Serio IT Service Desk & Helpdesk Blog

SerioPlus has now moved to the next stage of testing. If you’ve been given an invitation code you can sign-up and login at the link below to take part.

http://www.seriosoft.com/passport/newpassport.htm

• SerioPlus now Live

To celebrate the launch of Serio IT Service View Pro, Serio will be holding a Plugin writing competition during July, August and September 2009.

We’ll be awarding a winning prize of USD$400 and a runner-up prize of USD$200 for the most useful, original and best thought-out Plugins submitted.

Background: IT Service View monitors IT Services & computes Availability statistics by means of Plugins – these are monitoring packages written in SerioScript that have published Properties and Responses defined by the Plugin author. Plugins can access WMI and SNMP data, read files, access Performance Counter data, read web pages, analyse web page content – and in this way verify the state of different IT Services.

This is what the judges will be looking for, and the criteria on which Plugin entries will be judged:

1. The Plugin covers a product or service not covered by one of the current Standard Plugins.
2. The Plugin covers a product or service in reasonably widespread use.
3. The Plugin works reliably.
4. The Plugin is easy to use, by sensible use of Properties and Responses. There should be no need for users to change the Plugin code to make it work.
5. The Plugin has a clear description telling you what it does, and how to use it. If the product or service being monitored requires any special set-up, then the description will tell you this also.

Closing date for submissions is September 30th 2009.

Terms and conditions of Entry

Entries must be submitted by email to competition@seriosoft.com.

Plugins must be exported and supplied in exported form, as attachments you your entry email.

If you’ve used any MIB files that are not supplied as standard in IT Service View, you must include these in your entry email.

Correspondence of any kind will not be entered into regarding the competition.

The entry email must be entitled ‘Plugin competition’.

The decision of the judges is final.

You must have a Paypal account in order to accept the prizes offered – no Paypal account, no prize. Any fees deducted by Paypal will be made from the prize money.

You may submit more than one entry. However, each separate entry must be submitted in a single email – do not submit multiple entries in a single email.

By entering, you agree that we may place your Plugin onto a Community Plugin webpage for download by others.

If you create a DLL to be used as part of the Plugin, you must supply full source code for the DLL and instructions on how to build (or supply the project files).

Winners must supply the following information about themselves for publication: Name, Nationality, Country of Residence, Occupation – so that we can publish the winner’s details.
By taking part in the Competition, you warrant that any Plugin supplied is your own work, and does not breach the copyright of any individual or organisation.

Prizes are non-transferable and there are no alternatives.

All taxes, transfers, insurances, and other expenses resulting from the prize are the sole responsibility of the winners unless otherwise stated.

Failure to claim a prize within the time or in the manner specified may result in disqualification and the selection of an alternative winner.

The competition and these rules are governed by Scottish Law.

It is your sole responsibility to ensure that your details and e-mail address are accurate, and that Serio is informed of any changes to these. Serio accepts no responsibility for any changes which are not properly notified from the time of submission of your entry to the time of notification that the prize has been awarded.

As some of you are aware, we’ve recently (as of Friday) relocated to new offices here in Livingston. BT’s technology doesn’t seem capable of allowing us to keep our old telephone numbers even though we’ve moved no more than 2 miles to Uphall Station, so we now have new telephone numbers which are:

Tel: 01506 438855
Fax: 01506 438868

Sorry for the break in posting, everyone here has been focusing hard on Serio Release 5. It’s looking pretty good and will be released on Monday.

The Release 5 website is here.

• Serio Release 5 – Now that the Dust has settled a bit…

This is an update to the earlier Release 5 post, with more information about new features.

Firstly, the new PocketSerio-i application is available for anyone that wants it on servers hosted at our offices in Livingston (in other words, there is nothing to install). PocketSerio-i allows you to action Incident and Changes (and amend the CMDB) through a web browser on a PDA. It supports any browser, so if you can browse the Internet through your PDA then you should be able to use it just fine. It’s designed for the very small screen and low connection speeds that PDAs typically have.

Things you can use it for a sending emails to customers through Serio (so they look and feel just like any other support email), making re-assignments and resolving tickets.

We’ve also added a single-line Issue Summary field to the logging form, so that you can add a pithy description to each Incident, Problem and Change you log. You can then add this to the subject line of emails you send to customers (which helps remind them what the email is about).

One area in which there has been a lot of Change is Known Errors. Previously, customers devised their own way of recording Known Errors – usually by means of Agent Status A or B.

This will still work just fine in Release 5, but we’ve brought the Known Error concept more directly into the tool. There is now a Chapter (under Tools) called ‘Known Errors’ which lists each and every Known Error in Serio, helpfully showing the Known Error Description and Workaround together.

As part of this, we’ve also extended the popular Service Status HTML web pages with Known Error pages – whenever you add or remove a Known Errors, these pages are updated.

Creation and deletion of Known Errors is now done directly via Action Extensions created specifically for that purpose. When creating a Known Error, you set the Known Error Description (which is defaulted to the ticket description, but can be amended independently) and add the Workaround details – and that’s it.

And one final thing, we’ve made it so that you can view Incidents, Problems and Changes all together in your queue if you wish.

• Defining Known Errors
• Serio Release 5 – Now that the Dust has settled a bit…
• Serio Release 6 – Sneek Preview

As some of you are aware, we’re currently working hard on a major upgrade to both the Serio Helpdesk and Serio Service Desk lines, which we are planning to release in the next quarter (although a firm release has not been set yet).

Currently the changes list details some 40 amendments, some big, some small.

The ‘big-ticket’ items relate to web access and web functionality.

PocketSerio-i

The first of these is PocketSerio-i. This is a browser-based piece of software that complements our mobile product line by allowing you to:

Manage Incidents and Changes
Manage Items

from a handheld, mobile device. We’ve been quite careful with what we assume that the host browser is capable of (ie, it doesn’t need to be the latest and greatest Internet Explorer version, or even Internet Explorer at all), so it should run on a wide-range of hand-held devices that have an ‘always on’ internet connection.

This product doesn’t replace PocketSerio, it complements it. PocketSerio is still good for users that need a download/work and edit/upload model where no persistent wireless internet connection exists.

PocketSerio-i however is aimed at mobile engineers performing site visits to resolve problems, and those performing on site inventory checks and reconciliations where the engineer has an always-connected device. PocketSerio-i actually been around for some time, but Release 5 will be the first time we’ve bundled it with the standard distribution.

For the technically minded amongst you, PocketSerio-i is an ASP.NET application that uses SerioServer in the same way as the other Serio applications do (in other words, it’s a another client using the same business object layers).

As soon as we’ve sorted-out a few hosting issues, you’ll be able to obtain access to this over the web. Simply contact support, letting them know the exact model designation of the mobile device you are using, and the type of wireless connection you have, and we’ll send you the access details once we know them. The system will be connected to a simple database we’ll set-up for you.

SerioClient-i

Although this won’t replace SerioClient, at least in Release 5, it will allow customers to log Incidents, Problems and Changes over the web, as well and manage Incidents, Problems and Changes. It will certainly allow you to log new tickets, and to place Actions on them (for instance, so make assignments, send eMails, or record resolutions).

Like I said, the plan is not to replace SerioClient immediately but to offer SerioClient-i as an alternative for off-site working.

There are other enhancements due as well. I’ll post about these at a later date. Release 5 will be available to customers with a current (active) support plan.

• Serio Release 5 Update – PocketSerio-i and Known Errors
• Looking forward to the next release

In today’s post, I’m going to introduce you to SerioScribe, Serio’s screen customisation tool for both SerioClient and SerioAdmin.

Naturally, we’ve put a lot of thought and research into the design of our screens, and if you’re like many of our customers, you’ll probably find that you don’t ever need to change them.

That said, specific reporting or management requirements occasionally require people to, for example, put additional fields to the logging form. At other times you might want to: streamline forms by hiding fields you never use; adjust the tabbing order according to your data capture process; move fields around; change the labels on fields to conform with your organisation’s terminology or to change the use of a field; disable fields to prevent certain users from modifying them, or make others mandatory; change colours/fonts or add special instructions; remove menu options in SerioClient.

A Word of Warning

Don’t hack your screens to pieces, hiding fields you just haven’t happened to use yet, and leaving the others higglety-pigglety. Also remember that Serio uses industry standard ITIL terminology, so think carefully before changing it. Customisation is like a drug for some people – remember: less is more!

Example

Each Incident received by the Service Desk at WXYZ PLC relates to a particular project. All the projects generate the same types of calls, and WXYZ have set up Problem Areas and Cause Categories to reflect these. As a reporting requirement, they also need to be able record the project code against each Incident. They decide to add a custom lookup field (Project) to the logging form for this purpose.

How to do it!

1. If you don’t already have it, install SerioScribe – it’s an option in the setup program in the main ‘Serio’ folder from your Serio software.

2. Choose ‘File’ > ‘Login’ to log on to SerioScribe – you can use the same login as you do for SerioClient.

3. Open a new Screen Explorer from the ‘File’ menu.

4. Look under ‘Screen Sets’ in the explorer pane. Most Serio installations have at least one Screen Set already set up (usually ‘Default’). If you don’t have any, right click on ‘Screen Sets’ and create one.

5. Expanding your screen set, you see that it’s divided into SerioClient and SerioAdmin screens. Using multiple Screen Sets, you can create different customisations for different groups of users, but most users only need the one.

6. Expand the ‘SerioClient Screens’ and select ‘Incident Logging’. At this point, you’ll notice there’s another Incident Logging screen called ‘Incident Logging (Incident Management)’. This latter version of the screen is used when you are view Incident details after logging, through ‘Manage’ > ‘Incidents’. The ‘Incident Logging’ field is shown when logging new Incidents. In this case, we want to apply the change to both versions.

7. At the bottom of the ‘Incident Logging’ form, you’ll see the custom ‘Lookup 1′ field. Right click on the label, and choose ‘Properties’. Change the text of the label to ‘Project:’, and make the label visible.

8. Now right click on the (white) data entry field, and make it visible – also set ‘Must complete:’ if necessary. Switch to the ‘Lookup’ tab page of the properties dialog, and set the Windows Title, Left Column Title, and Right Column Title to ‘Projects’, ‘Project’, and ‘Project Description’ respectively.

9. We’re not going to use the blue read-only description field to the right of the custom lookup 1 field this time, so leave it as it is. Drag the label and lookup field, e.g. to the convenient gap between the ‘Impact’ and ‘Received’ fields.

Tip: You can multiple select using Shift+Click, and align your selection using the ‘Control’ menu.

10. Turn on the ‘Show Tabbing Order’ from the ‘Control’ menu, and sort out the order that your new field will be tabbed to.

11. Make the same changes as above to the ‘Incident Logging (Incident Management)’ version of the screen.

12. While you’re adding your Project field, you might want to make sure it appears correctly elsewhere. You can have it as a column in the Selected Incidents field. To set the title of this field to ‘Project’, follow the instructions in the help in SerioScribe. In the help, turn to the ‘Contents’ tab page and see the topic: ‘SerioScribe Help’ > ‘Common Customisation Tasks’ > ‘Changing the Issue Monitor Column Headings’. The column headings you need to change in this case are ‘Issue Lookup 1′ and ‘Issue Lookup 1 Description’.

13. You can also set the name on ‘Issue Selection Criteria’ screen for selecting Incidents. Select this screen in SerioScribe – you’ll notice it consists of a number of different ‘pages’. Scroll right down to the bottom – the Custom issue lookups are shown on the third page from the bottom.

14. Ok, now you need to make sure that users can see your customisation. In SerioAdmin, open a New Serio Explorer from the ‘File’ menu. Expand ‘Agent’ and select ‘Profiles’. Open up your profile and look on the ‘System’ page. Make sure that the Screen Set that you have been working on in SerioScribe is selected where it says, ‘Customise the Agent screens using the following screen set’. Apply the same change to the other Profiles.

15. While you’re in SerioAdmin, you can define your ‘Project’ codes. Do so by expanding ‘Issue’ and selecting ‘Custom Issue Lookup 1′.

16. Log out of SerioClient and then back in to see your changes!

In order to increase the range of content available on this blog, we are creating a new category – Technology. We’ll be publishing articles to this category on a regular basis, alongside our existing ITSM and Serio product posts. We hope you find the new posts informative and useful.

Jackie, blog admin

• New Search Facility on this Blog

Just a quick word about the various information resources we offer to customers, and information about where product documentation is located.

Product Documentation – Serio HowTo

Product Documentation (including documentation on SerioClient and SerioAdmin) is not available on the web. This data is for customers, and you’ll find it distributed with the product. Both general use and administration information is contained within the HowTo guide. You can access this from any machine with SerioClient or SerioAdmin installed, either by pressing F1 or by using the Start menu.

Serio Website at seriosoft.com

This contains general product overviews, key features and the blog. The blog contains articles about IT Service Management and articles about the product. These product articles are created to supplement what is in the HowTo guide and offer ideas to customers for additional areas of functionality they can use. It also offers us a place where we can announce upgrades and enhancements.

Support website at serio-support.com

This contains troubleshooting knowledgebase articles, and our support portal you can use to log and progress Incidents. This website is for customers with a valid support contract only.

Regards, Jackie – blog admin

from everyone at Serio, to all of our customers, blog readers and RSS subscribers, wishing you the very best for 2007.

Jackie, blog admin

• Happy Christmas & New Year from us all!