The Email System: My Favorite New ITSM 7 Feature

Finally, the ITSM product offers a feature that customers have wanted for years. While Remedy has had an Email Engine for a while and you could send out automatic notifications at any point, customers often wanted a way to send out updates at any time, and link that e-mail to the request.

Both Change Management and Service Desk 7.0 include a feature called "Email System" (as well as an equivalent feature called Paging System). Choosing the option from the sidebar opens up an dialog where one can compose an email, selecting a recipient from the people involved in the request (assignee, requester, etc) and inserting values from the request (Summary, Description, Request ID). After sending the e-mail, the contents are tracked in the Work Info tab.

I had actually written a customization for ITSM 6 that did most of these things. What I like best about Remedy's implementation of the requirement is that you can adapt it for use with any app - there are no changes to the Change or Incident forms since it is a separate dialog box, and the fact that they came up with the idea for field-value replacement.

ITSM 7 Highs & Lows

Yesterday was my first real day implementing an ITSM 7 app (Change Management if you must know). So far I've set up the Foundation Data, Change and Task Templates, Approvals, and even delved into a little customization. Then I ran through the application as a user to see how it worked. Here is a list of my ups & downs.

Thumbs Up!

• The Process Accelerator makes it much easier to progress through the much more complex processes of Change Initiation, Approval, Scheduling and Implementation.
• The Change Approvals have many more options than they used to. In 6.x and before, you could only set up approvals based on CTI. Now you have many options.
• Notifications - you can turn each individual notification type off or on by user, or by application.
• The multiple types of categorization (product categorization and service categorization) really opens up a company's options for categorization and allows for many permutations. It's a real improvement though it seems complex at first.
• Change Templates are very cool and Task Templates have been beefed up significantly.

Thumbs Down!

• No more Asset Tracking. The CMDB is bare-bones with a very user-UNfriendly interface. It's confusing, figuring out how you're supposed to access the CIs, or link them with people.
• Configuring users requires a PH.D to figure out the permissions needed.
• Every time you add a Change Template, you need to configure every single group that can see it. If you want a change template to be accessible to all groups, this will be very time-consuming.
• All the forms have changed their names. Everything has a new naming scheme. If you were an expert in any application, no more. We are all starting from scratch. And Remedy doesn't have any more documentation of their code than they ever did.

ITSM 7.0 Installation

Well, the saga continues. I've now installed ITSM 7.0 several times, with each time taking several days to complete. By the end, I still don't have a working installation. Learning from my mistakes, here are some tips:

* You need a lot of memory. We're talking 4GB minimum.
* You need a lot of hard drive space. Your database needs to be 2GB minimum, with another 1GB allocated to your transaction log.
* Get the latest version. If you, like me, downloaded a pre-release version, you'll find it sorely lacking and downright confounding when it doesn't match the documentation. While you're at it, get all the patches too. There's already patches for Change Management and the CMDB.
* Installation order of the apps is now unimportant, HOWEVER, you do need to install approval and assignment engine prior to the applications. Both of these come with ARS 7.0, but are installed separately (as is the email engine and flashboards). CMDB is also a prerequisite, as one might expect - being the basis of any ITIL process.
* You need to license before you install the apps.
* If your app installation goes wrong and you want to repeat it, you'll need to remove all evidence of the application from your system, or it will not reinstall.

I've settled for the fact that my two-year-old laptop, used and abused as it has been by years of consulting, is not a welcoming environment to the new applications.

Disconcerting ITSM 7.0 Installation Discoveries

Heard a nasty rumor that, despite the documentation, you must install in a particular order or risk issues...that order would be ARS 7 -> Approval Engine -> CMDB 2 -> Assignment Engine -> IM -> PM -> CM -> AM. Even having done this and after over 24 hours of installation time (on vmware), I discovered I was missing workflow right away.

The Application Administration Console (RAC:Config:Console) had no attached workflow and I was unable to begin configuring ITSM 7.0, which by the way does not come with sample data. Now, I was able to locate the relevant workflow in the unpacked binaries from my installation...
\servicedesk\im\incident700[1].win\win\incident\cdrom\ar\rac\workflow\en

The question is - what other definitions were not imported...I guess we'll find out.

Oh, also one might think that you could reinstall the product to get the missing workflow. The answer is no - the installation detects that it is already installed and will not re-install. I guess they assumed that it would work right the first time.

Some of my colleagues have run into similar problems with missing workflow and failed installations. I assume that we're all using the same older machines, hence the anomalies. On a real server, up to the latest specs, these issues should not occur.

ITSM 7.0: Early Thoughts

As I read the pre-release documentation for ITSM 7.0, I've been doing a lot of thinking. Most of my projects have involved an upgrade or an installation of ITSM. Both ITSM 5.6 and 6.0 were ITIL-compatible, but didn't make a huge leap away from the previous versions. ITSM 7.0 is a ocean's voyage in a new direction. In particular, the mostly widely used of the ITSM applications, Helpdesk 6.0, is undergoing a facelift. Actually, it's more face-transplant surgery than facelift.

Helpdesk has been evolved into an all-encompassing Service Management application, ServiceDesk, containing Incident Management, Problem Management, and Knowledge Management. Not only does the form look different - it behaves differently. One can write scripts to prompt a user for successively more specific information, a feature that many clients have customized in the past. The new applications are process-heavy, and this attention to process is highlighted by a process bar across the top of the application. The new version is more ITIL-compatible than ever.

But in their quest for ITIL-compatibility, is BMC/Remedy going to lose some customers? I have been wondering how many clients will choose to stay with safe, familiar ITSM 6.0. BMC/Remedy usually only supports the last two versions, prompting people to upgrade on a regular basis. But now customers are faced with a choice. An upgrade to ITSM 7.0 isn't just a technological change. It's not just a quick upgrade project. It requires a paradigm shift in the organization, a mental switch. In ITSM 7.0, customers will no longer be able to ignore ITIL recommendations. The new version is all about the new way of running your IT department, proactive instead of reactive, focusing on real solutions and improvements vs. fire-fighting. Sounds good in theory, but unfortunately many of my clients have stayed in fire-fighting mode, not having the time or motivation to evolve as an organization. For them, the new version will be a hassle and inconvenience, and they will probably choose to stay with version 6.0.

Another issue will be compatibility. A quick peek at the compatibility matrix shows that the new version of ARS will not be compatible with Windows Server 2000. Some companies are not agile enough to switch operating systems as quickly as Microsoft can release them. Some may choose to hold onto the 6.x versions of BMC/Remedy products because they aren't ready to upgrade their servers to Windows 2003. Of course, that doesn't mean it won't work on Windows 2000, but if Remedy Support won't answer your calls, it doesn't matter.

At the same time, the new version offers many benefits. Quite a few common customizations are now "out of the box". For example, I have added an "Internal/External" feature to Pre-Defined Summaries and Solutions for many clients, allowing them to mark some summaries and solutions to be used only by the Support staff, and others to be available to the public. This feature is now out of the box in the new Knowledge Database, formerly known as Solutions.

Work Log, everyone's favorite field, has undergone a huge transformation. No longer is it a Diary field that, once updated, could never be changed. Now, each work log entry is stored in a separate form. You have the option of editing work log entries, and marking them internal/external. For myself, I've often created a "requester-visible" work log so that clients could keep their internal work log separate from requester updates. So this will be a great addition. Plus, being able to edit work log entries means an end to embarassing eternal spelling mitakes. However, this move from Diary field to a separate form does present a problem for upgrades - how to migrate those Work Log entries? There were similar dilemmas moving from Audit Trail as a diary field to Audit Trail as separate form, when moving from 5.6 to 6.0.

Stayed tuned to this blog for more of my thoughts on the newest version of the product formerly known as HelpDesk!