How is your issue / problem hierarchy looking these days?  Is it out-of control?  If it is, then there's a good chance that the jobs you are logging are not being classified correctly - there's either too much choice, or it's just downright confusing.  Either way, an out-of-control Issue hierarchy can affect your reporting and overall efficiency of your helpdesk.

See the next post for a link to download a simple, but useful report for a HelpMaster Pro cleanup.  Save it into your "Custom Reports" working folder and access it via the "Custom" tab on the "Reports Selector" screen - double-click to run it.

This report shows all of your issue codes, as well as their unique database number.

Now that you have this information, it's possible to bulk-reclassify the issue for many jobs.

WARNING!!  Only experienced SQL database administrators should perform the following and it is strongly recommended to make a backup of your database first.

Using the example report displayed above, suppose you wanted to reclassify all jobs that were linked to

Facilities Managements > Air Conditioning > Heating > Too cold

to

Facilities Managements > Air Conditioning > Heating > Thermostat

all you have to do is exectute the following SQL statement on your live HelpMaster Pro database.  Use SQL Server Management Studio to do this.

Please be aware that this SQL statement is a bulk-action statement - that is, it will affect all jobs linked to the issuelink that you specify.  There's no undo when working with databases, so double-check your work.

Best regards,

Rod

OK, here's an update to this report.

The original report showed all of the Issues, including those that are deleted.  An updated version of the report is now available that will highlight the deleted issues in red.

In order to make this new report run however, your HelpMaster Pro database will need to be updated.  Run this SQL script against your HelpMaster Pro database.  As usual, please make a backup of your database before doing any database modifications.

ALTER VIEW [dbo].[qryJobIssue]
AS
SELECT     tblIssues_1.pkID, tblIssues_1.Caption AS Issue, tblIssues_2.Caption AS Issue1, tblIssues_3.Caption AS Issue2, tblIssues_4.Caption AS Issue3,
                      tblIssues_5.Caption AS Issue4,tblIssues_1.IsDeleted
FROM         dbo.tblIssues tblIssues_4 LEFT OUTER JOIN
                      dbo.tblIssues tblIssues_5 ON tblIssues_4.SelfLink = tblIssues_5.pkID RIGHT OUTER JOIN
                      dbo.tblIssues tblIssues_1 LEFT OUTER JOIN
                      dbo.tblIssues tblIssues_2 ON tblIssues_1.SelfLink = tblIssues_2.pkID LEFT OUTER JOIN
                      dbo.tblIssues tblIssues_3 ON tblIssues_2.SelfLink = tblIssues_3.pkID ON tblIssues_4.pkID = tblIssues_3.SelfLink

Click here to download the latest update to this report.

Best regards,

Rod