Remote control

Integrated CMS

Workflow or process engine

Self-Help

Many organizations find it beneficial to offer ‘Self-Help’ capabilities to their users. The technology should therefore support this capability with some form of web front-end allowing web pages to be defined offering a menu-driven range of Self-Help and Service Request s –with a direct interface into the back-end process -handling software.

A workflow or process control engine is needed to allow the pre-definition and control of defined processes such as an Incident Lifecycle, Request Fulfilment Lifecycle, Problem Lifecycle, Change Model, etc.

This should allow responsibilities, activities, timescales, escalation paths and alerting to be pre-defined and then automatically managed.

The tool should have an integrated CMS to allow the organization ’s IT Infrastructure asset s, component s, services and any ancillary CIs (such as contract s, locations, licences, supplier s etc. – anything that the IT organization wishes to control) to be held, together with all relevant attribute s, in a centralized location – and to allow relationship s between each to be stored and maintained, and linked to Incident, Problem, Known Error and Change Record s as appropriate.

7.1.4 Discovery/Deployment /Licensing technology

In order to populate or verify the CMS data and to assist in Licence Management, discovery or automated audit tools will be required. Such tools should be capable of being run from any location on the network and allow interrogation and recovery of information relating to all components that make up, or are connected to, the IT Infrastructure.

Such technology should allow ‘filtering’ so that the data being carried forward can be vetted and only required data extracted. It is also very helpful if ‘changes only’ since the last audit can be extracted and reported upon.

The same technology can often be used to deploy new software to target locations – this is an essential requirement for all Service Operation teams or departments, to allow patches, transports etc. to be distributed to the correct user s.

An interface to ‘Self Help’ capabilities is desirable to allow approved software downloads to be requested in this way but automatically handled by the deployment software.

Tools that allow automatic comparison of software licences’ details held (in the CMS, ideally) and actual licence numbers deployed – with reporting of any discrepancies – are extremely desirable.

It is often helpful for the Service Desk Analysts and other support group s to be able to take control of the user’s desk-top (under properly controlled security conditions) so as to allow them to conduct investigations or correct settings, etc. Facilities to allow this level of remote control will be needed.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23