Remedyforce Implementation: 15 tips and tricks to accelerate ITSM KPIs by actionable Remedyforce reporting

By Kedar Zavar, Senior Consultant, Cloudaction    


Remedyforce administrators receive lots of requests from the business to build ITSM KPI reports with actionable data for driving continuous improvement for the organization. While Remedyforce provides a wealth of standard reporting “out of the box,” administrators can get even more creative by combining the power of reports, dashboards, list views, and QuickViews. Here are 15 Remedyforce consulting tips and tricks to make Remedyforce reporting easier and report data more useful and actionable.

1. Build custom report types more quickly. Remedyforce has “out of the box” canned report types that include certain fields and records. However, most customers have unique reporting requirements for measuring and improving KPIs. If this is the case, then using custom report type is a preferred way to build powerful custom reports quickly and efficiently. See below for an example of incidents with action history.

2. Use bucket fields. The bucket field feature is a good and fast way to group your report data without creating formulas or more custom fields. These buckets fields are like virtual fields. For example, your business user needs to report incidents by department, but there is no department field available on the form. In a situation like this, you can use bucket fields in reports to achieve the result

3. Use “Add Fields Related via Lookup” in report type to get the report data without adding formula fields and custom fields. This is how you can get related lookup object data: Report Type > Edit Layout > Right side > Add Fields Via Lookup. This gives you access to lots of fields. Below shows the result, where the report is generated and grouped by client account billing city.

4. Use object formula to generate complex or unique calculated field in report. Example: If your business user needs to report on “Time to resolve,” then this field can be used calculate by using DateTime field using formula field at the object level: Create > Object > Formula fields

Calculated Time to close =
“BMCServiceDesk__closeDateTime__c” Minus (‘-‘) “BMCServiceDesk__openDateTime__c”

Likewise other field Time to resolve can be calculated as “Resolved_Date__C” minus (‘-‘) “BMCServiceDesk__openDateTime__c”

Note: Make sure you add a new data time field Say Resolved and update it using workflow on whenever the status is set to now()

5. Add/update/delete drop-down menu fields during requirements gathering and design stage to generate effective KPIs report. It’s recommended to discuss and gather reporting requirements during the workshop so that KPIs reports can be generated and measured. It is a best practice to design and configure the system per reporting needs so that it will be easier to generate valuable measurable report. Example: if you would like to see incident resolved by “closure” category, then “closure” category should be present on the Incident form so that it will be captured and reported.

6. Build advanced reporting needs using mathematical report formula. Example: If you have already done grouping and your business user asks for additional field of percentage, you can repurpose the same report by adding following formula:
RowCount/PARENTGROUPVAL(RowCount,GRAND_SUMMARY)

7. Build advanced reports by using joined report capability to drill down on KPIs detail. For example, to track the performance of agents or queues or more, you can have five (5) blocks of data in the same report with different filters. There is no need to create multiple reports.

8. Create an audit compliance report. Every audit department user’s wish list includes real-time reporting that can be used for auditing purpose. Example: An incident audit compliance report can be built using audit history tracking for capturing the data on incident history audit activity. You can enable “Audit History Tracking” to track the activity performed by staff by going to Create > Object > Custom fields> Set field history tracking.

9. Create approval matrix reports. You can create reports on approvals by Changes or Incidents or any other ITIL process. Example: Create a report types using process Instance and process instance Node. You can also generate reports based on status updates on approval steps using field template updates.


10. Generate Remedyforce license usage report. With the Winter 15 release, there are some “out of the box” reports available under Remedyforce administration > License and storage and usage. If you want to get report by license type, add a formula field on Profile.UserLicense.Name. and group by this.

11. Tweak dashboards to display critical and high-value reports. Reports on dashboards can be easily managed to allow business users to delete, update or change components or reports. You can easily get data by creating a custom report type with reports and dashboard components.

12. Use workaround option to monitor “My Incident queue” via reporting. Create a formula field in that module say Current Logged User Example go to Incident > Object > Add field > Formula > Text > IF ( BMCServiceDesk__FKOpenBy__r.Id = $User.Id, TRUE, FALSE). Now when you run the report, add a report filter to show: Current Logged in User= TRUE.

13. Apply filters to generate targeted report data on the dashboards. This allows you to slice and dice targeted report data on single dashboards by applying filters.

14. Distribute right reports to right users at right time by leveraging Salesforce reports scheduling mechanism. The report can be send via email, with no need to log in to the Salesforce portal.

15. Roll out reports and dashboards on Salesforce1 platform for easy access to commonly used dashboard and reporting.

We hope these 15 Remedyforce reporting tips and tricks gave you some ideas to immediately apply in your organization. At Cloudaction, our goal is to help you get maximum value from your Remedyforce experience. We welcome your comments and suggestions. Please don’t hesitate to contact us at 1-844-2CLOUDA (1-844-225-6832) or via Ask Us NOW!, a complimentary service from Cloudaction to provide expert answers to your product capability, functionality, and implementation questions. We promise to respond to your inquiry or question within 24 hours.