Service cases

A service case is the record of one outage: the subject, the service area it affects, the asset involved, how many units are without service, when it was reported and, once fixed, when service came back. The case moves from reported to triaged, assigned, under review, restored and closed. Its revision number rises with each change, so an action taken on an out-of-date view of the case is refused rather than applied to the wrong state.

When an outage is first logged in another system, such as a call centre platform or an outage map, its external incident ID is kept on the case. That stops the same outage being entered twice when it is reported through more than one channel. Each case has an owner, the coordinator responsible for seeing it through.

The outage coordinator owns the case; the supervisor reviews it; the field crew supplies evidence.

• One case per outage. Duplicate reports of the same incident are matched on the external incident ID rather than opened again.
• Affected units on the case. The number of units out of service is recorded at intake and kept current, so priorities are clear.
• Closed only after restoration. A case closes only once restoration has been confirmed and recorded.

Agree where outage reports come from and which system’s incident ID is the one to keep. Agree how affected units are counted (meters, customers or premises) and who may close a case. Decide what makes a case high priority. Prepare examples of a single-street outage, a feeder outage reported many times, a case that turns out not to be an outage and a case reopened after a second failure.

At 18:20 a storm takes out a feeder serving two neighbourhoods. Calls come in through the contact centre and the outage map. The first report opens a service case with its external incident ID and 640 affected units; later reports with the same ID are recognised as the same outage. The coordinator owns the case through triage, field work and review. When the crew’s evidence confirms power is back, the case is restored with the real restoration time and then closed.

• Open service cases — Reported, triaged, assigned and in-review cases with affected units.
• Case status board — Every case grouped by status.
• My service cases — Each coordinator’s own cases.

• Report to restoration: The full path of an outage case.

Review the implementation plan before connecting outage reports.