SAManage IT Management Blog

Today, in response to frequent requests from our users, we are launching a complete revamp of the system’s views and reports. The new reporting capabilities will allow you to:

1. Create new reports in each part of the service (inventory, contracts, help desk and all other areas)
2. Use multiple criteria and filters within each report (for example, you can report on only those laptops running Windows XP in the New York site)
3. Modify, delete, and rename reports, or organize them based on your specific preferences
4. Select a default report for each section of the service (for example, make “my active and overdue tickets” the default report in the help desk area)

These new and improved reports empower users with greater functionality and control than ever before, allow them to access and analyze important information about your assets in an almost unlimited number of ways.  For example, they can rapidly build and execute custom queries, filter and sort the information contained within reports, and much more.  This enables them to more efficiently and effectively manage your assets, and makes it easier for them to uncover the important patterns and trends that impact the performance and value of your technology environment.

Each report can be saved and exported to a variety of common formats including CSV, PDF, HTML, or RSS/atom feed.  So, users can email reports to peers, import them into other applications, save them for future reference, or print and distribute them.

In addition to the expanded reporting capabilities, we have redesigned parts of the user interface to better support these new features, and to make it easier to navigate through and locate critical asset-related information. As always, your feedback and ideas help us to make continuous enhancements to our system, so please let us know what you think and what further improvements you’d like to see.

We have launched a number of user interface changes to make it easier to navigate through and locate critical asset-related information. As always, your feedback and ideas help us to make continuous enhancements to our system, so please let us know what you think and what further improvements you’d like to see.

Enhanced table usability

We made changes to the table’s header and separated the module’s main actions (such as creating a new ticket or exporting data) from the header to highlight these actions. The table’s header is now organized around the activities relating to the new reporting capabilities – selecting, creating or modifying reports for each module, where the area above each header is dedicated to action in that module. Here is an example:

Enhanced actions on assets

There are many actions you can perform on various places in the system, from tagging assets to modifying their status or assigning them to individuals. We made it easier to see the areas you can modify with the addition of the new edit mark. Here are a few examples:

The new asset details page is another example:

We strongly believe this enhancement would make it easier to use our IT management service and provide a more intuitive user experience. As always, let us know what you think and how we could further improve!

For most companies, IT service management is critical to keeping the systems that employees and/or customers rely on performing at peak levels at all times.  Therefore, ensuring that related IT service desk processes are efficient – for example, that issues are addressed and resolved as promptly as possible – is of the utmost importance.

The SAManage SaaS-based IT management system offers a variety of features designed to enhance IT service desk operations, and to help IT service management teams to do their jobs better.  These capabilities allow staff members to interact directly with the end users who are reporting problems or requesting services provided by the IT team, and automates the execution and tracking of key tasks. This, in turn, offers significant benefits, including:

• Improved communication and collaboration between IT professionals and those they support
• Accelerated issue handling and resolution and streamlines IT support processes
• Increased productivity of IT service desk workers and other stakeholders throughout the company
• Reduced support costs

How does SAManage enhance IT service management?

SAManage IT service management capabilities provides a facility that automates the routing of certain types of support incidents to specific individuals.  The requester selects a ticket type when they are creating a new request (note: these ticket types are fully customizable).  This lets the system know who the request should be assigned and distributed to.  For example, a technical problem would be immediately sent to a technician working the IT service desk, while a request for new software would be routed to someone in purchasing.  This helps speed up response times by ensuring that the right people are designated to handle each and every ticket.

Additionally, businesses can set up multiple email drop boxes – one for each ticket type.  So, for example, acquisition requests would be sent to acquisitions@acme.com and forwarded to the acquisition drop box.  New acquisition requests would automaticly get assigned to members of the procurement department who could then respond to each accordingly.  Or, requests for software or hardware installations would be sent to installations@acme.com, a support drop box that might be overseen by certain IT service management professionals.

But, most importantly, SAManage provides a direct line of communication between those who open tickets, and those who handle them.  When a ticket is created and routed, the IT professional receives an email alerting them of the new issue.  They can then simply reply to that email to ask questions, or gather more information from the end user.  Responses to those questions can also be sent via email.

With SAManage, organizations can dramatically improve service to end users by streamlining and enhancing their most vital IT service management processes – making issue handling and resolution faster and more effective than ever before. Visit our Website to learn more about our solutions for IT service management, as well as our powerful SaaS IT asset management tools.

Online IT Management and Help Desk Software

Discover how on-demand IT Asset Management and Help Desk software from SAManage can help you gain instant visibility into your assets and improve your service levels.
Sign up for a free trial of SAManage.

More and more companies are adopting software usage policies – formal, documented sets of rules and guidelines that let users know what software packages are authorized, and how they should be utilized and managed.  With a software usage policy in place, organizations can gain greater visibility into and control over their software stack, as well as all software-related activities, such as how applications are requested, installed, used, upgraded, and maintained.

A software usage policy is a critical part of any IT asset management strategy, providing dramatic benefits for the companies who implement them.  For example, software usage policies can:

• Reduce business risk. Formal software usage policies help facilitate effective software license compliance, digital rights management, and other types of initiatives aimed at adhering to contracts and legal guidelines.
• Optimize technology performance. The enforcement of software usage policies can enhance the performance of IT assets by eliminating bandwidth issues, excessive network traffic, and other problems caused by mis-use of approved applications, or use of illegal or unauthorized ones such as peer-to-peer file sharing programs.
• Enhance security. By dictating how remote access tools, and other solutions that minimize or hinder security can be utilized, a software usage policy can help keep PCs and other assets protected from viruses, spyware, malware, and other malicious programs.
• Improve end user productivity. When employees use games, chat, or other similar unauthorized, their efficiency can be seriously impacted.  Implementing a software usage policy, and enforcing it via automated software asset management tools, can eliminate use of these types of programs.  This helps to ensure that staff members are always focused on performing their jobs.

Companies who leverage an automated solution, like SAManage, to manage their software usage policy can ensure continuous adherence to all rules outlined.  For example, the software usage policy capabilities within SAManage allow firms to implement and enforce enterprise-wide usage standards, and quickly detect policy violations.  So, they can take immediate corrective action by removing unauthorized software, to keep their entire IT infrastructure – and the people who use it – secure and performing at peak levels at all times.

Visit our Web site to learn more about our software usage policy solution, part of our robust, innovative SaaS IT management system.

Online IT Management and Help Desk Software

Discover how on-demand IT Asset Management and Help Desk software from SAManage can help you gain instant visibility into your assets and improve your service levels.
Sign up for a free trial of SAManage.

samanage-helpdesk-iphone

The need for mobile help desk software functionality is becoming increasingly urgent, and SAManage can empower your help desk technicians to be more productive and efficient – even when they’re on the road.

Over the past several years, the mobile workforce has expanded to include everyone from executives to IT teams.  Today’s IT support professionals now travel more frequently, or are based out of satellite offices, to best support the needs of the end user base.  But in order to ensure that they can always rapidly handle service requests and stay on top of support issues, no matter where they are, they need automated help desk tools that are fully portable.

Web-Based Mobile Help Desk

SAManage offers a wide array of mobile help desk capabilities, allowing IT support professionals to easily and efficiently receive, respond to, and track tickets via Blackberries, iPhones, and other popular mobile appliances.  With powerful, yet convenient features, companies can create a true mobile help desk by allowing team members at remote or off-site locations to use any mobile device to:

• Receive immediate notification through email alerts when new support requests are created
• Correspond and collaborate with users about open or pending service requests
• Request additional information from users, to clarify issues and facilitate faster resolutions
• Review issues in progress and retrieve asset configuration or history of changes

Activating Email Notifications

Activating the mobile help desk capabilities within SAManage is quick and easy.  Simply enable email access on your mobile device, using the address already linked to your SAManage account, to get email notifications when new help desk tickets are assigned to you or when a new reply to a ticket was received.  Or, if you’d like to create a unique email ID specifically for your mobile device, you’ll just need to make sure that you re-set the default email assignee in SAManage to the new email address.

Use Your Phone’s Web Browser

Additionally, you can use your phone’s Web browser to utilize the SAManage IT management service by navigating to https://app.samanage.com.  Login to your account to access your help desk.  This allows you to not only leverage the help desk capabilities, but to access other areas of the SAManage service, such as computer and software inventory, the contracts repository, and detected risks.

Visit our Web site to learn more about our mobile help desk features, as well as our other SaaS IT management solutions.

SaaS-based IT Management Software

Discover how SaaS IT Management software can help you gain instant visibility into your assets and know exactly what you have.
Sign up for a free trial of SAManage IT Management service.

SaaS is rapidly disrupting an area of the enterprise software business that is frequently overlooked – the customer advisory board.  A customer advisory board is made up of an ISVs best customers, who help review future product roadmaps and provide valuable feedback and input on planned new features and enhancements.

Why the Traditional Customer Advisory Board (CAB) is Broken

Having spend a portion of my professional career working in large enterprise software companies, I have seen, firsthand, that the customer advisory board is in many ways broken. While intentions are good and the concept of the CAB itself is useful, there are many key issues:

1. Forgot Bob? - We all have budget restrictions, so when you are planning to fly customers in and wine and dine them, you can only afford to invite a very limited number. You would likely choose your VIP customers, leaving “little Bob” out, and taking away his opportunity to participate and influence the future of your product.
2. Is it the right Bob? - CAB meetings are a nice little perk (especially when held in warm and sunny places), so you’ll often find that company management, instead of the user that has day-to-day experience with your product, will attend. Yet, a CAB can only be productive when attendees can provide real insight and feedback on your product, something that those who don’t use it frequently are unable to do.
3. Infrequency- Most companies hold CABs on an annual basis, while others host regional meetings multiple times a year. Neither approach is a methodical, frequent process that is built into the organization’s DNA. To make CABs productive they have to be an ongoing process that both sides are committing to.
4. Long delivery cycles - Perhaps one of your customers came up with a really great idea that you want to incorporate into your product plans. A traditional enterprise software vendor would go back to the development center and make it a priority in the release after the next (the next release is already closed for changes).  This means that, in many cases, the customer won’t see that great new functionality for at least a couple of years, which might make it obsolete altogether.

SaaS and the Continuous Customer Advisory Board

SaaS brings the customer and the software vendor closer together, and shortens the feedback loop. SaaS vendors can (and should) always provide an effective way for customers to provide feedback and submit ideas, and reach out to customers to discuss their needs. SaaS providers can facilitate the continuous customer advisory board through:

1. Online communities - SaaS users can participate in the vendor’s online community and discuss or vote on new ideas and features. At SAManage we use UserVoice to collaborate this way with our entire user community. All customers, regardless of their size, get the opportunity to participate in the discussion, cast their vote, and influence future product features.
2. Talking to the right Bob – SaaS vendors can group their users based on how they interact with and use the service. They can easily tell if the user is a “power user”, and how frequently he/she is accessing certain features and areas of the service. That gives the SaaS vendor an opportunity to reach out to and establish a discussion with its power users – a great way to gather feedback from the right bob.
3. Continuous communication - CAB can be ingrained in the DNA of SaaS companies. For example, when we release a new feature, we monitor how users leverage and utilize it, and reach out to them for feedback. Its a great way to learn how we can continue to improve our product capabilities.
4. Agility - SaaS companies that utilize agile product development methodologies can deliver new features, or incorporate user feedback much faster. This agility allows us to change priorities, quickly modifying a feature we just released to incorporate customer feedback, whenever needed. It takes just a few months, not years, to enhance our solution based on user requests and continuously meet customer needs.

Learn more about SAManage SaaS IT management service….

One of our users recently shared this valuable tip with us – a great way to continuously track changes to assets using the custom search feature.

To monitor changes to assets via custom search, just follow these steps:

1. Search for the asset or software you are interested in tracking - for example, “Skype”
2. When your search results appear, click on the RSS icon and generate an RSS feed of the results
3. Subscribe to that RSS feed to monitor results via your favorite reader (note: you can also subscribe to other views within the SAManage service)

Once you’ve completed these steps, any modifications to your IT assets will appear as changes within that feed.  Review the feed regularly to be instantly notified of any new systems, or any updates to existing ones.  If you want further details on any particular asset, simply click on the item to retrieve its complete information and history in SAManage.

Use RSS feeds to monitor your IT

Using this combination of custom search and RSS to monitor changes in your IT environment can be very helpful, providing you with faster alerts when conditions change, and giving you greater visibility into what’s going on within your assets.  You’ll be instantly notified when important events take place, such as:

• A new computer gets installed or removed
• A PC gets reassigned to another department or user
• A new audit event is created for an asset
• A new risk is detected
• A new help desk ticket is created

Visit our Web site for more valuable tips on getting the most our of your SaaS IT asset management solution.

SaaS-based IT Management Software

Discover how SaaS IT Management software can help you gain instant visibility into your assets and know exactly what you have. Sign up for a free trial of SAManage IT Management service.