“SMART” Reporting for HEAT

We recently conducted a webinar demonstrating the functionality and features of SMA’s Report Toolkit for HEAT (SMART). If you had the chance to join, THANK YOU!

If you couldn’t make it, you can click on the SMART image below to see a ‘2 Minute Tour’ of  how SMART can help your organization retrieve valuable information from your HEAT system.

HEAT Flirting with ITIL Standards? Say it isn’t so!

As ITIL becomes more of a standard, some of you have come out asking how you can make HEAT work closer to those standards.  The answer is, we can show you how to get really really close.  If you have a new system, like with zero miles on it, the process is painless.  But if your system has been around for a while and has seen more turnover than an India-based call center, then you’re gonna need to sit down.  Let me pour you a drink.

The concept is involved – don’t get me wrong.  However let me steer you in the right direction.  First think about the main components we can quickly ID.  Incident, Problem, Change.  Ask yourself, “How do I identify these records in HEAT?”  The answer is to add a layer or two before your call type structure.  So you’d start by identifying the HEAT ticket… Problem, Change, or Incident?  Then from there on, you’d follow your call type structure. 

The process of adding a layer above your current structure will be an involved task – you’ll need to carefully consider your current call type structure.  You might need to break things up and re-categorize everything.  And if you do that, what happens to existing tickets?  Will it even work with existing call groups or autotasks?  What about HSS?  Some serious questions there.  We got ‘em covered.

What about the parent-child relationship between problems and incidents, or changes to problems?  No problem!  HEAT 9’s new ability to link multiple incidents to other HEAT tickets is easy.  Call us to find out how.

We’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly and can help by saving you time (and some doe ray me)… so give us a call and feel around on how we can help.  I am certain you won’t be disappointed.

Had a chance to “Test Drive” the HEAT Survey tool yet?

There’s no better way to check out HEAT Survey, a new module that’s free to HEAT customers on maintenance, than to give it a “Test Drive.”

When I checked out the one minute sample survey our staff put together, I felt how smoothly the tool “handles.”  Try it, and you’ll even get a link to view the results at the end of the survey period!  

Click to take your own HEAT Survey Test Drive.

iHEAT vs. WebUI….LET’S GET IT ON!!

In the red corner, weighing in at a unnecessary 65MB, requiring additional licensing, KO’d by countless Microsoft patches, the one, the only… iHEAT!  And in the blue corner, an app with a clean title, a newcomer light on its feet leaving no footprint that can go all day long… the quick, the fast…WebUI!

Okay, let’s put the drama behind us and talk about these two products.  But first, let me address those who ask, “What is iHEAT?”  iHEAT is an application that essentially turns your server into a metaframe service.  A HEAT user (technician) would either log into a web site and install a thin client, or run Call Logging through a metaframe.  This technology would often break when Microsoft pushed an update to a shared iHEAT video component, leaving those paying customers in the cold… no pun intended.

So let’s ask, why use or switch to WebUI?  The title suggests a comparison study, but let’s drop the study.  I’m implying that iHEAT is without a doubt inferior to WebUI.  Many reasons, but the most settling is the fact that it does not require any type of client to install onto your technician’s computer.  It uses IE 7 or higher, Google Chrome and even Firefox.  On the back end, it installs and uses a hardened version of Apache web server, giving you a stronger product, not vulnerable to other updates.  Finally, WebUI is free, and comes with HEAT, whereas iHEAT requires a separate iHEAT license.  Shall I go on?

Before you rush to get it, remember, it requires HEAT 9.0 or later and you’ve got to be on maintenance.  Since WebUI is completely web-based, you might have some autotasks that call programs, write to files and perhaps send emails that may not work.  There are workarounds, and that’s where we can come in to help.  We have experience to rewrite most of those autotasks to work correctly if you choose to use WebUI.  Other functions like attachments, etc. work very well.

So what are you waiting for?  (I hate ending sentences with a preposition…)

Use That Calendar Function!

Calendars here, calendars there… “Calendar what?” you might ask.  Yes.  Calendar functions.  I figure while you begin counting how often I say the word calendar in this post, I’ll have some time to tell you a thing or two about HEAT’s ability to follow a calendar.

Out-of-the-box, HEAT quietly sneaks in a couple of calendars; Helpdesk and 24×7.  You may have seen them.  The first is set up to be open during typical business hours, and the other is wide open.  A calendar or “Hours of Operation” in HEAT is actually a very useful function.  Once you set up your calendar of choice, your possibilities become endless, er, almost endless. 

You can have autotasks run based on the calendar – (Button can only work within business hours).  Another example might be to have your BPAM rules escalate tickets or send emails in or around a calendar, because no one likes getting low priority text messages at 2AM right?  Finally, you can even run reports that calculate duration times based on those calendars, to get more realistic numbers. 

So get to work!  Take a fresh look at your calendars right now by going to the Admin tool.  Dig around in the system drop-down and find that neat little guy and let the imagination run wild with calendars.

Fourteen BTW.

Default Values

Tell me what you’re feeling, well, about default values in key fields within your HEAT system.  I personally am not a fan of them.  If fields have default values users tend not to change them.

Let’s take the example of the source field on the Call Log screen; here we are trying to get an idea as to where this incident came from, what was its reporting source (i.e. a phone call, email, or a network monitoring tool.)

If the source field has a default value of phone, but users are entering numerous incidents received via email and choosing not to update the source value, this will cause your trending reports to be incorrect.  You may completely miss this new trend and not react accordingly, all due to a default value.

What are your thoughts?

Groundhog Day

Do you ever get the sense that you wake up on certain days, go to work and feel like your repeating the same day of your life over and over again?

This is often the case for those lucky employees responsible for manually compiling and emailing reports on a daily, weekly and/or monthly basis.  It’s a thankless and time consuming task that you probably thought you were going to do just once, until management really liked the reports, and made it “just a small part of your job responsibilities.”

The first bit of good news is that there are solutions out there, such as SAP BusinessObjects and Microsoft’s SQL Reporting Services, that help with this exact scenario.  They can take these repetitive and time consuming tasks and significantly reduce the manual effort to almost nothing, besides the upfront initial investment.

The second bit of good news is that these solutions are extremely easy to calculate the Return on Investment (ROI) on.  You know how much time you spend on performing these tasks right?  And you certainly know how much your time is worth.

Get rid of that DeJa Vu feeling and regain some of your otherwise valuable time.  I’m sure you will find another challenge to rise to the occasion to.

To Assign or to Not Assign?

Over the years, I’ve run across customers who don’t use the assignment tab, and many whom do.  From this, I’ve sort of developed a rule a thumb.  Kind of like a methodology, if you will.  Now, this rule of thumb is simply a self-proposed best practice that applies to both sides.  Take it or leave it (but I hope you take it).

First let’s ask, “Why in the world would someone buy HEAT, and not use the assignment tab?”  Some customers who don’t use this tab have a very simple workflow, and really don’t need it.  Their workflow normally consists of opening and closing a call on first contact, or opening and only needing one assignment.   Therefore, if no assignment needs to be made, don’t use the tab.

“What about all of the functionality behind the scenes, like the escalating BPAM rules, etc?”  Good question and again, sometimes it’s not necessary.  However, you may be a group that uses HEAT to its fullest potential.  You require multiple assignments, escalation patterns based on the customer, priority, calltype, and time.  So, it’s in your best interest to use that tab like it’s 1999.

“So how ’bout that rule of thumb?”  Oh yeah, the rule of thumb…  To put it in the most pure and unalloyed way, I say use the tab and it’s functionality if you have to pass the same call record around more than 10% of the time.  Easy rule right?

-rr

SAM and Eggs

What do Software Asset Management (SAM) and eating breakfast have in common?

For starters, both are activities that I enjoy more with a cup of coffee!  But both are also important factors to you AND your organization’s health.

Just as I am bad about eating breakfast every day, Software Asset Management (SAM) is one of those overlooked and undervalued initiatives by organizations. I say this because I don’t usually hear clients in need of help to implement a SAM strategy until AFTER they get a letter from the BSA ( www.bsa.org ) or one of the other software compliance groups like the SIIA ( www.siia.net ). Once legal proceedings have begun, the situation can turn into a swift spreading wildfire across departments scrambling for paperwork and purchase receipts needed to prove compliance was in effect BEFORE they got the notice. Once you have skipped breakfast, your stomach doesn’t usually rumble its message of regret until mid-way to lunch.

Tracking software installs and monitoring for usage can do more than avoid compliance penalties. It can improve the health of your company finances through improved budgeting and planning.

SAM is something positive that companies should start practicing early so they can refine the process and be ready to face changes. But SAM can also be stressful, to say the least, and more expensive when you have to rush.

In a webinar I hosted recently for SMA, I talked a lot about how SAM best practices can benefit many teams in organizations of any size. I also presented some research from Gartner stating that,

” Enterprises that implement software usage monitoring capabilities will achieve savings of five to twenty-five percent in the first year.”

How could having 5 – 25% more budget help your company?

SAM helps improve your overall IT Asset Management strategy. It can reduce the time it takes to support your end users by nearly 50%, help make rolling out new applications less costly and make future planning take less time!

So what is holding you back? If you have a SAM process in place, what advice can you add for those just getting started?

HEAT Messaging Center or Auto Ticket Generator?

If you’ve gone to HEAT 9 or are thinking about it, you may have seen or heard about a new module included called HEAT Messaging Center – aka HMC.  HMC is a product of people like you wanting more from ATG.   “Wait… how can it be a product from the people?” 

Remember the old saying, “Fill out an enhancement request?”  
FrontRange actually listened and it’s nice to see them build a product that does what their customers ask.  So let’s get back to HMC.  What does it really do and how can it help you?

HMC is like ATG, but on steroids and other performance enhancing drugs.  Now add a brain and you get a superior product.  “A brain?”  Yes… a brain.  Think about it.  ATG, what does it do?  It really only takes emails or files and creates or updates tickets.  Like a ‘dumb’ receiver.  HMC is a whole new beast that conditionally evaluates what comes in, then performs even more actions than just create and update tickets.

Like what you might ask?  Well I’ll tell ya.  Along with said actions, you get the ability to create or update a profile and even a config record.  Cool right?  As something comes in conditionally, you can do the other stuff and create or update a profile or config record .  Sweet!

“Makes sense, what else can it do?”  This is another favorite of mine.  The services run asynchronously.   Meaning if one service listeners fail (e.g. pop3, Exchange, Lotus Notes, GroupWise, text, xml, web service), the other listeners keep running until the failing listener automatically recovers, whereas ATG would simply fail, and wait for you to restart the service.  The best part is that you can place these listeners all over the network for load balancing purposes – as many as you’d like for redundancy!

So what would I do if I had to choose between the two?  I’d dump ATG.  “Hold on!  I have a complex ATG setup, can I migrate?”  The simple answer is there is no way to import old ATG definitions, but we can help you get started… and fast!  Either way, HMC is an excellent tool to replace ATG.  It works very similar, but soooo twenty-first century.

-rr