New Features and Enhancements

The key features of this release are enhancing the usability of various modules in SX and native crowdsourced knowledge management and reconciliation engine.

The highlights include introduction of alternate groups in contextual search, improvements in approval, Global search on edit pages of various modules and watcher functionality.

The scope of this release extends to approval, change management, CMDB, consumer portal, foundation, Hub, Incident, Knowledge, notification engine, problem, SLA, SPCM, TMS and work item board.

All


S.NO	Features Added
1.	The introduction of global search capability on the work item board will now allow the users with fulfillment, incident, problem, change user or manager roles to search for work item records based on work item ID, Requestor email id, Requestor employee id on the Create/Edit Item pages. This will provide flexibility to search for tickets based on a single criterion or a combination of multiple criterions for granular search capability.
2.	The introduction of tags-based search capability on the UI for multilingual offerings will allow end users to search based on their preferred language, thus enhancing their user experience.
3.	The addition of the 'Alternate Group' to supplement location and CI based Contextual group configuration will help in making the Assignment Rules more comprehensive. This will ensure that the tickets are not orphaned in the absence of CI or location as they will be assigned to the Alternate group where contextual assignation is not applicable.

Approval


S.NO	Features added
1.	With the Refer back button configured in the Approval section of the change edit form, approvers will not have to navigate to the My Approvals UI for the refer back action. Also, approval action buttons such as approve, refer-back and reject will get highlighted while approver is responding to the request which will help to draw their attention to the actionable items.
2.	Configurable approval reminder frequency so that customer can configure approvals based on their process and policies.
3.	Approval history to be captured under approvals so that users can view the thread of approvals that were already completed on their requests.
4.	Introduction approver cannot be requester policy.

Change Management


S.NO	Features Added
1.	The approval section of the change work item board will provide the flexibility to add additional approvers by the logged in approver.
2.	Now change initiators will have to enter the company name, impacted CI and requester name while creating or editing a change requests. This will ensure display of the support groups associated with these attributes thus ensuring change request and tasks are assigned to relevant groups.
3.	Improvements in change plans such as: Increasing the character limit to 2000 characters for comprehensive description. Label for files to be updated to File name instead of file type. Plans are now viewable after draft status throughout the change lifecycle. And download attachment included to view the attached plans. Plan type document shows the values that are not yet created. For already attached plans, these plans are shown in view mode only and Date/time stamps are displayed along with created by.
4.	Introduction of advanced risk assessment in change where multiple business and technical risks can be associated with the change. Score is calculated based on Probability, impact and confidence. Risk type, category, description and control measures can also be documented alongside each risk.
5.	Provision introduced to submit a latent change request in which backdated schedule is also allowed so that unauthorized change requests can be recorded for compliance.
6.	On cancellation of change, related tasks get auto-cancelled instead of change task assignee having to cancel all the tasks manually.

CMDB


S.NO	Features Added
1.	The CI classes ‘Application System’, ‘Cluster’, ‘Computer System’, ‘Disk’, ‘IP Address’ will now have the option to select ‘Others’ under category, resolution category, and resolution sub-category. This will help in reducing inaccuracies in categorizing CIs.
2.	CMDB class attribute are now non-editable and duplicate attributes are cleaned up
3.	The introduction of the three-character search on the Service Asset and Configuration which will enable fulfillers to quickly find all the related CI and assets by just entering the first three letters of the company.
4.	A new input type column has been introduced for configuring attributes on CIs according to field types such as dropdown, textbox, datetime, multiselect. This will provide the flexibility to capture attributes in the correctly. For example, multiselect fields can be used for capturing asset compliance based on multiple industry standards like ISO, PCI etc.
5.	The ability to add attachments to CI records will allow app admins, config admins and config managers to associate relevant documentations with CI.
6.	Ability to view, add and edit CI category and CI based resolution category from the category board.
7.	Audit log will now capture technical attribute change also to improve traceability of Configuration on CIs.
8.	Base class is no longer visible on CI as base class acts as a container to capture a template of attributes that are common across different classes. Hence, different classes are derived from the base class.
9.	Show external attribute section on CIs to enable information visibility in case of integration.
10.	Restrict adding/deleting attachment at end status to ensure the integrity of CI record.

Consumer portal


S.NO	Features Added
1.	The length of service offering name on consumer pages has been restricted to prevent distortions in the UI and provide end users with a uniform experience.
2.	Attach file button is now hidden for requesters on my request page if the status of the ticket is cancelled, closed, rejected, fixed and fulfilled. This is to ensure the data integrity of the records is in place and no updates are done on tickets on terminal statuses.
3.	Configurable questions are now visible on incident work item, standard change work item and incident work item order now page.
4.	On the offering Details page and Order now page the SLA Details and Delivery Time are now removed to eliminate the ambiguity in reporting estimated time to resolve to end user.
5.	Introduction of On Behalf of (OBO) functionality where support users who is part of a support company that is associated with a consumer company can raise the request on behalf of a consumer company requester after switching to OBO mode. The support user can also view the catalog of the selected consumer company user to submit the request on a service offering.
6.	The configuration of the Default User Preferences on the User creation page will now allow new users to log in for the first time to view the featured and most popular offerings instead of a blank home page. This will allow them to get started and start using the offerings, thus improving the user’s experience.

Foundation


S.NO	Features Added
1.	The search capability on Foundation has been enhanced with the introduction of additional email and username filters, making it easier to search for user records.
2.	The introduction of the Multilingual Support field on the company create/edit page with the options ‘Enabled’ and ‘Disabled’ will provide admins with the flexibility to control display of multilingual offerings as per their requirement.
3.	"Password" marked as "Nonmandatory" in payload while uploading user data in Foundation
4.	The introduction of company-based priority matrix table will provide customers the flexibility to configure the priority matrix consisting of various parameters such as urgency and impact. This will allow the API to fetch the information and calculate the correct priority based on the priority matrix set by the customer.

Hub


S.NO	Features Added
1.	The introduction of APIs to get the count of tickets for the criteria such as scenario, transaction start date, transaction end date, and status will provide the necessary visibility for faster debugging of issues.
2.	Outbound Attachment for PM Integration where attachment is also sent along with problem ticket.
3.	User defined question/Answer - incorporated in HUB database for e-bonded Change Request and incident.
4.	Now in case of incidents created from via external systems such as Moogsoft, the payload of the outbound incident response generated by the Hub will also include the Item ID.
5.	Correct sequence of Status update in IM module, when multiple updates for same ticket are picked up by the scheduler at the same point of time.

Incident Management


S.NO	Features Added
1.	The permission mapping for group re-assignations has been modified for service desk and incident fulfillers. This will allow the service desk to pull incidents and reassign to any other group, but incident users will be able to re-assign the incidents to other groups only if they are assigned as per AMS.
2.	The permission mapping for incident (Priority upgrade/downgrade) has been modified so that users with both critical incident manager and service desk roles will be able to change the urgency as well as the impact of the ticket.
3.	The permission mapped to service desk user for incidents has been modified to enable them to perform updates on incident tickets. However, they will not be able to accept or reject critical incidents which will be performed only by the critical incident manager role.
4.	The payload of incidents created through integrations will now contain the CI and the contextual AMS Rule ID for routing the work item to the support group associated in the CMDB for the respective CI. This will help in extending the contextual AMS capability to incidents created through integrations.
5.	The incident review functionality has been extended to non-critical incidents thus enabling incident users and incident managers to access and fill the incident reviews.This does not impact the existing critical incident review for critical incidents.
6.	The Email notification triggered to support users upon change in status of incident ticket from ‘On-Hold’ to ‘In Progress’ /will now display the previous status for support user to know that it has transitioned from the "On Hold" to "InProgress" state. This will provide support users with information on the previous ticket status thus allowing them to take an informed decision while fulfilling the ticket.
7.	The introduction of the Resolution Notes text box on the incident ticket will allow fulfillers to provide the details of the fix provided for the respective Incident. The same resolution notes will also be displayed in the Activity details section and sent via email to requestor or assigned support group. This will help in documenting the exact solution provided for the incident for auditing purposes.
8.	The incident status is changed back to assigned from on hold, once the response is received from the customer on tickets that are pending for awaiting customer response. This will ensure that the actions on tickets are resumed quickly.
9.	Flexibility to create user defined questions on incident form to capture additional information.
10.	Response SLA is now not attached again on re-opened incidents or incidents with priority change during the lifecycle of the incident.
11.	Field added on incident to capture the resolution time. This field will indicate the time from incident creation to the time it was fixed.

Knowledge Management


S.NO	Features Added
1.	Introduction of Native crowdsourced knowledge management capability for community assisted knowledge.

Notification Engine


S.NO	Features Added
1.	The introduction of multilingual fulfillment and consumer notifications in German language will help in notifying customers who have chosen German as their preferred language.
2.	My Request link is now provided on incident and SR email notifications so that users can access the appropriate record to find more information related to the ticket for which the notification is sent.

Problem Management


S.NO	Features Added
1.	A problem ticket with status ‘Under Investigation' will display the following two actions in the hamburger menu: Root cause Identified - clicking on this would change the status to ‘Root cause Identified.’ Withdraw Investigation - clicking on this would change the status to ‘Closed’ with ‘Closure reason’ to be captured in Activity journal and respective notification as ‘Investigation Withdrawn’. This will allow the problem manager to log the problem as a residual risk where investigation is withdrawn due to business reason.
2.	Problem tickets with status ‘Root Cause Identified’ will now have a new ‘Corrective Action- Not Implemented’ action item in the hamburger item for changing the status of the ticket to ‘Closed’ and recording the reason for taking the action. This will help in providing an audit trail for the closure.
3.	Upon creating a problem from work item board or proposing a problem from incident/change and saving the ticket, the ticket status will be displayed as ‘Draft’. Only problem with display status as ‘Draft’ will be movable to ‘Under Review’ by clicking on the ‘Submit for Review’ option under the hamburger menu.
4.	Problem tickets with the 'Under Review' status will now display the following three actions under the hamburger menu. Qualify as Problem - clicking on this would change the status to ‘Under Investigation’ Disqualify as Problem - clicking on this would change the status to ‘Closed’ with ‘Closure reason’ to be captured in Activity journal and respective notification as ‘Disqualified’. Cancel - clicking on this would change the status to ‘Cancelled’ (after entering ‘cancellation comments) This will benefit problem manager to quickly change the status and account disqualified and cancelled problems.
5.	The role-based/field-status permission mapped to Service Desk Role (Problem/Change) has been modified so that the Service Desk User Role would only be able to perform the following operations: View WIB (Records of my company and associated companies) View Problem View Change Relate Work Item Post/View comment in Activity Journal All other operations would be made available only in 'View' mode.

Reconciliation


S.NO	Features Added
1.	Introduction of native reconciliation capability to identify and match entities from different data sources and generate accurate dataset.

SLA


S.NO	Features Added
1.	Once the SLA status has been changed to an active or inactive state it cannot be changed to draft stage.
2.	The flexibility to specify the groups who will be notified in case of SLA escalations for fulfilment/Incident/Problem/Change will help in communicating the breach to the groups responsible in a timely manner.
4.	The introduction of Business Criticality under SLA attributes will allow fulfillers to link it to the relevant CI while creating Incident/Problem/Change records from their respective work item board. This will ensure that the correct SLA gets triggered based on business criticality.
5.	The introduction of related SLAs link on the work/holiday schedule page will allow fulfillers to quickly find the relevant SLA for unlinking it with the work/holiday schedule before removal. Earlier, it used to take time and effort to find the relevant SLA before deleting the work schedule.
6.	The introduction of three-character search on the AMS and SLA Board makes it possible to return all the associated companies without having to type in the name in full thus making search more intuitive for fulfillers.
7.	Support company introduced as attribute in SLA definition to be able to define support company specific SLA.
8.	Functionality to be able to define SLA pause conditions based on hold reason to accurately capture SLA progress.
9.	SLA listing has been updated for service offerings such that when hidden SLA is selected, the SLA section is not visible on the offering. Also, only the SLA specific to the offering are listed on the Service Board instead of Generic SLA.
10.	Add/Edit SLA on service board opens the SLA details in the separate tab so that user does not have to navigate again to service details.

SPCM


S.NO	Features Added
1.	The header section of the edit button for 'Language Activation' under service details was blank. Table Header given for language activation edit column
2.	On the Service Board the offering name input length to be restricted to 120 characters on the UI (while creating new or editing old) offering for better UI alignment on catalog.
3.	The introduction of a dynamic data source typeahead field on the provide information section for service request offerings will help in fetching the asset details such as asset type, asset model, location and asset class from the CMDB. Once the ticket is submitted, the asset information will also be displayed in the ticket.
4.	In the Service Board, the offerings will now be displayed in descending order of their creation and updated dates considered together. This will ensure that the newly created and copied offerings are shown before the ones that are modified.
5.	On successful copying. of an offering via the copy offering feature a message to confirm that the action has been performed successfully should appear. Currently when an offering has been copied, it simply redirects to the main offering edit page without any message, user then closes the edit page to search for the copied offering to see if the operation was done successfully.
6.	Translation for display text is also visible on provide information section for any offering which was not getting translated earlier for user’s preferred language.
7.	Attribute creation is not mandatory for translations in offerings where attributes do not exist for the base language. Earlier, this was mandatory which created ambiguity while creating offerings with language translations.
8.	The creation of core or optional components is now restricted for incidents and standard change offerings as incident management and change management are core service management processes and driven by specific process policies.
9.	Functionality for catalog managers to be able to add templates in the form of attachments to capture supporting information/documentation related to the offerings. This template/document is downloadable for the users from offer details page.
10.	Visibility of sections for incident work item type optimized so that only relevant information is visible on the incident form.
11.	Fields such as short description, display text, service disclaimer and approval disclaimer that require comprehensive information are now available on the form as rich text so that users can apply text formatting for better legibility.
12.	Datetime and Calendar type fields now have an option to be restricted on the basis of date range.
13.	Urgency values are now visible on the incident form as per the prioritization policy defined for consumer company.

Service Request


S.NO	Features Added
1.	Once the SR is on hold due to pending customer action, and the customer updates the notes, the SR status is now changed back to in progress. This will help the support team to quickly reinstate the fulfillment process.
2.	Fulfillers will now be able to reopen the requests on behalf of users so that fulfillment is done according to requester requirement.

TMS


S.NO	Features Added
1.	When the resolution code and method values are updated in the parent ticket, they will now be propagated from parent tickets to their children automatically. This will enable the fulfiller to take informed action on the ticket based on the captured resolution notes from the parent ticket.
2.	Creation of sequential ad hoc tasks is now restricted in assigned status so that it does not impact the planning of fulfillment for the request.

Work item board


S.NO	Features Added
1.	While making any group changes in D2C forms, the reason for re-assigning the ticket to a different group needs to be mandatorily captured in the ‘Group Reassignment Reason’ field. This will help to trace back the reason for re-assignation while auditing.
2.	While putting any ticket on hold, 'hold type' is captured either in audit log or in activity journal. This will help support teams to identify the correct reason for putting the tickets on hold (like Awaiting Vendor action, Awaiting client response, part replacement etc.)
3.	The introduction of Global Search capability on the WIB page allows any user with Fulfillment/Incident/Problem/Change user/manager role(s) to search work items on Fulfillment/Incident/Problem/Change modules using Requestor’s Email Address OR Requestor’s Employee ID. This will help in locating the ticket quickly.
4.	The ability to remove attachments will allow fulfillers to remove documents that have been attached by mistake and need to be removed for compliance. This feature is not available for documents attached by other fulfillers.
5.	The multiselect filters on the WIB for Task/Incident/Fulfillment/Problem/Change will now have the following functionalities: Option to select all or unselect All options under the column filter The API call will be made to apply the selected filters only on click of 'OK' to prevent extra http request. Filter would be closed on clicking cross button. This will provide fulfillers the flexibility to search for tickets using any of the search parameters configured in the multiselect filters.
6.	UX changes on work item create and edit page - Typeahead improvisation for information shown in drop downs of consumer- Requester/service name/Impacted CI
7.	Introduction of watcher functionality where users can add themselves or any other user as watcher so that they also receive timely updates on the tickets. This feature is available from both WIB edit mode and list view.
8.	The filters applied by the users are now retained on WIB so that if they close the ticket from edit mode, they navigate back to the records in the same order and filter.
9.	User contact card along with information icon is now shown on activity log also.
10.	Standardization of form breadcrumbs for effective navigation of different modules.

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