Discovery: ServiceNow for workflow management

[PaulKuykendall]

Issue description

Problem/Opportunity:

CISA .gov analysts use a common mailbox for communications with people requesting domains and CISA regional advisors. This is generally done to garner additional information about a requesting organization/entity or person making the request. This seemingly simple request and response becomes difficult to manage through the use of a single inbox across several analysts.

Solution Tree:

• Zendesk
  • Not currently FedRAMPed, may prove infeasible.
• ServiceNow
  • FedRAMPed and accessible to the program.
  • ECS has skills in this area and could demonstrate a POC to assess viability.
• Bespoke
  • Build the solution into the registrar admin.

Acceptance criteria

• [ ] Decision made whether ServiceNow is a good solution for this communication management.
• [ ] Prioritization complete and tickets in backlog, as appropriate.

Additional context

• [ ] ServiceNow POC and demo, to see how this might serve the CISA analysts

HL Requirements

• Analyst can initiate outbound communication (to be delivered by email) directly from the analyst tool in the appropriate context.
• Recipients (email) can respond to the email and have their response logged in the proper thread
• Analysts can visualize the entire conversation history, cleanly, within the analyst tool.
• Recipient can view the entire conversation history when logged in and viewing their domain request.
• Recipient can respond to a message, or add to the thread, from within the Manage app

Links to other issues

No response

[PaulKuykendall]

@h-m-f-t - when you have a moment, please take a look at the HL Requirements above, just to make sure this is what you're thinking. Thanks.

[PaulKuykendall]

@h-m-f-t - would like to review this with you to determine how we proceed with this investigation.

[h-m-f-t]

@PaulKuykendall I don't think the "problem" section adequately captures the challenges of the current state, so it's hard to say how the A/Cs address the problem.

I think the "HL requirements" section does a better job of detailing what we want, but it's still a little murky.

We/users need the ability to easily see some correspondence history with a user while also providing ourselves issue management features: issue numbers, state declarations ("resolved"), an ability to assign a responder ("Cameron") and see who's assigned to issues at large, set an issue's priority ("urgent") to improve triage, declare an issue's type or class (see the many "canned responses" in our inbox), metrics tracking (count of inquiries managed, by type, by user) and maybe responder support features ("this old one is still open"), or perhaps even email delivery itself. Ultimately, we'd like to not manage user correspondence in an email client.

Tagging @katypies for thoughts, especially on how some of the potential solutions often work to resolve these kinds of problems.

[h-m-f-t]

Also, I think a lens to look at this is through different tiers: eventually, analysts should be "tier 2" support and delivery team is "tier 3".

[PaulKuykendall]

Thanks, @h-m-f-t : I will incorporate your feedback and sync with @katypies to clarify the needs.

[PaulKuykendall]

Working "notes" document. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qRDA8vfntdU4wGtgBLujUOe0qItYt4vC-U66oPuDjJ8/edit?pli=1