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Chat Transcript - CA Service Management Office Hours: A Live Online Chat (August 2016)

  • 1.  Chat Transcript - CA Service Management Office Hours: A Live Online Chat (August 2016)

     
    Posted Aug 11, 2016 06:17 PM

    Miss the August Service Management Office Hours - Online Chat? Check out what you missed below and be sure to join us in September for the next session!

     

    from Chris Hackett (CA) to Everyone:

      Hi Everyone - We'll be starting in just a few minutes!

    from Chris Hackett (CA) to Everyone:

      OK - Let's go ahead and start. Ready for questions!

    from Jeff to Everyone:

      Good morning everyone.  We need to change the values of fields which are copied when using the Create Incident button on a Request.  We tried modifying the tmplcopy_site.spl file but it has no effect.  (It does work when doing a plain copy of an active ticket).

    from Chris Hackett (CA) to Everyone:

      While we're waiting on questions, be sure to check out the 'CA Service Management “Meet the Experts” community webcast series' https://communities.ca.com/community/ca-service-management/blog/2016/08/11/ca-service-management-meet-the-experts-community-webcast-series

    from Andrea to Everyone:

      We recently had an issue with Properties in an Area used in both Incidents and Problems.  When the area was selected in Incidents, the Properties were created and displayed just fine.  When the Area was selected in Problems, it did not create the Properties but still expected them because they were required.  We don't know what caused it or what fixed it (we didn't make any changes).  We wondered if anyone else has seen anything like this.

    from Jon Israel (CA) to Everyone:

      @Jeff - I dont believe you can specify fields to copy upon creating an incident from a request.  The tmplcopy_site.spl is specifically for "copying" - not creating.  This is something that would be considered an enhancement to the product.

    from Jeff to Everyone:

      @Jon.  Thanks.

    from Andrea to Everyone:

      @Jeff, look in the detail_cr.htmpl

    from Alex Perretti (CA) to Everyone:

      @Andrea that's an interesting problem. I can't think of a specific reason, nor have I seen that happen before. It may be something to investigate if it happens again.

    from Jeff to Everyone:

      @Andrea.  Thanks, that's the next place to look.  Possiblly setting a hidden KEEP?

    from Andrea to Everyone:

      @Jeff, search for Create Incident.  Under that section it lists the fields that are pushed from the Request to the Incident when the Incident is created from a Request

    from Andrea to Everyone:

      @Jeff the first line will be:  <input type="hidden" name="SET.requested_by" value="$args.requested_by">

    from Jeff to Everyone:

      @Andrea.  Got it.  Thanks!

    from Andrea to Everyone:

      @Jeff  You're welcome. We recently had to do the same thing when creating a Problem from an Incident 

    from Jon Israel (CA) to Everyone:

      @Andrea - Thanks for helping out Jeff.  Unfortunately from a support standpoint, we dont have a lot of experience with that type of customization as it would be out of our scope.  We can really only comment or advise on things that we know are supported.

    from Mark McMinn to Everyone:

      I have a question that deals with properties on Incident areas.  when a user saves a ticket after filling in properties, and then comes back in and changes the area, the original properties from the original category are lossed.  Is there a way to get the properties logged so that we can see the old answers?

    from Jeff to Everyone:

      New question.  We have a 14.1.02 conventional architecture with 1 Primary and 1 Secondary.  The users login via the Secondary via SSL.  We have attachments working but the  Export feature does not work from the Secondary.  It works fine on the Primary.  What should I look for?

    from Jon Israel (CA) to Everyone:

      @Mark - you would need to set the "keep tasks" option in options manager - which I believe will work for tasks and properties.

    from Mark McMinn to Everyone:

      Thank you Jon

    from Jeff to Everyone:

      @Everyone.  The Primary is not SSL and is not in the DNS.

    from Alex Perretti (CA) to Everyone:

      @Jeff the url that is used for export is controlled by the "NX_SERVLET_SERVER_URL" value in the NX.env file.

    from Alex Perretti (CA) to Everyone:

      On the secondary server is this value pointing to the primary url or the secondary url?

    from Andrea to Everyone:

      Actually, I have another question on Properties as well.  All of our Change categories have a single required Property.  We notice that when an old change is copied, created prior to the Property being added, that it does not create the Property record and does not require it on save either.  The user has to modify the Change category and then change it back in order for the Property to be populated.  This is in both 12.9 and 14.1.02.  Is there any way to correct this?

    from Jeff to Everyone:

      @Alex.  I will check the Secondary. I would say the Secondary Servlet should be set to the Secondary Server, that is where attachments are handled.

    from Jon Israel (CA) to Everyone:

      @Andrea - this is expected behavior as the record is created at the first save containing the links between the properties and the tickets.  The only way to trigger it to check for new properties would be to change the category and then change it back.

    from Alex Perretti (CA) to Everyone:

      @Jeff, ok, you will want to confirm that it's using the exact same SSL url for Tomcat. The browser may be getting tripped up if you are using mixed content, SSL and non-SSL

    from Andrea to Everyone:

      @Jon - thanks, I was afraid that was the answer. 

    from Jon Israel (CA) to Everyone:

      @Jeff - the best option to avoid this mixed-content condition would be to put SSL in place all around.

    from Jon Israel (CA) to Everyone:

      @Andrea - Sorry   Wish I could give you a better one there, but thats just the way its designed.

    from Jeff to Everyone:

      @Jon.  Thanks.

    from Chris Hackett (CA) to Everyone:

      Ready for more questions:)

    from Chris Hackett (CA) to Everyone:

      Quiet today. Must be summer!

    from Mark McMinn to Everyone:

      Question on Knowledge Documents.   My customers would like to use groups instead of single contacts as owners, assignees, sme, etc.   is this possible?  the forms behind the lookups are hard coded to analyst type.

    from Jeff to Everyone:

      @Everyone.  Same server setup.  We have SAP CABI installed on a separate server.  The Reports tab reports remain blank on the secondary but the BI Dashboard runs fine from the button there.  I don't beleive the customer has the CA BI server in their DNS.  Only the Secondary server is resolvable.  The Primary and CA BI are on the same network and everything is fine if we log in via IP instead of hostname.  If there are reasons they don't want to add the CA BI to the DNS, can I change the Options Manger settings to us the IP of the CA BI?  What is best practice?

    from Alex Perretti (CA) to Everyone:

      @Mark, I'm taking a quick look at it now. You may need a customization to allow a group, but let me see.

    from Mark McMinn to Everyone:

      @Alex  thanks

    from Jon Israel (CA) to Everyone:

      @Jeff - Yes, you would have to use the IP of the CABI server since the secondary cannot resolve its hostname, thus you cannot see the reports there.

    from Karolin Albinsson to Everyone:

      Our customers use the Service Catalog frequently and that generates a lot of data. Will CA work with performance in mind even more in future releases of the product? It would be much appreciated. We see that the demand of performance is increasing and not so much for new features.

    from Jeff to Everyone:

      @Jon.  Thanks. 

    from Mark McMinn to Everyone:

      Has there been any progress in allowing ServiceDesk to be configured as an IIS only configuration?  I saw some of the posts on the community site say it was under review.

    from Jeff to Everyone:

      @Everyone.  Maileater question.  Inbound email is working fine but we can't get the reply email to show the Display Name for the From or Reply-To address.  It will only show the actual address.  We have tried adding the -F and -T parameters to the pdm_mail method but it fails if we add the Display Name <email@address.com> format. 

    from Jon Israel (CA) to Everyone:

      @Mark - "Under Review" means that the product management team has it open for ideation, meaning that they are looking into the viability of it. 

    from Alex Perretti (CA) to Everyone:

      @Mark - on the KD question - I looked at the form, and it is clearly set up to filter by the "factory=agt", in theory, yes you may be able to use cnt instead, but there is a possibility there could be an expected result somewhere down the line, and of course it wouldn't filter out "Employee" users, so you'd need something else to handle that.

    from Mark McMinn to Everyone:

      @jon @alex  -  Thank you

    from Jon Israel (CA) to Everyone:

      @Jeff - is the maileater account set up on the mail server with a display name?

    from Jeff to Everyone:

      @Jon.  I assume so.  It is the same one used before the upgrade.  I will have them check.

    from Jon Israel (CA) to Everyone:

      @Jeff - and this worked prior to the upgrade?

    from Jeff to Everyone:

      @Jon.  Yes, sorry to mention this an upgrade from 11.2

    from Alex Perretti (CA) to Everyone:

      @Jeff - Maileater - How are you defining your "mail_reply_to_address" options manager setting? Is that set as desired?

    from Rajeev Kumar (CA) to Everyone:

      @Karolin - Thanks for your question. Service Catalog performance would depend on a number of factors e.g. deployment architecture, load balancing, workflow integration etc. In recent releases and value packs (on 14.1) we have added code for performance improvement in multiple areas. Typically, performance testing and benchmarking is a standard practice that is in-grained in our development and testing cycles. We would be interested in hearing from you about the specifics to identify the areas of your concern.

    from Mark McMinn to Everyone:

      @everyone We use CABI for the majority of our reporting, however we had to create a few reports using SQL reporting Services.  I would like to be able to add them to our Reports list for users to be able to see them, even if they open as just a link to something outside of CA.  Is this possible?

    from Jeff to Everyone:

      @Alex  I can't look right now, but I want to say it is Display Name <email address> but that wasn't working once we enabled replies mailbox rules and so went to the pdm_mail parameter setting.  If not, I will go back make that change.  Which brings me to the fact I am confused by the documentation as to which settings are active between Options Manager and Notification Method, except that it says the pdm_mail setting will override the other?

    from Jon Israel (CA) to Everyone:

      @Mark - unfortunately that is not possible due to the way the report list is designed within the product.

    from Karolin Albinsson to Everyone:

      Thank you Rajeev. Our implementations would benefit from improvements when saving offerings that has large option groups. It can take up to ten minutes or more. Usually it take seconds saving smaller ones.

    from Jon Israel (CA) to Everyone:

      @Mark - what you could do, as an idea here, would be to create a new separate tab in service desk that is just an HTML page which you can supply links to those SQL based reports.  Then give that tab to the roles for which the users belong to that you would allow to see those reports.

    from Alex Perretti (CA) to Everyone:

      @Jeff - I would assume manually trigger pdm_mail is going to override configuration settings... but from what I am aware of using the options manager should work. If it's not it may need some investigation

    from Mark McMinn to Everyone:

      @Jon I am not familiar with the Jasper Reporting tool that you will be moving to, will it function the same for the users.  Meaning will they still click a report from the report list and get a result like they do today?

    from Jon Israel (CA) to Everyone:

      @Mark - at the current time we do not have a Jasper Reports tab available.  Users would log directly into the Jasper Server console via a browser, and would view reports from there.   You CAN add a custom tab in SDM that points to the Jasper URL, and they can then log in and view reports from within that tab in SDM.

    from Jeff to Everyone:

      @Everyone.  Final question ;-)  We need to allow Administrators to Open inactive (Closed) tickets only but allow all analysts to edit activity logs on Closed.  I can't use the global Options Manger to prevent edit inactive.  I'll post on the Community later but wondered if anyone had a best practice here.  I was looking at adding wherclauses to the status dropdown to limit the display of  when closed by Role.

    from Mark McMinn to Everyone:

      @jon thanks for all the feedback

    from Jon Israel (CA) to Everyone:

      @Jeff - Yes, you would have to use an "if then" statement because there are no options or functions availalble to specify what can and cannot be edited on a ticket when its in closed status.  You would have to use spel code most likely to trigger a status check and then do something based on that within the forms.

    from Tam La to Everyone:

      Do you know why we have some email stuck in our mail queue, and how to fix it?

    from Rajeev Kumar (CA) to Everyone:

      @Karolin - Thanks for sharing the details. 10 minutes is way beyond the benchamark that we have successfully tested the application for, so quite possible that there are local/environmental factors involved here. Let us know through CA Communities and CA Support Online if this is a recurrent issue adversely affecting productivity.

    from Karolin Albinsson to Everyone:

      @Rajeev, thanks, will do!

    from Lindsay Estabrooks to Everyone:

      @Jeff - If you follow best practices then a closed ticket should be considered an artifact and thus should not be modified any further.

    from Jeff to Everyone:

      @Mark.  To expand on everyone else suggestions. I wonder if you can create a Web Form and for the resource use a JUST_GRONK_IT to the SQL Reporting site.  Then it could be inside the current Reports tab?

    from Jon Israel (CA) to Everyone:

      @Tam La - you can try taking the email out of the mail queue folder, kill the pdm_mail_nxd process, and then when it comes back up, put that email back in and see if it goes out or not. 

    from Jon Israel (CA) to Everyone:

      @Tam La - if the email still does not go out, then you would have to look at the email to see if there is something odd with it.  Compare it to other emails that did go out (you would have to copy one quickly before it disappears from that folder)

    from Mark McMinn to Everyone:

      @Jeff - didn't think about that, but that could be a positive solution.  Thank you for the suggestion.

    from Jeff to Everyone:

      @Lindsay.  Thanks, I know this but it's a maturity level thing with the customer to allow modification to billable time after the ticket is Closed but before it is invoiced.  They have moved to Auto Close and so the analysts now have 3 days from Resolved to Close to modify the still active ticket. 

    from Chris Hackett (CA) to Everyone:

      OK Everyone - We're wrapping up for today. Thank you all for participating and we'll see you back here in September!

    from Jeff to Everyone:

      @Jon.  Thanks.  I already have conditional checks for both Role session id, staus, and edit states, so I think I can get this if I can enumerate the valid status options for the dropdown.

    from Jeff to Everyone:

      @everyone Thanks.   As usual this is the most productive 45 minites of my month!

    from Lindsay Estabrooks to Everyone:

      @Jeff - One approach would be to tell them that if the ticket has gone closed then they have to create an additional (child) ticket to record the extra time

    from Chris Hackett (CA) to Everyone:

      Thanks again everyone! Have a great rest of your week and join us back in September!

    from Andrea to Everyone:

      Thanks everyone!

    from Jeff to Everyone:

      @Thanks Lindsay

    from Jeff to Everyone:

      @Lindsay - Thanks!