Introducing the Redesigned Inbox Console
The views of 4me’s Inbox console have undergone a major makeover. When specialists open their 4me inbox, they will initially not notice a major change. Their inbox still presents the assignments in a table layout. But they may notice the ability to switch to a new layout.
The new layout offers multiple lines of information about each item. These extra lines make it possible for the inbox to provide a complete summary for each assignment.
The new Inbox console contains several helpful enhancements.
The most important ones are described below:
Filtering
Like the filters that can be applied to the views of the Record console (see Filtering Views), it is now also possible to apply filters on the inbox views.
Sorting
Because the multi-line layout does not have columns, it is not possible to click on the column header to change the sorting. Now users can click on the ‘Sort View’ option to specify how the view should be sorted.
To toggle between ascending and descending, simply select the same sort option again. The sort icon will switch to indicate whether the view is sorted in ascending or descending order.
Urgent
Inbox items that are marked as urgent have the red stopwatch icon displayed over them. This should help draw attention to them. By default, they are displayed at the top of the list.
Waiting for You
When a request is set to ‘Waiting for Customer’ and the requester is a specialist, this request now shows up with the status ‘Waiting for You’ in this specialist’s inbox. By default, these items are listed immediately below the items that are marked as urgent.
Category Icons
The impact icon was already visible in the inbox views. Now, when a request does not have an impact level (i.e. when a request is not a request for incident resolution), the category icon is displayed where the impact icon would otherwise have been.
The category icons are also shown for project tasks, as well as the risk & impact and approval tasks of changes.
Unread Items
New items are no longer presented in bold typeface. Instead, they are marked with a blue dot. This makes new items easier to spot and allows more text to be displayed over the width of the inbox view.
Service Instance of Request
The name of the service instance that is linked to a request is displayed when the multi-line layout is selected. Many people have asked for this and it makes sense. This extra piece of information provides a lot more context about each request.
Service of Problem
Likewise, the service name is an additional piece of information that is available for each problem in the multi-line layout.
Request Group Requesters
In the table layout, the ‘Requester’ column is empty for request groups. That is because groups normally contain multiple requests and therefore have multiple requesters. The new multi-line layout shows the names of the requesters of the first three requests that are linked to the group.
Change Requester
In the Inbox console, the requester of a change task is now defined slightly differently. When a change is created from a request or because a request template that is linked to a change template was applied to a request, the requester of the tasks of this change is now considered the person who is selected in the Requested for field of the request. In all other cases, the requester of a change task is still considered the change manager.
Seeing the requester of the original request should be a useful feature to support the Request Fulfillment process. Most changes are generated automatically after someone submitted a request using a request template that is linked to a change template. The change manager typically does not get involved, unless an approver rejects the change or a specialist failed to complete a task as planned. So, seeing the person for whom the change was created should be more relevant in such cases than seeing the change manager.
Change Subject
Below the subject of each change task, the subject of the change is presented. This helpful because most tasks are generated automatically using a template. Their subjects are therefore typically the same as the subject of the template that was used to create them. If someone receives many tasks that are based on the same task template, they all looked alike in the Inbox console.
The subject of a change is often more specific, even when the change was automatically generated after someone submitted a request using a request template that is linked to a change template. In such cases, the UI extension option to automatically add information to the subject from the custom fields that were filled out by the requester normally ensures that the change subject offers a useful description of what needs to happen. The addition of the change subject below the task subject makes it possible to tell tasks apart, even when they were generated using the same template.
Project Subject
For the same reason, the subject of the project is visible in the inbox views below the subject of each project task.
Note that new specialists will see the multi-line layout by default when they access 4me for the first time. When a specialist switches to a different layout, 4me will remember that preference regardless of the device until the specialist presses the ‘Switch Layout’ option again.
Pro Tip: After you have selected an item in an inbox view, you can double-click on it to place it in Edit mode.