HP used the forum of HP Software Universe 2010 in June to educate its customers on the next release of its Service Manager product, version 9.2. From HP: "HP has put a fresh face on its enterprise strength HP Service Manager (SM) software application, and initial customer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Customers are excited about this new version of HP SM because it helps IT be more efficient than ever before. Specifically, its end-to-end solution automation increases service performance and agility and the product now offers an improved user interface which greatly enhances service desk agent productivity and control."

Techport'ers Take in HP Software Universe 2010
L-R: Joe Clark, Mac Bullock, Emily McMullin

Highlights of the release include:

• Web 2.0 user interface, with a significant web client performance increase, for superior operator efficiency.
• Enhanced end-to-end solution automation for Change, Configuration, and Release Management (CCRM) and Closed Loop Incident Process management (CLIP) drives higher service agility.

HP SM 9.20 is actually an extension of the SM 7.x family (and thus a simple upgrade). It was re-numbered from 7.20 to 9.20 to reflect how tightly it integrates with the new releases of HP Universal CMDB 9.0, Release Control Analysis 9.0, and other products in the HP BTO portfolio. Version 9.2 also earned OGC Certification in nine ITIL v3 processes, just as Service Manager v7.1x achieved. HP SM 9.20 is available for purchase now.

Techport already has v9.2 installed and running in a demo environment. If you would like to see the new release, contact your Techport representative for a demo. For more immediate information on SM 9.2, please view the release notes or the compatibility matrix .

AlarmPoint Systems officially changed its name on June 1st to xMatters in order to better reflect what they do – delivering what matters at the time it matters. xMatters is still doing the same type of work as before; only now they’re helping entire organizations become more aware and responsive by helping them connect people, processes and information.

Their market-leading alert management solutions are still being offered, but they now deliver what are called relevance engines as a complete IT Service. You’ll recognize their first relevance engine, called AlarmPoint. It knows what you need to know, it finds you and it blocks out everything you don’t care about so you can act.

For Techport clients using AlarmPoint today or considering adding it in the future, a good question comes to mind: Will AlarmPoint go away? The answer from xMatters: "No. AlarmPoint was our first relevance engine and it’s here to stay. We have hundreds of businesses relying on it day in and day out. We are continuing to invest in its core capabilities of mass personalization, which helps you deliver what matters, when it matters."

To learn more about why the name change occured, please [read more].

...that Folder Entitlement in HP Service Manager allows an organization to segregate data thus controlling who can see whose interactions, incidents, changes, and/or requests?

For example, an organization may have multiple departments such as human resources, facilities maintenance, IT, etc. The entire organization may use Service Manager to track interactions and incidents for the different departments. However, these departments may deal with sensitive data or simply may not have a business need to see each other’s ticket information. Folder Entitlement is a viable solution.

To activate Folder Entitlement:

1. Go to "System Administration > Base System Configuration > Miscellaneous > System Information Record", and enable Folder Entitlement (found under the General tab). When you enable Folder Entitlement, you will see the “Folder:” field display on the forms for interactions, incidents, changes, configuration items, etc.
2. Determine how many "folders" you will need to separate your data. Hint: You may need to build distinct folders for each applicable module with Service Manager if you plan to share certain data differently across modules’ profiles. You may decide to have a set of ICM folder and another set of folders for SD, IM, CM, RM, etc.
3. Add these folders to the FolderDef table ("System Administration > Ongoing Maintenance > Security Folders")
4. Determine who can see whose folders of data for each module, and set up your profiles accordingly. Folder management is facilitated by each module’s user profiles. For example, a self-service (ESS) profile may be able to see all the services for Facilities, Human Resources, and Information Technology so that they can open interactions to all three areas. Therefore, the self-service profile would have an ICM profile with access to all three folders. You could define your services for each department and place them in the appropriate folder. Yet, your ESS users would be able to report on any of those services. For the different departments’ agents taking calls, however, you may only want them to select from the services in which they support. So, their ICM profiles would reflect folders only applicable to their department.
5. Lastly, define the default folder for a Service Manager user in his/her operator record. If you opt to have ICM folders separate from your other modules, the default folder should reflect the folder used for SD, IM, CM, RM, etc. This user’s default folder will be reflected on the records in which he/she created/opened. Some tailoring would be required for ESS-generated (self-service) requests in order to determine the appropriate folder in which to place the request. Or perhaps, you could place those requests in a folder shared by all profiles and when the appropriate agent selects the request from the “Self-Service Interactions” queue, the folder is changed per the agent’s default folder.

As information, Folder Entitlement is an extension of Restricting Queries in Mandanten. When you specify a folder in a profile, you will notice that a Restricting Query is generated for the given profile.