Keys to a Successful ITIL Implementation using HP Service Manager
July 22, 2009
Keys to a Successful ITIL implementation using HP Service Manager 7
ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) is a set of best practices used to implement and govern the processes for Service and Support. HP’s Service Manager application provides ITIL compliant, out of the box processes in each of its modules. The level of adherence and integration with ITIL processes may vary by module. All of the modules meet a minimum ITIL compliance level.
This does not mean that the out of box delivered application can just be dropped into an organization and suffice to support the business. Each organization has its own unique constraints and needs, which need consideration when implementing any Service Management tool.
HP’s Service Manager application provides an excellent template for implementing Service and Support within the enterprise. What makes some implementations so much more successful than others? How can you guarantee success when implementing your Service Management application?
- Carefully review the out of box provided Service Manager application and individual modules
Invest the time in taking a test drive of the whole application. Review and compare the differences between out of box processes versus your established ones. Itemize those key activities that the application performs satisfactorily as well as those that just do not work within your framework.
- Demo the entire application.
Even if you do not plan to implement all of the modules, see how the modules interact and interrelate with one another. Identifying and learning key elements of each module facilitates building your own processes.
- Look forward
Don’t make the mistake of re-building the application you had yesterday. Business needs change and planning for change and growth up front enables you to have a more robust and dynamic application.
- Hold process review meetings
Before doing any tool tailoring, develop focus groups within the organization to review the existing out of box processes and perform a GAP analysis against your process. Make sure the process meetings are effective by:
- Knowing the needs of the organization
- Invite the key SME’s from different areas across the organization
- Provide a published agenda with desired objectives and outcomes for each meeting
- Set up rules for resolving disagreements. The most amount of time wasted in meetings is in resolving deadlocks.
- Perform a GAP analysis of the out of box tool against the desired processes
- Identify all areas where the out of box tool can support your desired processes. Would the out of box tool be able to be used or can the process be tweaked to meet the tool? Or is custom code required to support the process.
- Document your processes. Include all the actors, inputs and outputs used in each process.
- Leverage ITIL and tool specialists that can help guide you through the process review
- Identify key data
It is important to identify key data that will be used in the tool and in your process. Service Manager has some “critical” data that supports all modules in the tool. Planning and establishing good criteria for these will make for a smooth road during your implementation.
- Contact.name – The contact.name is probably the most critical data component in Service Manager. Contact.name is used universally throughout Service Manager. The contact.name must be unique. It should not contain special characters that are interpreted as wild cards by the back end database.
- Services – Identify the services that are supported by your organization
- Categorization structure – Identify what types of issues are reported and supported by the organization. The perfect time to review and implement a new categorization is during the implementation of Service Manager.
- Configuration data – What types of configuration items does your organization use? Do you use an effective way of organizing them? Can your items be dropped into an established structure such as the one HP Service Manager provides? Is there other information that your organization needs to track that is not provided out of box?
- Develop Access Profiles – Identify the different types of users within your organization. Document who has access to what types of data. Is there data or fields that should be locked down? Document these up front.
- Review your Impact, Urgency and Priority matrix. The out of box provided matrix follows ITIL guidelines. Use that matrix if able.
These key data criteria are items that apply globally. There are other criteria that apply to single modules, such as a Service Catalog, or Change Categories that should be identified if you are implementing those modules.
- Plan and document your notifications
Identify all of the notifications and conditions that require notifications to agents, users or approvers. Document these conditions before trying to implement them. Avoid over-notifying users. Excessive notifications may cause a reduction in compliance and ignoring message content.
- Build a good foundation
Start by implementing a clean and well developed system. It’s important to build efficient expressions that can support not only your current system, but future growth as well. Use experienced developers in conjunction with your current team. Make sure you know up front what you want before you start.
- Don’t be afraid to paint outside the lines
Service Manager “out of box” is representative of a general implementation. The out of box behavior is not meant as a one size fits all, but rather provides a good foundation on which to customize and build your Service Management solution. Out of the box and Service Manager Change Management should not be considered, as the out of box are examples of how Change Management could be used. The provided out of box will not give an organization the end to end process that is needed to support Change Management.
- Perform an ITIL review of your system and processes
Will your developed process and tool conform to the ITIL guidelines? Is your system well documented? Are the controls clearly identified?
By following these recommendations, your Service Management solution will be clean and support your business process. Your tool should always support the business process. Avoid building the process to support your tool as there are likely to always be shortcomings in the tool or process that will cause non-adherence.
Erratic Behavior for the ServiceCenter ESS Web Client
July 9, 2009
Erratic Behavior in the HP ServiceCenter 7.1 ESS Web Client
ESS (Employee Self Service) in ServiceCenter provides a functionally slimmed down version of the full web client. The ESS web client is designed to give the ESS users a way of opening tickets to the Service Desk and checking the status on those tickets. Several situations were noted where the ESS client was not behaving correctly. These resulted in a client crash or other internal failure in ESS.
Examples of the bad behavior include:
- The ESS mail URL (for an ESS client) does not work as expected
- Record lists with one record in the open or closed records causes the ESS client to crash.
In our affected system, the “New Thread: -> List” option in the Service Desk profile record was enabled for the ESS profile. Since the ESS client does not support threading, this option causes the ESS client to behave with unpredictable results. By turning this option off, we were able to resolve both of the issues above. It should be noted that these are just a few examples of the behavior exhibited in one example. Other errors in ESS could also potentially be connected to this same issue.
StrataCom presents: HP Service Manager 7.1 recorded demo
July 1, 2009
HP Service Manager 7.1
StrataCom has a new recorded demonstrattion of HP Service Manager 7.1. Have you…
- Been wondering what is new in HP Service Manager 7.1?
- Been thinking of upgrading/re-implementing but you want to see SM7 first?
- Have you been wanting to see a demonstration but not deal with a scheduled call?
All you have to do to watch the video is go to our Gotomeeting site, supply your name/email, and you can watch it at your leisure.
(You may have to install the codec too – it’s linked on that page).
Thanks – and enjoy!
Service Manager 7.1: Migrate vs. Re-implement
June 29, 2009
Migrate? Re-implement? Upgrade?
Service Manager 7.1 is the latest release of the ServiceCenter line. Both internally and externally, there are many structural changes in Service Manager. If you have previously been on ServiceCenter and used its’ proprietary P4 database, the P4 database does not exist in any form on Service Manager.
The choice and the decision to re-implement reside with the business. However, there may be factors that will sway an organization from one side to the other.
Choosing the Path Right for You
Look at the age of your original implementation.
Has your application been repeatedly ported from one version of ServiceCenter to another and now you are finally looking at Service Manager? If your organization is upgrading to Service Manager from a version older than ServiceCenter 6.x, there may be huge benefits to gain from a re-implementation. With each release, the base implementation is improved and continually aligned with ITIL. There are also many backend infrastructural improvements that occur from release to release.
Look at the business processes that support your implementation.
While those processes may have been first class when you first implemented your Service Management solution, do they still support your organization as desired? Have you gone through and re-designed your processes to align them within the ITIL framework? Has your tool taken over driving your business processes because the implementation is too complex? Does your solution support the entire enterprise or just one portion of the users within your organization?
If you answered “No” to any of these questions, your organization would benefit from a structural re-alignment of the business, business processes and the tool.
Contact/Operator Integrations into HP Service Manager 7 Part 1
June 25, 2009
In Service Manager, personnel information is one of the most important pieces of information that needs to be entered into the system. Maintaining clean information that is synchronized from a single source is crucial. Operator information is important for the entire application, as it controls who has access to the software and also ties to profile information dictating what each logged operator can do. Contact information needs to reflect valid details on a reported tickets.
There are a two primary ways to integrate and import data into Service manager:
Service Manager text delimited file import:
- Pros:
- Can be run on a schedule
- Swift import time
- Data can be manipulated automatically using internal SM functionality
- Easy to configure
- Default configurations are available as templates
- Cons:
- Requires that the delimited file be stored at a specific location accessible by the Service Manager server
Connect-It:
- Pros:
- Can run on a schedule or continuously or ‘real time’
- Swift import time
- Data can be manipulated easily with the application
- Easy to configure
- Can read from many sources (XML files, text files, direct database or application direct)
- Cons:
- Requires additional purchase of the Connect It application and access to required connector types (ODBC, Service Manager, Asset Manager, LDAP, etc)
- Manual configuration is required; there are no OOB scenarios for contacts or operators
Connect-It establishes a client connection to the Service Manager server through a listener and information is routed bi-directionally through it. Connect-It is specifically designed so inbound information must go through Event Services. The input event log file is called eventin. Data passes to Service Manager in a character string using a delimiter character to separate fields.
There are many ways that this application can access the data required. Connect-It can connect directly to an application such as LDAP (Active Directory), connect directly to the database tables holding this data using an ODBC driver or read in from a produced document (XML, CSV etc).
Configuring Event Services requires the creation of an Event Registration record along with a corresponding Event Map record. The Event Registration record identifies information about the event being processed, such as:
- Action to perform on this record (add or update)
- What file will this event act against when processing
- The event map associated with the fields to be updated
- Query to identify the unique record to be added or updated.
The example below shows the Out of Box operator Event Registration record. This is an input event registration which receives operators from outside sources. $axces is a variable that exposes the event record details. $axces.fields is a variable to the field that contains the input mapped fields as a delimited array string.
ServiceManager Event Registration Record for Operators
In Part Two we’ll finish this process
Contact/Operator Integrations into HP Service Manager 7 Part 2
June 25, 2009
This is Part Two. Read Contact/Operator Integrations Part One first.
The map identifies each individual field that will be moved from it position in the map to the identified field in the target file. Event Services is very flexible allowing data to be controlled before the data is mapped into the target file, after the data is mapped into the target file and even allows for the data to be mapped into multiple files as part of a single event. In the case of updating contacts and operators, the event can first map the information to the contact file, and subsequently add or update the operator there. Using Event Services in conjunction with a format control record, imported data may be manipulated to produce the result needed to complete the import of this data.
Service Manager Event Map for Operator
The import of operators becomes more complicated due to the need to associate these records with profiles and groups allowing access to Service Manager functionality. These groups and profiles can be imported with the data from the source if they are known, defaulted or determined based on other criteria coming into the system.
Once all these elements are created and configured, Connect-It will process the data on the defined schedule and add or update records into Service Manager. The scheduling of this data will depend on the amount of data that will be new or updated in the source or sources and the need for this data to be added or updating the Service manger database.
~Kim Euker, StrataCom
Categorization in Hewlett Packard’s Service Manager 7.1
June 24, 2009
Categorization in Service Manager
In the Service and Incident modules, categorization is the most important piece of information applied to a ticket. Categorization allows the tickets to be subdivided, organized, reported on, and allows for unique workflow by type. Whether you are upgrading, implementing, or just configuring Service Manager 7.1, careful attention to categorization will greatly increase the product usability.
Categorization
In Service Manager 7.1, categorization changes from a four-tiered Category, Subcategory, Product Type and Problem Type to a three tiered Category, Area, and Sub Area. The underlying fields have not changed and the fourth categorization field remains for organizations that still need it. The difference in Service Manager 7 is that the categorization tree applies to a Service Area and Configuration Item. These are now segregated from the categorization and allow the Categorization to be more specific to the affected service.
- Category is the highest level and reflects the overall area that is affected
- Area (or Subcategory) subdivides the category into a more granular view of the affected area
- Sub Area (or Product Type) is commonly used to house CI information or the actual item that is affected
Problem Type is no longer a required part of the categorization tree. This field can be optionally used to describe the primary symptom being reported.
This structure is very integrated into the Service Manager product and the categorization structure can provide support for:
- Driving alerts and notifications
- Providing a centralized view to which items are having Service Interruptions
- Automatic assignment to a particular group
- Automatic severity assigned to certain items
- Providing a good standard for reporting and metrics
If your organization does not currently have a formal categorization structure or your organization is not utilizing the methodology supported by Service Manager, it is a good idea to review that structure and implement a new categorization scheme for Service Manager.
There is no one perfect structure for categorization. This is why there is no “published” categorization. No one method will work for all organizations. A financial service desk will want to track different information than an internal support service desk. The trick is finding a balance between under-categorization and over-categorization.
If your categorization structure is under-categorized, it won’t offer enough choices and will not enable your organization to recognize and identify trends and provide predictive problem analysis. Likewise, a categorization structure that is too granular will leave an agent lost in the web of details, unable to make a clear choice between selections.
While designing a categorization structure, there are some good design principles to follow:
- ITIL recommends limiting the top level category to approximately 5 to 7 selections. Beyond that number, it becomes far too complicated to categorize incidents in a timely and efficient manner
- Whenever possible, place the failed component (item) at the same level in the structure. Typically, this is the Sub Area field. Knowledgeable agents are able to use this field to abbreviate their search and be more efficient in the categorization of their incidents.
- Maintain standardized lists of problem types. In many cases, the same types of problems are reported across the enterprise. By maintaining a more common list of problem types, agents are able to quickly and efficiently categorize incidents
Good categorization is extremely important to the enterprise in being able to enter and report on incidents. As noted above, categorization drives the alerts and notifications, automatic assignments and provides a foundation for reporting and metrics. The larger and more diverse the organization is, the more important good categorization becomes.
Best Practices
There are some Best Practices and Good Practices to follow when categorizing issues: These include:
- Do NOT over-categorize
- Review categorization frequently and remove unused categorizations
- Use controls when adding categorizations (Review and Approve)
- Avoid the use of “Other” as a category
- Review the usage of Generic “Catch-All” categorizations over time and add new categorizations as required
- Categorization should describe the symptom of what’s wrong, not provide the solution
How to get started structuring your Categories? A good idea is to hold categorization workshops. Set up a comfortable environment with white boards and refreshments and invite a few of your major stakeholders. Avoid inviting too many people to the workshops. Make sure that your selection of users is diverse and represents people across the enterprise.
Make certain to allow enough time for the categorization workshops. If your time frames allow, set aside a few days of dedicated meeting time for the task. Always have a moderator present who is willing to work through any conflicts that arise. Also, it’s an excellent idea to have a scribe present to take notes and detail the work provided in the session.
After development of the categorization structure, allow time to take a test drive using actual tickets and agents. Get their feedback on what works and what doesn’t. At a minimum, they will feel engaged and involved in the project.
Lastly, if you have an existing structure, you will have to provide a bridge to re-categorize old items into the new structure. A good idea is to have a single lookup table with the old categorization fields and the new categorization fields in the same record. That way, the old categorization in a ticket may be looked up and automatically swapped to the new categorization when there is a clear path from the old to the new.
The Categorization Structure within Service Manager is extremely valuable to the overall Service and Incident modules within Service Manager. It is a good idea to avoid, wherever possible, breaking the inherent functionality provided by the tool and to require all pieces of the structure. It may seem painful at first, but the rewards are well worth it.
~Kim Euker, StrataCom
StrataCom Managed Services
May 9, 2009
HP ServiceCenter / HP Service Manager Managed Services
Have you funded costly certification and training for your staff only to have that knowledge wiped out overnight by the reality of employee turn over? Do you want to see real results from the additional features of upgrading to a new version? Our certified staff has all the HP ITSM expertise you need.
Growing and maintaining HP ServiceCenter or HP Service Manager
expertise takes both time and money – both of which are in short supply in today’s economy.
StrataCom’s Managed Services can help you..
- Cut costs and make them predictable
- Free up precious IT staff for other duties
- Offload difficult systems maintenance
- Make upgrades simple, predictable, and effective
- Reduce training budgets
When you invest in a Managed Services option from StrataCom, you can choose which services you want, including:
- Administration and Development
- Back Ups
- Dedicated team of certified Developers
- Performance Tuning
- Application Hosting Available
- Patching and General Maintenance
Our Managed Services offering will benefit your organization by
- Lower total cost of ownership (TOC)
- Increased IT budget flexibility
- No Training Costs
- Complex Questions or Issues are met with high level expertise
- No Certification Costs
- No Employee Turnover
- Autonomous Managed Services; 100% Reliability
Want to know more? Please contact us.
You can also download a PDF of our Managed Services offering.
ServiceCenter to Service Manager upgrade services
May 7, 2009
Are you planning on upgrading from HP ServiceCenter to Service Manager?
If this task is in your future StrataCom has the solid expertise to help you.
It’s what we do. All StrataCom’s consultants are highly skilled within the HP ServiceCenter arena. As long-time HP partner we complete numerous
ServiceCenter to Service Manager upgrades every year. This is done either at your site or remotely at your site – whichever makes more sense to you, your project, and your budget.
Our are are well-versed on the processes of upgrading this system. This valuable experience will enable you to be up and running
smoothly in a timely and efficient manner.
And after the upgrade is finished we can help you further. The following services are available to all of our clients for their future Service Manager plans:
- Remote Administration
- Business Process Consulting
- Upgrade Services
- Integration with Third Party Systems
- Ongoing Customizations and Enhancements
- Gap Analysis Efforts
- Managed Services
Please Contact Us for more information. We’re happy to help.