The 9 a.m. flood
Fourteen tickets in six minutes, from a broken mouse to all of Finance locked out. Classify and prioritise before the clocks run away.
IT Service Management
ITSM Service Desk
A service desk is where every outage and request lands first — and the first ten minutes usually decide whether a small problem stays small. You work live tickets end to end: triage, priority, the SLA clock, escalation, change, and the review afterwards.
What you'll walk away with
- Tell an incident, a request and a problem apart — and route each one correctly.
- Set priority from impact × urgency, not from whoever shouts loudest.
- Act before an SLA breach instead of explaining one afterwards.
- Raise a change with a rollback, then close with a blameless review.
The scenarios you'll face
Six situations, each built around a decision real service desks get wrong.
One ticket, or nine?
Nine users report the VPN dropping. Nine incidents, or one failing appliance? Link them and find out.
The clock is at 80%
Twenty minutes to breach, the specialist is in a meeting, the user has gone quiet. Chase, pause or escalate?
The fix that needs approval
You know the fix, but it touches production at 2 p.m. Emergency change with a rollback, or wait for the window?
The angry VIP
The CFO wants a slow laptop marked P1 while a scanner outage stops shipping for forty people. Hold the line.
The morning after
Build the timeline, separate cause from symptom, propose three actions — one of them detection, not just a fix.
Cheat sheet
Six ideas the lab assumes. Twenty seconds — then go.
Incident vs request vs problem
Incident = service broken. Request = a standard, pre-approved ask. Problem = the cause behind repeat incidents.
Priority = impact × urgency
How much of the business is hit, times how fast it is growing. A calculation, not a negotiation.
The SLA clock
Starts the moment the ticket is logged. Pause it only when you are genuinely waiting on the user.
Escalation
Functional when you need deeper skill, hierarchical when you need a decision. Most failures do neither in time.
Change control
Standard is pre-approved, normal is assessed, emergency is fast-tracked. Always carry a rollback.
Post-incident review
Timeline, root cause, actions — and blameless, because blame hides the facts that prevent the next one.
How it works
- Everything is simulated — nothing you do here leaves your browser.
- Tickets arrive on a live clock, so the SLA timer runs while you think.
- You are meant to get it wrong. Make the call, see the cost, reset and replay.