Thanks to host Charlotte Murry. This was the Agenda.

1. This meeting was held at Fred Hutchinson downtown Seattle. Thanks to our host Charlotte Murry!
2. Remedy Updates – Dan England, Remedy Corp. - Manager Solution Evangelism
1. What has Remedy been up to lately?
1. Solutions based on serving both internal and external customers.
2. Linking products together, using Help Desk and CRM as a base.
3. ARS 4.5
1. Resolved more than 2000 bugs in 4.0
2. Better Server and Network performance
3. Better access via WAN and Web
4. Improved logging and other developer tools
5. New DBMS and OS versions supported.
4. Web strategy – new product is code named Minnie III.
1. Remedy Web and ARWeb will merge into one entity.
2. Remedy Web - Minnie III
1. Signed Applet
2. SSL Support
3. Greater Search capabilities
5. Futurama – Not AR System 5.0

 

Product Presentations

 

3. Password Courier – John Moore, Courion Corp. http://www.courion.com
   
1. Courier
1. Allows passwords to be changed by users.
2. Allows password reset time lost to be lowered from 10-15 minutes to less than 1 minute
3. Cost drops from $25 to about $2.
4. 25 – 40% of total HD calls are for password resets.
5. Automates back-end system administration
6. Eliminate neccessity of manual tickets
7. Allows password standards to be strengthened, due to the Help Desk no longer being required to do all the resets.
8. Lowers number of people necessary to have Admin privileges, improving security.
9. Bypasses authentication questions that may violate privacy laws, while increasing authentication by requiring it 100% of the time. Allows up to 5 authentication questions.
10. Enhances ability to meet SLA with customer groups for support.
11. Always available.
12. All private data is stored in DBMS encrypted.
13. Real-time intrusion alerts for failed change attempts. Email notifications sent to user of new password, so that attempts to reset a password of another user can be noticed immediately.
14. Allows syncronization of passwords via selective syncronization. Allows for a common pw for non-critical apps that you select and configure.
15. Courion Desktop Direct allows user to reset his/her password to a temporary one.
16. Interacts with all common Operating Systems, both MS and UNIX.
17. Web interface runs on JSP architecture.
18. Creates a Remedy ticket that requires no interaction by the Help Desk – just for logging purposes.
2. Profile Builder
1. Allows users to register and update their own personal profile information
2. Data is gathered initially from users, from the users themselves, via secure browser. Users are given a PIN to enter their site.
3. Automates end-user registration and profile mgmt.
4. Secures employee personal information, only they can enter it.
5. Allows for more secure and robust administration of personal information than other solutions.
6. New JSP version (2 weeks out) will create and close a Remedy ticket as well. Current version runs on ASP.
7. Link to PPT presentation @

 

4. Crystal Reports – Harpal Gill & Norm Parish, Seagate Software http://www.seagate.com
   
1. Business Intelligence – retreiving information and distributing it, regardless of source or destination.
2. Over 7 million users worldwide, most through Crystal Reports.
3. Partners with PeopleSoft, SAP, Lotus, MS, & more.
4. 4 products – Analysis, Crystal Reports, Holos, and Info.
1. Analysis: Standalone client product available as free download from web. Can view .rpt format files.
2. Crystal Reports: Relational and OLAP data reporting tool. Can be standalone or part of system.
3. Holos: hybrid OLAP capability for analytic application platform. Can be used alone or linked to Info.
4. Info: Light reporting front-end for customers who don’t need full Crystal Reports, or as Server app.
1. Delivers Enterprise reports, Ad Hoc querying, OLAP, and scalability. Does NOT work on Apache Web server.
5. On-site training courses, CBE

 

5. Email Management System – Sher Khan & Elizabeth Schoen, eGain Communications
1. Proactive Contact Center
1. Web-based system.
2. Customer priority for fixing problems is Self Help à Email à Chat à Phone.
3. The heirarchical complexity of adding channels is Phone, Email, Live, Self Service.
4. Customers expect to have access to multiple timely sources of information.
5. Most (65%) e-commerce web sites take more than 72 hours to respond to customer email.
6. Uses APIs to integrate with Remedy, etc. Can be used two-way, to update tickets on either end.
7. Uses its own KB system, but the gateways are provided to integrate with other KB systems, if desired.
8. Can use an outsourced remote hosting service to try the product before making a purchase agreement.
9. Link to PPT presentation @

 

6. Deskartes Knowledge Management Suite – Emmit Ray, KMS http://www.kmsoftware.com
   
1. Founded in 1991, this product is the result of 9 years of research in Neural Networks at the University of Manchester.
2. Allows organization of files and programs across an entire enterprise, using key words to locate the files.
3. Enables the retention of information from human sources, and the leveraging of it across the enterprise, even after the people are gone.
4. 4 types of searches:
1. Key Word
1. Must know the right words and syntax
2. Boolean
1. Need to know syntax and
3. Case-based reasoning
1. lots of maintenance needed; flow charting required.
4. Neural – 3D based networks
1. Plain text-based questions from which the true question is derived.
2. Looks not at the syntax, but at the pattern, and returns the most likely match to that question.
3. No rules to create.
4. Sources of information include HTML, Word, Excel, PPT, Lotus Notes, .PDF. Point the product to the file(s), and the questions and answers are generated automatically.
5. The next generation of the product will update in real time when a new solution is created, but currently it is recommended that a manual refresh be run as often as necessary.
6. The searches run on the server, and have botha web interface and client.
7. Environments – Help Desk, Intranet, Internet, Customer Response Center.
8. Used by Nikon for their FAQ and KB online help. They get most questions answered 75% of the time in the first 5 choices. Old Key Word search yielded 55% answered in first 20 choices.
9. You can track how often certain answers are used. You can have unused answers purged, or review them and purge or alter them manually.
10. If an answer is not found, it can be created at the same time that a manual response is sent.
11. Can be used to track development pieces – find a function or subroutine that does X, to avoid having to rewrite it from scratch.
12. The answers learn by comparing patterns, and adjust the % of match as the number of responses returned grows. The adjustment can be overridden by clicking a box that says that the answer didn’t apply to the question.
13. When a query is run, the information is logged (in Remedy, if you like) so that followup can be given. Even if information about the requester isn’t given, information about the question asked is logged for review.
14. Multiple KBs can be created, so that certain groups of requesters can be channeled into the proper place more likely to contain the information they are looking for.
15. Answers are actually stored in a separate DBMS, only the Metadata is stored in the KB product.
16. Currently runs only on NT, but new product (December), will be able to run on UNIX, and will be XML, Java Beans architecture.
17. Link to PPT presentation @

 

7. ActionProgram Manager & Service Order Module – Stan Feinstein & Jim Bert, FS Integrators http://www.fsintegrators.com
   
1. ActionProgram Manager (APM)
1. Turnkey application for program management for an AR System environment.
2. Multitask processes, similar in concept to Change Management with sub-tasks, except for the scale.
3. Tracks resources, time from Help Desk, CM, Bug Tracking, and APM. Time is stored in a separate bucket
4. Total Cost Mgmt System – an integrated approach to gathering different types of data, so that reports can come from one source DB.
5. Costing and resource assignment are features of the product.
6. Resources can be defined by skill, people, location, or whatever you like.
7. Seven roles: Sponsor, PM, Approver, Dept Manager, Assignee, Worker
8. Define templates for project phases of the project, and when the template is finished, send it on for approval. Once approved, the tasks may be worked, and time assigned to their completion.
9. Many predefined reports for Management and Project Management use.
10. Web accessible.
11. C APIs do date calculations (much faster than Remedy), but most of work is done in Remedy workflow.
12. Can be exported to MS Project, but not be imported from it. It also creates its own Project-like output.
2. Service Order Module (SOM)
1. Create approval processes for use by APM, or any Remedy application.
2. Diary entries are rolled up from child tasks to parent task.
3. Can add approvals to processes already in midstream. Creates workflow automatically.
4. Production server license is $20K, unlimited users. Each backup server (test, dev., etc) is $7500.
   
8. Hot Topics – none
9. Next Meeting – Tentative: December 12, Noon – 3:00. Place: Christmas Luncheon at The Melting Pot (Downtown Seattle).
10. Questions to get answers for later:

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