Clarity SM Reviews

My involvement with Service Desk Manager is on the administration side as I have a partner who does all the form design and that sort of thing. What I get out of it personally is that it can go beyond out-of-the-box.

In other words, if I need SDM to do something that it doesn't do out-of-the-box, it gives us the tools to expand it, like the events and macros. It empowers me to be a lot more creative in doing things beyond the out-of-the-box scope of SDM.

Right now, we are using it for change management, incident management and service requests. It provides all users with a scoreboard where they can track all the incidents, requests, or change orders that they're responsible for. It provides the user with a tracking of anything they may have submitted.

With the simple notification when somethings being worked on, your Service Desk allows you to be creative with the notifications. Who gets what, when they get it, and it keeps dialogue open between service provisioner and the service requester.

There's always behind-the-scenes notification and tracking of what's going on through the Service Desk incident record or through the change record.

I submitted an enhancement request and I think it actually made it into the product. It was basically enhancements to how it integrates with Process Automation -- if Process Automation is down and Service Desk happened to call Process Automation for external activity type of thing, I want SDM to be more resilient to the interface being down to that component.

Also, instead of throwing an error to the user, I'd suggest maybe a spinning hourglass or something. A message that says, hold on, we're trying to talk to Process Automation or something along those lines.

It's not in a production environment yet, but were moving in there. The environment where we're currently stood up on in production is version 12. I think it's holding up pretty good. I think that version 12.9 will allow us to build on a a more advanced configuration, which means that it will sustain an outage better than version 12.5 because you have multiple user interface servers stood up. If one goes down, it still provides user interface connectivity.

I think 12.9 is going to be a lot better in terms of availability, but I think that SDM does a nice job and isn't buggy. Where it does get bogged down, or it does encounter an error, is that lot of times we're unable to track the error through the error log mechanism, and we then have to figure it out for ourselves.

The scale that we currently use it at is more than sufficient. We have single server with a single database and it holds up very well for over two hundred users. I think it's doing pretty good.

v12.9 does allow us to be more scalable if we have to build it for a greater audience of users, but we haven't got that far yet.

I've had to call them on occasion because I've had integration problems with Process Automation. I might've had an SSL certificate-type issue. The people whom I've dealt with were very knowledgeable about the product and oftentimes resolution comes with in a day or so that I open up an issue. I can't say that I open an issue up every week. It's probably more like once a month.

I think it's pretty easy. The documentation was good for somebody who has a background on it. I can stand it up with my eyes closed. I don't know if someone coming to it for the first time could look through the documentation and make sense of it, though.

Really, really learn the admin functions.

For me, personally, the ease of interface is the most valuable feature. It's easy to look up tickets, requiring less clicks compared to CSM. The functionality is more robust than CSM.

It wasn't really rolled out to the organization, it was more of an IT tool, because we didn't fully utilize the tool, as we expected to do work in a mature state within the organization.

SDM could be improved. I don't know if it was in the infrastructure where it crashed a lot, or if it was with the tool. I think maybe I got used to it and then it sort of wasn't an issue anymore.

No issues with deployment.

I noticed more crashing for some strange reason, being that it's on our on servers and we don't know why.

I think the issue, though, goes back to if you use the full functionality of SDM. So, we were on it for two years and we moved it over to the cloud. There were probably a lot of factors why we couldn't optimize SDM to its potential. It’s more of an organizational type of factor.

I wasn't involved in the SDM portion of support tickets, so I can't say.

I wasn't involved in the setup.

Seeing all the demos at CA World, it has a lot of potential, that we, again, did not make use of. So, it's like, oh, it could do that, really? From what I saw with the demos is that there are a lot of functionalities out there. For example, the new 14.1 version seems to scale more with customers. So, if you're looking for more customer-facing input, I would say that it would probably do it.

The ticket incidents and requests management are the most valuable features for us. That's really the primary purpose -- tracking our issues and fulfilling our customer requests. Those are the two main pieces that we use.

It mainly helps to track hardware issues and issues with any of our applications for the whole system. Any of our applications that have a problem get called into our help desk using this tool. It's as good of information as you can get, so as a ticketing system it works pretty well.

We use the CMDB to manage our configuration items, devices or assets. We use that to keep track of all of our assets. I think that usability is fine and the interface is pretty customizable as well.

Support. Support is the biggest thing dragging it down, and the fact that it's not all one integrated package. You have to get different pieces and put them together when buying them separately instead of it being just one whole suite.

But again, the level of support is probably the area that needs the biggest improvement. But as for the product itself, there's nothing else I can think of as it does what we need it to do for the most part.

I think we've had unexpected downtime in the last four years. We have downtimes, but when they schedule it, it's fine. We had just one issue, but since the latest upgrade it's been pretty reliable.

As far as tickets go, we probably have about 1300 a month, across at least 80,000 assets. We've got about 300 analysts, and for end users somewhere around 14-15,000. They're mostly just sales service. They enter their tickets and that's it. They don't go into the system a whole lot. As far as active users, probably about 300.

We had problems several years ago, but we upgraded and fixed some architectural parts of the systems.

I would say that's probably the weak point -- support. They take a while to come up with the resolutions. Trying to differentiate between the PPM and service management, but I would say generally we've had tickets that have taken three months to get results. Our issues don't always seem like they should be that complicated, but even on a good turn around, it usually takes at least a week or two. It just seems like it's slow. It's inconsistent; sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not.

No. I was involved in the upgrade, but not before that. It was pretty smooth.

We've looked at quite a few, including ServiceNow and Microsoft Systems Center Service Management. They have a whole suite similar to CA. Citrix as well.

• Incident management
• Problem management
• Exchange management
• Conflict resolution management, defining two configurations items across the board

I think maybe the biggest improvement has been in the integration parts of our organization. Though it's an easy solution to use, I find colleagues talking about CMDB parts. Sometimes I feel that maybe there must be a way to improve it where it's kind of simplified in a way where it's more usable. I think sometimes it's too much for someone to use, or someone gets lost, or someone complains about having too many things in there. It's not easy to manage, not user friendly, and maybe not easy to use.

So, when you get down to it, you have to see the details in the ways in which it's used. Maybe they have to work out the interface in a way that is more usable based on whatever you're trying to see.

I know that there is a mobile application version coming with version 14, though I haven't seen it yet. Hopefully it's going to really improve the mobility. It's one of the things that I would love to have. It would help those inside be able to change the way that they are doing business. I haven't seen it, but I would love to see it.

We use the ITN model, and we're about to upgrade to version 14.

Perfect. One of the most stable solutions ever.

No, we have our own developments.

I'm managing the project, but I'm not integrating the technical part of it. I used to work in the front technical team for the center and the old versions, but nowadays I'm just managing the project as manager.

Implementation wasn't complex. You just have to know what you're doing, maybe you have your process set to where you know where things are, if it's clear enough where technically there's no issues. It's just the way that you want to configure it.

For a service desk, maybe look at other options due to the cost. It will happen someday probably because of the cost. Now ServiceNow is coming along and wiping out everything.

Perhaps the cloud will bring down the cost. If somebody has an alternative with a cloud-based solution, that would bring down the cost.

Service Catalog is one place where you can do things for the entire organization. Whenever a new employee joins, you can put in requests. Now, we're using the old version, though it’s not great. We're trying to customize it to our requirements as a healthcare company.

This is first time I’m working on this platform. I use it for Service Desk Catalog and ITSM asset management. I use all functionalities.

The new version should have an app, as it’s not in this version.

I’d say it's been OK, not great, but it's determined by the servers. There are so many aspects to the program that if the servers go down, we can't use it.

There are some limitations, but it's used company wide, around 50-60 thousand users. We just need to upgrade because it gets overloaded.

I've not had to use them as we have weekly calls with CA and they provide solutions to any issues or defects.

Use the newer version to get the full support.

The most valuable feature to me seems to be that the system is fully customizable and the service types with events and macros, that allows you to define not only SLAs, but actions and notifications in time, during the ticket processing. Also, the unified self-service portal with mobile interface, the knowledge base, Web Screen Painter, and the fact that you don’t need to provide any new password when you are changing the role - you just select the role you want to apply and push the button).

There are some improvement that can be done. First of all, the interface is pretty old (although it looks ok). There some improvements needed in the support and security offered for mail servers. Also, the system should allow to add new action macros at the interface level, and not through workaround, and some more easy way manage the language support (an easier way to generate the translated interfaces, fewer files to be translated). The Web Screen Painter tool can be improved, since this is a very powerful tool.

I’m relatively new to CA Service Desk Manager, having started using it at the beginning of this year.

The product, once you have implemented in the right way is very stable. You can leave it there to do its job, and only perform administration tasks like creating users and changing minor things. You don’t need to restart it or perform other administrative tasks.

It is a very scalable product and multi-tenancy feature allows you to give secure access in a multi-organizational environment, or provide services with it.

I had no problems, so 10/10.

Technical support is good, and you have also a strong community. You can even consider some advice from the older product, Unicenter, so 9/10.

The initial setup is complex. CA Service Desk Manager has a complex architecture, and depending upon the features you choose to install, you need more than four machines, which is the minimum number recommended by CA. So, it is an effort, and the same for the business rules. A complex model means a bigger implementation effort, process automatization, means some other extra effort too.

Service Desk Manager price is not very high and the benefits are considerable. If you compare with other products, for the same money, you'll get a more flexible system, with a very nice licensing model (it is licensed per analyst that's processing the ticket, not per ticket or per user).

Yes, we have evaluated more products like IBM, Landesk, Microsoft, and Manage Engine.

You won’t regret implementing it. If you have a medium or a large amount of ticketing activity, you will see the true benefits this system is giving to your business. But, keep in mind that you will need a dedicated resource to maintain the flows as they are changing in your activity, the policies, and the system itself. This is because when you customize it, and things are changing, you need someone to implement these changes, and since the system is so flexible, also there are a lot of possibilities.

• Service Desk
• Knowledgebase
• CMDB
• Change Calendar

It established a more organized dynamic and the ability to better plan activities.

CMDB and the user interface, especially for extracting reports, could be improved.

Almost a year.

No issues encountered.

Yes, but we are using an older version that can cause this.

No issues encountered.

It's satisfactory.

It's satisfactory.

Yes, but I was working in another company.

It's straightforward.

We used a vendor team who were satisfactory.

It's difficult to control costs, and it's expensive.

I wasn’t here in this period, but I know they evaluated BMC and HP.

Keep it simple, and try to avoid customisations.

Unique tool that can get data from any other tool, correlate, make complex formulas to calculate SLAs/KPIs, calculate penalty/bonus, alerts, dashboards, automatic reporting, unbeatable for SLM.

UI is not perfect, but maybe with Jaspersoft.

6 years