Thanks to Tricia Callahan for sponsoring this meeting. This was the Agenda.

1. The presentation of Remedy ARS 4.5 (SouthPark) by Everett Carnahan, Remedy Corp., unveiled many new features that should delight Remedy Administrators and Developers everywhere. Some of the features are:
1. Unlimited MPSO Servers, limited only by system resources and connections allowed by your DBMS.
2. The ability to skip the attempt to connect to particular servers when logging in. This will help a user avoid having to wait for a login to an unavailable server to time out.
3. Color in the Table Fields. This can be done to some degree now, but the feature is greatly enhanced.
4. The ability to stop a search before it returns from the server (the action continues on the server side, but stops on the client side.) by clicking a button that appears after the search is initiated.
5. Enhanced Client-side (Active Link and User) logging – set by preferences from the User tool.
6. Screen colors are back! They will be configurable in Remedy User.
7. The ability to export reports to Excel/Word to use Print functions from there – with no DDE required.
8. The ability to make changes to your Remedy User settings permanent!
9. The ability to send a ticket via email to a User – not just save it to the Desktop.
10. Shared Workflow and Global Fields using common Field Id numbers. You select which forms will use each piece of shared/common workflow. This can be specified when building an Active Link or Filter.
1. Global fields start with a NULL value.
11. The ability to make common changes to multiple pieces of workflow at once.
12. Packing lists of software that can, like subroutines or functions, be reused in other forms and applications. Packing lists can be grouped, or be sublists in other lists.
13. Change (Dirty) Flag is now configurable via workflow, i.e. if you don’t want the little change button to be active when some workflow activates it without a real change having taken place, you can now turn that off within that workflow.
14. 5 New Active Link Set Field functions for numeric fields - the names more or less explain their function.
1. COLAVG
2. COLCOUNT
3. COLMAX
4. COLMIN
5. COLSUM
15. Changeable permissions on the Request ID of a Join Form. This bypasses the problem of having a Join form comprised of two forms with different permissions.
16. The UnDisplay (like Lose Focus) firing condition in Active Links for when a window closes.
17. The ability in Administrator to search for objects on the server. A table must first be created and maintained, to which the search is directed, so this is not a real-time, live search of the actual DB tables.
18. Source Control Integration with Microsoft’s Source Control engine (Clearcase). Note that this simply allows integration with the engine, Remedy does NOT include the software.
19. The ability to append or start new logs, by choice.
20. The ability to limit othewise recursive loops to a certain number of iterations. (thanks to Go Tos!)
21. The ability to do server name aliasing from the Administrator (instead of ar.ini or ar.conf tweaking).
22. Authentication of Unregistered Users via LDAP. See separate paper on that.
23. The ability to set Server ports and RPC numbers to communicate with other servers.
24. The ability to have a separate window for search results, like in ARS v3.x.
25. Many other features not quite as cool as what’s listed here.
26. The release date of ARS v4.5 was supposed to be in April, but the unofficial line now is that it will be released "Somewhere in Q2". We assume that it will be prior to RUG, which is in Early June.
2. Hot Topics
1. Several NWRUG members are attending RUG. Do we want to meet as a group there? See the NWRUG Web site for details and a poll on this topic.
2. The Windows 2000 patch is available now from Remedy Support.
3. Remedy purchased Axtive Corp. See http://www.remedy.com/corporate/press/2000/02.07.00b.htm for details.
4. A questionnaire about future meeting topics, etc. will be posted on NWRUG’s web site.
5. Please fill out the bio form on the NWRUG Web site. Please log your most important Remedy Enhancement Requests there, too.
3. Next Meeting time/date/location
1. Location: University of Washington Administration Building, on The Ave. in Seattle. Directions and a formal agenda will be posted as the meeting date grows closer.
2. Date: Tuesday, 5/16/00, from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
3. Topics: Geoff Endresen from Herrick-Douglass will demo his RUG presentation on the use of ARSPerl in a Remedy web interface, and Carol Schroeder will go over the list of your Enhancement Requests for discussion.

4.    Other Questions and Answers during the presentation:

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Q: Will there be a Motif Admintool?
A: There are no plans to carry forward the Motif Admintool. If feedback from our customer base one may be created.

Q: Will source code control work with a Unix Server?
A: Since this release integrates with only the Microsoft SCC DLL Library one would need to have an NT box available to manage the SCC function in conjunction to having a UNIX ARServer.

Q: Is a migration paper available and can we get it?
A: The migration information will be delivered with he upgrade. It will be part of the installation instruction. 

Q: Will the ARServer use Oracle's Intermedia FTS?
A: The ARServer simply sends a standard SQL request for data. If Oracle is configured to use it's own FTS to aid in finding results then it should do just that and be transparent to the Remedy user.

Q: Is it possible to now have multiple instances of arserver on a single Unix Server?
A: This will be an official capability of the release after 4.5. The basic support is present in the 4.5 release and we will share it will select customers. There are some caveats (nothing serious) and there is no formal documentation, but this capability should be useable in the 4.5 release.

Q: Can multiple servers talk to the same database? 
A: This is possible today with some limitations. Those revolve around controlling where escalations are done (currently by both) and requiring specific configuration settings and requiring coordination of admin change. There are also issues with the server name in workflow defeating some of the benefit of this scenario.
    The 4.5 release eliminates the issue with server names by not storing them within workflow if the current server is being referenced. There are also supposed to be options to tell a server not to run escalations as another server is doing this. Finally, there is infrastructure (although maybe not direct implementation of all aspects) to allow coordination between the servers for Admin change.
    With appropriate processes in place, this is manageable with 4.0 with some hassle. In 4.5, it is relatively straight-forward with appropriate processes. In the release after, this will become an official feature of the product.

So, unofficially, these capabilities should be available. They don't become official features until the following release.

Everett Carnahan
Systems Engineer Sales
Remedy Corporation
925-469-4072
everettc@remedy.com

 
For comments or questions on this Northwest Remedy User Group website  
please email Geoff Endresen  at nwrug@geoffe.com