, a single designated
approver, or a percentage of the approvers.

Figure 8: Multi-stage approval in the service request template.

d. Facilitating team collaboration with effective

task management

• Create, manage, and organize multiple tasks for each request, with the
capability to assign them to technicians or teams, trigger tasks based on
specific conditions, estimate the required effort, and factor in any additional
costs. You can add the tasks either in the request templates (Fig. 9) or
directly within the incoming requests.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Figure 9: Tasks in ServiceDesk Plus.

• Tasks can also be swiftly added using predefined task

templates, which automatically populate details such as the
Title, Description, Group,Technician, and Status. Additionally,
you have the flexibility to trigger tasks manually, upon request
approval, or during request creation.

• You can sequence tasks within a request by utilizing the

Manage Task Dependency functionality. This prevents users
from closing tasks until all dependent tasks are completed.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Chapter 3:

Fostering a
knowledge-centric
culture

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Fostering a knowledge-driven culture within the service desk is vital for

enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of IT support. A well-organized
knowledge base enables faster issue resolution and ensures consistent
performance across the team. It also simplifies onboarding and training,
helping new support agents become productive more quickly. Retaining
key knowledge mitigates the risk of expertise loss when employees leave.
Additionally, empowering users with self-service options lightens the team’s
workload, allowing them to focus on more complex tasks.

a. Speeding up resolutions with a well-curated

knowledge base

• ServiceDesk Plus empowers you to create and curate a comprehensive

knowledge base (Fig. 10), enriched with solutions, troubleshooting guides,
and FAQs.

• You can categorize knowledge base articles under relevant topics and use
the filter option to craft customized pages that showcase solutions tailored
to specific criteria. To ensure the accuracy and relevance of the information,
you can implement approval processes and define expiration dates for the
content, thereby guaranteeing that only current and validated resources
are accessible.

• Incorporating relevant keywords makes articles more searchable, helping

technicians and end-users quickly find the needed information and reducing
search time. Articles can be shared with specific technician groups or
published on the self-service portal for easy access.

• With a built-in knowledge management system that integrates seamlessly

with other ITSM practices like self-service, incident, & problem management,
you can add new solutions from incident or problem requests to your
knowledge base, or link existing articles to incident and problem requests
for quick references.
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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

• Zia guides users to solutions using natural language and offers concise
article summaries. With ChatGPT integration, you can search for solutions
from both internal and external sources, making your knowledge base
smarter and more responsive.

Figure 10: Example of a knowledge base

article in ServiceDesk Plus.

b. Empowering users through a self-service

knowledge base

• The self-service portal in ServiceDesk Plus empowers end-users

to explore the knowledge base for solutions to common issues,
significantly reducing the need to submit requests.

• Both end-users and technicians can provide feedback on solutions,

marking them as helpful or not, and suggesting improvements. This
feedback mechanism ensures that the knowledge base is continuously
updated and optimized for accuracy and usefulness.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Chapter 4:

Elevating employee
experiences

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Managing an IT service desk brings its own set of challenges, especially

when balancing user satisfaction, operational efficiency, and ongoing
improvement. A key responsibility of a service desk manager is to deliver a
smooth experience for end users. Whether they’re troubleshooting technical
problems, submitting requests, or checking ticket statuses, users expect
quick, transparent, and effective communication. While improving their
experience can boost satisfaction, this goal becomes harder to achieve as
request volumes grow and communication clarity fades. With ServiceDesk
Plus, enhancing user experience becomes a manageable endeavor. Let us
explore how its features can empower you to elevate user satisfaction.

a. Building and launching a self-service portal

for employees

• ServiceDesk Plus comes equipped with an intuitive self-service portal

(Fig. 11), ensuring seamless navigation and resource accessibility for all
users. You can leverage it to showcase your IT service catalog, allowing
users to effortlessly select the services they need, similar to a shopping
cart experience.

• You can empower users to submit and track their own requests by
providing them with access to relevant solutions in the knowledge base
while resolving common issues by themselves. Automated notifications
keep end users informed about ticket progress and approvals, fostering
efficient communication between users and technicians.

• To streamline operations further, reduce duplicate tickets by making

company-wide or user-specific announcements regarding outages and
planned maintenance.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Figure 11: An example of a self-service portal

in ServiceDesk Plus.

• Role-based access permissions in the platform ensure that end users

have appropriate access to knowledge base articles, ticket templates,
service catalog items, and tailored announcements within the
self-service portal.

• Widgets provide an easy way for users to access important information

and perform key actions. These customizable widgets can show ticket
statuses, service catalog options, announcements, and knowledge base
articles, helping users quickly find what they need and stay updated.
They make it simple to manage requests and access resources, all in
one convenient place.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

• The self-service portal offers customization options, allowing

you to configure its appearance to align with your specific preferences
for how users should interact with it. This flexibility enables you to
reorganize, add, remove, hide, and resize widgets effortlessly. With
URL widgets bringing in information from your intranet or from another
website, you can present a personalized self-service experience that is
consistent with your organization’s branding.

• Beyond IT support, you can extend ServiceDesk Plus’ capabilities

to departments like HR and facilities management to offer a unified
platform (Fig. 12) for consistent service delivery across various
organizational functions. This unified approach enhances productivity,
streamlines processes, and elevates the overall service experience
for employees across every enterprise service touchpoint.

Figure 12. A demonstration of an enterprise portal.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

b. Providing on-demand support with a chatbot

• Zia helps end-users resolve issues by themselves or raise a ticket wherever

technician intervention is needed.

• Zia’s voice chat from the ServiceDesk Plus mobile app allows end users to
interact with the service desk through natural voice commands. Instead of
navigating through multiple options or typing, users can simply ask Zia to
create tickets, check ticket status, or perform other service requests. This
hands-free interaction improves accessibility and saves time, particularly in
situations where users need to log issues quickly, such as during meetings
or on the go

• Zia Actions provide customizable workflows and automation that allow end
users to perform specific service tasks directly. Through a chat interface,
users can trigger predefined actions like ticket creation, ticket modification,
or even approval processes without the need for manual intervention. This
reduces response times and streamlines operations, making it easier for
users to get the services they need immediately.

• Blended Conversations in Zia (Fig. 13) help you build visual conversation
trees that automate responses to end-user queries to accelerate self-service
and reduce the ticket workload on your IT service desk.

Figure 13: Blended conversations in Zia.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

• The Zia chatbot widget can be embedded on your websites or intranet

pages, giving end users instant access to help without switching
applications. This widget can assist users with common service desk tasks,
such as answering queries from the knowledge base or performing basic
ticketing operations, all within the same interface. It enhances the self-
service capability, providing a seamless user experience across different
digital touchpoints. Also, Zia integrates with ChatGPT, enabling end users to
lean on GenAI to resolve their IT issues.

• By offering 24/7 support through an intuitive chatbot interface, you can

ensure that users get the assistance they need whenever required, further
enhancing the user experience.

c. Collecting end-user feedback through advanced

custom surveys

• ServiceDesk Plus integrates with Zoho Survey, enabling service desks to set
up complex surveys within minutes. You can craft user satisfaction surveys
(Fig. 14) by creating unique survey templates, defining automations, building
custom logic, and personalizing the surveys for your end users.

• With over 250 ready-made templates and a drag-and-drop builder featuring

25+ question types, you can create tailored surveys effortlessly.

• Surveys can be sent automatically when a ticket is closed, or at other key

stages in the service management process, ensuring timely feedback
collection. You can also create custom rules based on one or more
conditions to trigger surveys and show or hide questions to guide end users
based on their responses.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

• The Zoho Survey integration offers in-depth reports and analysis on user
responses, enabling you to track trends, customer satisfaction, and areas
for improvement.

• Through detailed feedback and analysis, the platform enables IT teams

to refine their processes, ensuring that service delivery evolves based on
real-time user insights.

Figure 14: Survey builder.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Chapter 5:

Deploying unique
custom automations

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

As an IT service desk manager, dealing with repetitive tasks, time-sensitive

requests, and manual processes can be overwhelming, especially
when trying to maintain operational efficiency. While we have already
leveraged automation in areas like ticket categorization, prioritization,
and assignment, the potential for further automation is vast.

a. Automating announcements for planned

downtime or incidents

• Leverage the Announcements functionality (Fig. 15) in ServiceDesk Plus

to effectively communicate important information to both technicians
and end users.

• Tailor announcements to suit different departments or user groups, allowing

for more relevant communication.

• Configure start and end dates, specify the announcement type, set priority
levels, identify the services involved, and even include a banner to make the
announcement more visible and impactful, ensuring that key information is
highlighted for users.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Figure 15: Announcements.

b. Establishing a robust automated communication

mechanism for tickets

• Using Notification Rules (Fig. 16) in ServiceDesk Plus, you can set up
automated notifications that keep everyone in the loop—whether it’s
status updates, reminders, or escalation alerts.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

• Choose how you want to receive notifications—via email, SMS, or push

notifications—tailoring communication to suit your preferences.

• Customize notification templates to align with your requirements,

ensuring clarity and consistency in communication.

Figure 16: Notifications Rules.

c. Automating the ticket abort process

• Utilize the Business Rules (Fig. 17) in ServiceDesk Plus to automatically abort
ticket creation for known issues by establishing specific conditions. This
reduces unnecessary ticket volume and minimizes duplicate requests.

• You can customize the abort message to provide clear information to users.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Figure 17: Business Rules to abort ticket creation.

d. Optimizing the process of closing the tickets

• Implementing automated Closure Rules (Fig. 18) in ServiceDesk Plus enables

criteria-based ticket closure, such as requiring closure codes, specific fields,
user acknowledgment, and task completion. This ensures a consistent and
accurate closure process.

• Choose between Manual Closure and Automated Closure options, with the
latter ensuring technicians provide resolution details before resolving the
request. You can set a specific time for automatically closing the request if
no action is taken by the requester.

• Enable Zia request closure to automatically close a request as soon as the

requester confirms resolution via email, bypassing the standard closure
rules. Status and closure codes will still be recorded in the request history,
even with Zia configurations applied.
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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Figure 18: Request Closure Rules.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

e. Orchestrating IT services with a single touch

• With Zoho Circuit (Fig. 19), our native no-code/low-code platform, you
can automate complex workflows by defining and organizing tasks
systematically, all with a single action.

• Circuits allow you to execute tasks sequentially, in parallel, or in

batches, simplifying complex processes such as onboarding and
incident management.

• Workflows can be triggered automatically by specific events, minimizing

manual effort and accelerating response times.

• Additionally, circuits seamlessly integrate with existing automations,

including incident, service request, and change workflows, further
enhancing service desk functionality.

• For tailored solutions, you can also define custom scripts using languages
like Python or Java, aligning them with your organization’s unique needs.

Figure 19: Zoho Circuits.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Chapter 6:

Connecting your
IT & business systems
on a single platform

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

When your organization relies on disparate IT systems, IT service delivery

processes can quickly become inefficient and cumbersome. It is essential to
connect the ITSM platform to your other IT solutions like ITOM tools, identity
management solutions, UEM platforms, and more. This way, your service
delivery workflows are centrally managed and executed, cutting down time
and effort for your service desk technicians.

a. Leveraging native Integrations

ServiceDesk Plus provides several built-in integrations (Fig. 20) that allow
seamless interaction with other ManageEngine and Zoho applications.

Figure 20: ServiceDesk Plus integration with other

ManageEngine & Zoho applications.
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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

• Endpoint Central: Provides unified endpoint management, enabling

software deployment, patch management, and remote troubleshooting
from within ServiceDesk Plus.

• Applications Manager: Monitors application performance, linking alerts to

service tickets for faster issue resolution and reduced downtime.

• ADSelfService Plus: Offers self-service password management,

reducing password-related tickets and improving user experience
with features like MFA.

• ADManager Plus: Simplifies AD management by automating tasks

like user provisioning and group management, integrated directly
into ServiceDesk Plus.

• Password Manager Pro: Provides secure vaulting and sharing of

passwords and credentials, improving security and speeding up
access during ticket resolution.

• Analytics Plus: Delivers advanced reporting and analytics for IT

teams to make data-driven decisions, enhancing service quality and
performance visibility.

• OpManager: Monitors network health, automatically creating tickets for

network incidents, allowing for quick resolution and minimized downtime.

• AlarmsOne: Consolidates alerts from various IT monitoring systems into a

single interface. When integrated with ServiceDesk Plus, it allows IT teams
to automate the process of creating and managing tickets based on critical
alerts, ensuring that incidents are handled promptly and efficiently.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

• Mobile Device Manager Plus: Manages mobile devices like smartphones

and tablets from within ServiceDesk Plus. This integration provides remote
control, security enforcement, and app management for mobile devices,
ensuring that IT policies are adhered to across both corporate and
BYOD environments.

• PAM360: Enhances security by providing centralized management of

privileged accounts and passwords. The integration with ServiceDesk Plus
enables IT teams to secure, control, and audit access to critical IT systems,
ensuring that only authorized personnel can access sensitive resources
while working on service tickets.

• Site24x7: Provides full-stack IT monitoring and integrates with ServiceDesk

Plus to automate ticket creation based on performance alerts.

• Zoho Survey: Collects user feedback post-ticket resolution, helping IT

teams improve service quality by acting on real-time user insights.

b. Implementing business Integrations:

ServiceDesk Plus provides seamless integrations that connect ITSM with your
organization’s business processes or third party applications (Fig. 21), creating a
unified service experience. With connections to leading applications and REST
APIs, you can easily extend ITSM capabilities across various platforms.

• Microsoft Teams: Allows users to create requests and check ticket statuses
directly within the Teams interface. It enhances collaboration by keeping
IT support accessible within a widely used communication tool, improving
user satisfaction and operational efficiency.

• Microsoft Intune: Automatically enrolls devices into ServiceDesk Plus

for tracking and management. This provides a comprehensive view of all
devices within the organization, enabling better oversight and control over
IT assets.
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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

• Microsoft Outlook and Office 365: Integrates the IT service desk into your
Outlook or Office 365 mailbox. End users can submit requests and check
ticket statuses directly from their mailbox without needing to access the
service desk portal. IT teams can access Office 365 apps like OneDrive
and SharePoint from within ServiceDesk Plus, allowing for easy document
sharing and project management.

• JIRA: Lets you push any request created in ServiceDesk Plus as an issue in
JIRA with a preferred issue type.

• REST API: Enables organizations to customize and extend its functionality.

With REST APIs, IT teams can integrate ServiceDesk Plus with other
applications, automate workflows, and pull data from external systems. This
flexibility enables businesses to tailor their ITSM solutions to meet specific
operational needs.

Figure 21: ServiceDesk Plus - Third Party Integrations.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Chapter 7:

Driving efficiency
through AI capabilities

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

AI capabilities are revolutionizing the operations of IT service desks by

significantly enhancing efficiency and productivity. By automating routine
tasks and delivering intelligent insights, AI enables service desk teams to
concentrate on more complex and strategic challenges, thereby streamlining
workflows and reducing response times. Here are several ways Zia in
ServiceDesk Plus can assist service desk managers in their daily tasks:

• Predictive insights: Zia analyzes historical service desk data to predict

ticket categories, priorities, and routes tickets to the appropriate technician
automatically, reducing manual triaging efforts.

• Conversational self-service: Zia functions as a virtual agent, providing end

users with instant, conversational support. It can handle simple tasks like
resolving low-level issues autonomously, reducing the burden on service
desk staff.

• GenAI-powered ITSM: Zia integrates with OpenAI’s ChatGPT & Microsoft

Copilot unlocking different ways to achieve service desk productivity.
Technicians can now draft and refine replies, summarize tickets within
Microsoft Teams, generate low-code Custom Functions, or run ticket
management from within Microsoft Copilot.

• Customizable Zia actions: Using a low-code platform, Zia allows

businesses to create custom workflows and automate complex processes.
This enables Zia to execute more advanced actions, such as triggering
external applications or workflows.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Chapter 8:

Complimenting ITSM
with ITAM

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

As an IT service desk manager, it is beneficial to know about organizing and

managing business-critical configuration items (CIs) for maintaining a stable
and responsive IT environment. By integrating ITAM, you can gain better
visibility into hardware and software assets, allowing you to make informed
decisions during troubleshooting and incident resolution. Here’s how you
can leverage ITAM and configuration management database (CMDB) in
ServiceDesk Plus to enhance your ITSM strategy.

• You can categorize business-critical CIs from your ITAM database into
appropriate types—such as servers, workstations, departments, and
individuals. This structured categorization provides your technicians
with comprehensive visibility into all accumulated IT assets and services,
centralizing the information for more effective management.

• Leverage relationship mapping to link CIs logically, identifying

interdependencies between them. This helps your team quickly assess the
potential impact of outages or service downtime of a CI on related business
services, ensuring proactive risk mitigation and faster resolution times.

• By creating business views (Fig.22), you can visualize how different CIs
interact within the larger IT infrastructure. These views offer a centralized
platform for monitoring trends and analyzing service-related data such as
associated incidents, change requests, and problems, ensuring that your
team has the full context necessary to make informed decisions quickly.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Figure 22: Business Views in CMDB.

• CMDB helps you track CI relationships across your infrastructure, making

it easier to assess the ripple effects of incidents. For instance, when an
incident arises, you can isolate impacted systems, understand how they
relate to other CIs, and make decisions that minimize the disruption.

• The CMDB integrated with other ITSM processes, enhance the overall
context around incidents, changes, and service requests. This integration
promotes a more responsive IT environment by reducing downtime,
enabling quicker incident responses, and improving overall service quality.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Chapter 9:

Driving decisions with

granular insights

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

As an IT service desk manager, your decisions can impact the entire

organization. Whether it’s optimizing team performance, predicting workload
spikes, or justifying budget requests, having accurate, real-time data at your
fingertips is essential. The days of relying on gut feelings are long gone—what
you need is hard data to guide your choices.

ServiceDesk Plus makes this easier by offering powerful reporting and

analytics features to help you make smarter, faster decisions. Here’s how these
tools make decision-making a breeze:

a. Demostrating the value of IT service desk with

insightful reports

• Prebuilt reports: Save time with prebuilt reports that cover common metrics
like ticket resolution times, incident trends, and SLA breaches.

• Custom reports: Create custom reports that dig into any aspect of your
operations, whether it’s ticket escalations or technician performance.

• Scheduled reporting: Set up automated reports that are delivered to your

inbox or your stakeholders on a recurring schedule, ensuring everyone
stays updated.

b. Providing a quick overview of ITSM operations

with custom dashboards

With ServiceDesk Plus, you gain access to intuitive, customizable

dashboards that offer insights into KPIs.

• Real-time analytics: Track metrics like ticket volume, response times, SLA
compliance, and team performance in real time.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

• Customizable widgets: Create and customize your dashboards to

reflect the data most critical to your operations, whether monitoring new
incidents, tracking open tickets, addressing overdue tasks, or assessing
support agent workload. With the advanced visualization tools, such as
charts and graphs, you can gain deep insights into trends over
time—ranging from major incident trends and SLA breaches to
monthly resolution times and the recurrence of reopened incidents.

Leveraging the SmartView feature (Fig. 23) in ServiceDesk Plus

elevates request management by offering a customizable, widget-based
interface that consolidates essential information in one streamlined view.
This intuitive format allows for seamless execution of key actions, such as
responding to tickets, adding notes, and updating statuses, without navigating
away from the current screen. Designed to optimize efficiency, SmartView
enhances productivity and user experience by minimizing workflow
interruptions and providing a unified workspace tailored
to your needs.

Figure 23: Customizable dashboard in ServiceDesk Plus.

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

Conclusion
Ensuring your IT service desk operates at peak efficiency while safeguarding
your technicians from burnout is a complex, yet crucial, challenge. This
is where a unified, value-driven service management platform becomes
indispensable. It should strike a balance—easy to customize, cost-effective
to implement and maintain, while offering comprehensive and robust ITSM
workflow automation capabilities.

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus embodies this ideal and goes beyond. It is a

strategic partner in your IT service journey, empowering you with automation,
advanced workflows, seamless integrations, and actionable insights. By
leveraging these tools, you can focus on what truly matters: fostering a
high-performing IT team that consistently delivers superior service. From
optimizing routine operations to boosting productivity and enhancing user
experiences, ServiceDesk Plus offers the features you need to excel.

Discover how it can streamline your operations, enhance efficiency, and

elevate your service desk management through a hands-on free trial.
Experience firsthand how ServiceDesk Plus can be the cornerstone of
your IT success!

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9 ways ServiceDesk Plus simplifies your life as an IT service desk manager

About ServiceDesk Plus

ServiceDesk Plus is the unified service management
platform from ManageEngine, the enterprise IT management
division of Zoho Corporation. Built on industry-recommended ITSM best
practices, ServiceDesk Plus comes packed with contextual IT and business
integrations that help service desk teams better align with their organization’s
business objectives. With native enterprise service management capabilities
and unrestricted extensibility offered through low-code scripting,
ServiceDesk Plus helps organizations design, deliver and support their
business and IT services. It comes in three editions and is available in 37
different languages. To learn more about ServiceDesk Plus and its features,
please visit manageengine.com/service-desk.

About the author

With eight years’ experience in IT services, Suganya has hands-on
experience handling key IT service management (ITSM) practices. As an avid
ITSM evangelist, she is also a ServiceDesk Plus product expert. She creates
best-practice articles and blogs that can help ITSM practitioners address their
everyday challenges with ServiceDesk Plus, the flagship IT and enterprise
service management platform from ManageEngine. Besides her passion for
writing, she also enjoys trekking, reading books, playing basketball,
and stargazing with her daughter.

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