New Features and Enhancements

The key features of this release are enhancing the user experience, introducing process improvements and more configurability.

The highlights include introduction of global search capability on the work item board, location based contextual group assignations, SMS sending capability from incidents, CMDB update validation in change management and flexibility to create custom questions for service offerings.

The scope of this release extends to foundation, asset and configuration management, consumer portal, incident management, problem management, assignation management system (AMS), change management, work item board, task management, service board, notifications and SX Hub.

Foundation
S.NO Features Added
1. The introduction of input validation in the phone number field will ensure that the user’s mobile number, business phone and contact phone attributes are entered in the correct format based on the chosen country code. This will help in avoiding manual errors while entering the phone numbers in foundation.
Asset and Configuration Management
S.NO Features added
1. The icons on the left side tray have been moved to the right-side section thus making the icon display consistent with the rest of the asset and config board UI. This consistency will help in searching and accessing the icons intuitively.
2. The introduction of assigned-to field on the CI form ensures that the end user who is using the IT asset gets tagged to the IT asset or CI correctly.
3. The configuration of resolution category and subcategory for service CIs in the CMDB will help support users in selecting the correct cause and type of incident from therelevant list rather than having to search through generic resolution categorization.
4. The earlier provision of defining the chain entities (groups owning fulfilment activities on those CIs) in the CMDB while creating CIs is no longer available. This will encourage catalog managers to define the assignation in the AMS basis of CI classes and sub-classes instead of individual CIs. This will help to save the time spent on updating the chain entities for each of the CIs in case of any group change.
Consumer portal
S.NO Features Added
1. The introduction of the knowledge center link on the portal will allow users to directly access knowledge without further sign-ins.
2. The catalog manager now has the flexibility to configure custom questions apart from the predefined questions for standard change and report issue (incident) offerings. This will help in capturing company-specific inputs for incidents, and standard changes which will help in improving fulfilment, compliance, and analysis.
Incident Management
S.NO Features Added
1. The ‘Through’ field will now allow users to select integration (e-bonding) or Walk-In as the source of the incident. This will help with the correct marking and reporting of incidents based on their origins.
2. The introduction of ad-hoc SMSs in the incident module will now allow support users to send notifications on the updated status of incidents or any other information to the relevant users, stakeholders or elevated support. This functionality uses the SMS gateway subscribed by the recipient of the messages. This will allow support users to send ad-hoc communications at their discretion, ensuring no communication is missed.
3. The resolution payload for incident tickets raised through an e-bonding integration will now also include the incident closure notes along with the resolution category, sub- category, type of fix and resolution notes. This will result in faster and correct synchronization of incident closure data between multiple systems with enhanced transparency and auditability.
4. The activity log in the child incident form will now be updated with the resolution notes copied from the parent incident. This synchronizes parent and child incidents such that the status of the child incident changes depending on the state of the parent incident. This will help in improving the traceability of child incidents.
Problem Management
S.NO Features Added
1. Problem managers will now have the flexibility to change the RCA technique during problem investigations provided there is a change in the approach of the investigation team requiring a new RCA. This will ensure that the RCA technique is appropriate for the problem investigation.
2. Problem managers will now be able to view additional details (such as name, email id and employee id) of support users while forming the problem investigation team (PIT). Additionally, an information icon would be displayed against the users so that the problem manager can click on that and view more details about these users. This will help them in selecting the right teams for the PIT.
Assignation Management System (AMS)
S.NO Features Added
1. The capability to classify groups based on their function such as IT support group or facilities support group etc. will allow configuration of location-based contextual routing for assigning tickets based on the location of the support teams. This will improve the accuracy of the assignation leading to faster fulfillments.
Change Management
S.NO Features Added
1.

The introduction of a checkpoint in the change management process through a CMDB update task triggered after the completion of implementation will ensure that the configuration CI changes are also updated in the CMDB.

This will remove unauthorized changes thus leading to accurate and reliable CMDB.
2. The introduction of a functionality to allow users to cancel the change in draft status will provide users with the flexibility to reconsider and cancel the change if it is no longer required.
3. The CAB date functionality can now be edited by the change managers for any changes to the CAB date that may have arisen due to rescheduling of the dates or change in impact. This will ensure that the dates are quickly updated as per requirement.
4.

Once a change request is submitted by the support user, the change schedule (start date and end date) will become un-editable. This will ensure that the change request is considered for approval as per the defined schedule and associated risks.
5. The introduction of Task type will now allow users to select the purpose of the task while creating an ad hoc task for change requests.
Work Item Board
S.NO Features Added
1. The introduction of information icons in fulfillment, incident, problem, change, problem and tasks records will enable support users as well as end users to click on the icon for accessing information such as roles, email address, phone, company, location and manager details. This will help them in making assignations and take other actions that require explicit user information.
2. Introduction of the 3-character search on the work item board will now allow support users to apply the company filter for searching records without having to enter the full company name.
3. The Service CI column will now be split into two columns i.e., Service name and CI name. This change will improve data presentation in the list view.
4. The introduction of Global search functionality in the work item board will allow users to search for the relevant fulfillment, incident, problem, change and task record based on the work item id. The results will be visible in ‘All’ tab for managers while all the other users will be able to view the results in the ‘Assigned to my groups’ tab according to their entitlement. This will help in increasing the efficiency of the search results as they will be relevant to the users.
Task Management
S.NO Features Added
1. The ability to capture the reason for canceling any fulfillment task will ensure that such information is available for auditing or reporting purposes.
2. Creation of task plans while creating or deploying the CIs is no longer mandatory. Although, it should be ensured that this activity is performed when using change management or during submission of changes for these CIs.
Service Board
S.NO Features Added
1. Now catalog managers will be able to configure up to 200 comma separated values for service offerings in the look-up list on the ordering information section. This will provide a comprehensive selection for users to search and select correctly from the list while creating a request from the ‘provide information’ section.
2. As an extension to the contextual routing capability introduced in the assignation management module, the default contextual rule will now be available for selection from the list of rules on the service item details page. Also, while creating the fulfilment plan for a service offering, the catalog managers will now have the option of choosing either the AMS rule or the contextual assignation rule. This will help in increasing the accuracy of the assignations, leading to faster fulfilments.
Notifications
S.NO Features Added
1. The default notifications will now be available for each of the companies in the multi- tenant environment from day 1 for faster onboarding of customers.
SX Hub
S.NO Features Added
1. Users will now can view the password in outbound connections UI while configuring the source address. This helps to ensure that the correct password is entered into the connection while the outbound integration is being configured.
2. Now admin users will have the option to delete outbound connection records from the outbound connections page after confirming that the integrations are no longer required. This will help to avoid deletion of records associated with active integrations by mistake.

About SX

HCL SX offers a unified marketplace for enterprise services fulfilled by best-in-class service management practices.

Support

For product-related inquiries, please reach us at support.dryice.ai@hcl.com