Clarity SM Reviews

We use it for the collection of tickets, to help our end-users, make sure they're taken care of in a timely manner. We Utilize various aspects of it to provide best customer service for them, to get their problems resolved.

Sending an email, that's the old way of doing things. This system is still relatively new. People still use email, but using the ticket system verifies that no one gets left behind. We're in a world of electronic mail. Some nice people can slip through the cracks. It's kind of how it is. But the ticket system makes sure that everyone gets taken care of, and that makes for a better customer experience. It's something we enjoy and they especially enjoy. We want to make sure that the new IT is not synonymous with, "Eh, don't wanna work with it."

It allows IT to handle users on a personal basis. It allows IT to have a name and a face, and we interact with the end-users, and the ticket system helps us to get them the help they need right away.

The ability to keep track. The work is tracked.

Provides ease of customer interaction. Gives the customer a general sense that they're being helped. Email works, telephone calls work too. But having something that's tracked in this way just makes things easier.

It also allows us to assign different areas, maybe it's a multifaceted problem. Whether it's a problem we have to work on, or another part that needs to be worked on with infrastructure; sometimes they're meshed together. This really lets the IT group and our group shine.

The interface is pretty straightforward, but I think for some end-users a little more simplified user interface would help, perhaps. It's gotten better though. It's a little more streamlined, which we like. But every little bit helps with the end-user for them to get assistance.

We recently upgraded from the older version, 12.1, we went to 14.1, and it has gotten a lot better.

We have a lot of assistance from CA support now. We have some consistent support options with them. They get around to us really quickly. That's the great benefit with this new system, we really like it very much.

We use them many times. If there are some internal problems with the system, it's usually on the server base, server side of it. They've been very helpful in helping us get things resolved, especially since we have the newer version that's within the support frame. We were out of support for a few years, but they still helped the best way they could, gave us a few options. But now they've been quite good in helping us out.

Our servers were upgraded and over time we were noticing that there might be some issues with it because the older system had a few bugs and it but support options were limited. It was decided that we should get a newer, upgraded system to make sure we had the support from CA. Even though they did help us a lot with our older system, they were limited in what they could do. They still helped out. And the new system, now we create tickets, now things are resolved quite well. So any little issues, whether it is tickets not going to a user's email, things like that, are resolved.

I think we are comfortable with CA. We had heard of other options. My colleagues and I have used other ticketing systems as well before, in previous jobs. CA just seems to work for us overall, so that's why we stuck with it.

I was involved in the upgrade. We just recently did that this year. I was working the project management aspect of it to make sure it got implemented. I had a lot of help from other departments, so it was a very big team effort to get things done.

It went quite smoothly actually. We understand that now, with 17.1, it's even easier to upgrade, but the process didn't take that long. Considering the fact we'd been out of support on the older version and went to 14.1, it worked out quite well. And this is on a worldwide scale, it's used worldwide at Novus International, everyone uses it.

We especially like the look of xFlow. That looks very personal, so they can keep track of how things are going with their ticket, if it has been worked on, what the status of it is. It seems to be a little more user friendly. The user can see more from a distance right away.

I do recommend CA. Even though it can be complex, there are a lot of aspects to it that are fairly easy. There's a lot of material, CA has a lot of documentation to assist. Personally, I never knew of CA Service Desk at all, or even the name, before I came to this company five years ago. I adopted the system to help with any problems with it. The previous users who utilized and helped set it up, they weren't there anymore. It became my little project. I was able to get assistance from our group and from CA as well, to make it work out well.

So I would recommend it. From a newbie of that system I was able to help out, and CA was able to help out a lot, so it wasn't a huge learning curve.

We drive all of our operations for our enterprise solutions through Service Desk Manager. It has performed really well.

The flexibility and being able to connect to multiple products. It allows to use it the way we want to use it versus the way it came out of the box.

It has given us the ability to automate a lot of tasks, things we couldn't do before.

The flexibility. It allows us to do things, expand it, and integrate with our other solutions. Also, it's pretty easy to use.

• Simplification in the user interface
• Being more expandable
• Better documentation

The user interface is fairly cluttered, and we can update it the way we need to, but it just seems dated, a lot of the things for the full functionality.

Stability is pretty good. We've made strides in making it more available. Switching to the High Availability model helped with that. We had some "growing" issues, upgrades, and the like.

Scalability has been good. We've been able to add new servers when we need to and it's been performing well.

We use tech support a lot. We do things in a lot of non-standard ways, and we end up finding a decent amount of bugs or corner-case kind of things.

I'd like to see things move a little bit faster with it. Sometimes we've had tickets open for a long time, but overall they provide a good service.

Although I wasn't involved in the initial setup I have been involved with upgrades. They have been fairly complex. We've had some issues with upgrades where we had to roll back and get some things fixed. Some things that we ended up tracking back to not following directions right, but then other things we've run into issues.

When selecting a vendor, support is the big one. Also, the capabilities; the fact that it can do what we want it to do. And then expandability, being able to customize it the way we need to.

I think the best advice I'd have is to really use the automation features and expandability to be able to make it do things the way you want it to do them. Simplify the way a user has to interact with things by using a lot of automation.

For the analyst, the user experience is better. Also, for the demo, it is a good experience for them, because they want to look at a fancy application and forms, and know that it is to easy to use them and create easy tickets.

The value for the clients is that you can save information in the application and get reports with that information.

We are also installing xFlow in our QA environment at the moment.

More user experience in the look and feel of the application. 

The stability is great.

We are working on installing in the production environment.

In some cases, I receive late information. In general, it is good.

It was not simple or complex to set up. It was medium with CA's support.

Its implementation was a little complex. I needed support with the service department of CA to work together to implement the version of the product.

In my work, we only use CA products.

I would recommend this version of the product.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: the customer service and the quality of the product.

There are different products for different purpose. The Service Desk is to take account of incidents and minor requests from the different area of the bank. The PPM is to organize projects. I know that the organization is using Spectrum, but it is out of my scope.

The Service Desk has performed very well. I chose it. It was my selection. I managed the implementation of the product. It is a very good product.

We have a very good relationship with all the users. When users have a problem, they report using Service Desk and it is very useful for this. All the interactions and orchestrations of every problem, we can analyze what happens in the organization and which kind of incident we have. It is a very good tool.

It is simple for me. Simple, and it is robust. It works very well.

We need a mobile solution. We are not using any mobile functionality for the product, but we think that this necessary. This should be provided in the next release.

The product needs to have a better user experience in the interface and mobile functionality.

It is very stable. We have been using it since 2010. We have the usual problems, but no major problems.

Scalability is very good. We have scaled to more users and more functionality. 

The technical support answers your questions and partners with you. They have very good knowledge.

We were using Remedy previously. It was such a complex solution. It was very hard to maintain it. That was its main problem.

The initial setup was straightforward.

CA helped us with the installation.

We work with a lot of vendors, but they did not have this product.

Choose this product. I recommend this product for different companies. CA presents a case with our implementation.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: We can trust him and that he will work to help us.

We use it in our IT department to connect with our customers.

The performance has been excellent.

By connecting us with our customers.

It enables our coordinators to connect to our customers, and our customers are number one.

It adds tons of value. It gives us one central location to know, not only who is contacting us, but what they're contacting us for, what application they're contacting us for.

The new chat feature, I love that. They are always one step ahead of what we need. Usually, if I need something, I contact my rep and they tell us you have it.

In general, in terms of improvement, I would say our reps need to be a little more one on one. In the past we've had issues with that. But our current rep we love. 

Maybe training could be better.

Just little technical tweaks here and there. Like more options. For example "Organization." We wanted that to be available inside the change order, as well as the ticket and the request. And that's not available.

It's always on and it's always there. We've never had any issues with it being unstable.

Scalability is great. We can use it in our company from our IT department to our sales department. It works for everyone.

Tech support is fast. Fast, knowledgeable. I like that. I don't have to contact them often, just whenever I have a question.

I was not involved in the initial setup but I was involved in the upgrade. The solution was already there. But when I started, I knew that there were new features that we needed, so we upgraded.

We went from 12.1 to 14, so there was a lot involved in it. But from what I hear, the upgrade from 14 to 17 is way easier. So I look forward to that.

The issues we had were migration issues, getting our information from one place to the next and making sure everything was as everyone needed.

The most important criterion when selecting a vendor is communication. I like them to be upfront, honest, and transparent. Transparency means, when I call them they're honest about what they have available and what they can do, and not beating around the bush.

Our primary use case is mainly for incident problem requests and change management. The overall experience has been pretty good. It is customizable. You can customize it and make it work to the client's needs. Overall, the experience is pretty good.

Since we partnered, we go in and implement this kind of solution outside to other clients or other customers. Overall, depending on the customers' needs, the response is mixed. Some people who are process people, they like to adapt the tool, they like to follow it. They are more happy when we show them the power of incident power change request management. 

Some customers, the adaptability of any ideas in tool, is a little bit harder for them. Over the years, or over a period of time, the acceptance of the tool grows. 

The overall experience is pretty good. I love being in the process management area.

Ability to write macros, which can in turn trigger some condition or could be conditioned to basically trigger notifications, the workflow desk, or web calls. It is huge benefit to customize it.

I would like to see the customization being more flexible. What that means that we do not have to go through a complicated process of applying a custom field to a Service Desk Manager application if it would be easier to do through an interface, which would be nicer.

Some of the scripting parts, especially the spell scripts behind the scenes, if that could somehow be incorporated into the tool that would be helpful.

There are issues. Of course, then there is the CS port and Regal patches. They give us patches and we apply them. 

Overall, the stability is pretty good for the product, but there are gaps that could be fixed.

Solution is scalable. It does work. We can modify it up better to make it the way we want it to work. 

We use it for different clients and each client has a different number of analysts and different number of customers. I have seen some large scale implementations where they have over a 1000 people using it even in the country or outside of the country in multiple countries and even within small organizations as well.

We have implemented it for larger and smaller companies.

The technical support consists of very knowledgeable, helpful people. I know several of them personally.

Our issues are P1 or P2. We do not have the smaller scale issues because of our being on the technical side. We can resolve those issues by ourselves, within our team, or within the contacts that we have. In our organization, they can help us resolve some of those issues. Our technical issues are larger scale issues.

I am a consultant and we implement products for the tools. I only come into the picture once the product has already been sold. I am not part of that decision-making team.

It is not straightforward, but it is not complex since I have only done it about four or five thousand times. It depends on who is installing it if it would be complex.

Compared to some of the other products, I think we are bit behind.

I would highly recommend to install CA. Not only the CA Service Desk Manager tool, but the overall value that CA portfolio products can bring. If you can extend, you can get a grasp of management, you can get into IDCM client management, you can get into more automation and process automation.

The more add-on of the features that you can expand into your internal companies capabilities, the better, because CA has so many products.

The products are there that is why we work with CA's product suite. Other than the great knowledge of skill set available at CA that can help us guide through the project, the success is great.

I feel comfortable working with the tool as I have been working with it for years. 

Incident request, problem, and change management.

It's a solution. It needs a facelift, but it works. It improves our service delivery process. We're more efficient. We're leveraging the ticketing system, which is always more efficient, so we can measure and improve.

Extraction, the reporting tool that I tied into it. It's real-time reporting that's easy to use.

The user interface is just boring. I'd like to see a more interactive UI, from the end-user perspective, and from the analyst's perspective. I would like a product that looks like it was developed maybe in 2015, or at least 2012. Right now you see it, it's very flat.

It's pretty stable.

Scalability is good. All I have to do is buy more licenses and I can scale up as big as I want - maybe stand up another server and get a bigger database - but I'm okay.

They already had this stood up when I came to this company. But I own the system now. We just upgraded about a year and half ago and it was painful.

First of all it cost me a think $70,000 to pay my consultant. We had the testing of the dev environment, and then testing of the production environment, so it was two weekends out of my life. And stuff broke. 

For me the most important criteria when selecting a vendor is quality, because if the quality's not there then it's my time; quality of the vendor's service that they provide. If they're going to upgrade, I expect them to do the testing. Cost is a concern, but I'm already paying out the nose.

I heard an industry analyst say this once, and this is very true: No one likes their ticketing system. Everybody wants another one. It's just a difficult space. However, I would look for something that users want to use, and if you can get that amount of self-service tickets to rise, your cost of support goes down. So a good user interface is important.

Right now we have our IT analysts, about 500 users, that use Service Desk Manager primarily. They put in tickets, requests, incidents, and then track changes. Those are our use cases for it right now.

It's a great ticketing, tracking system. 

It also provides the front end for the employees too. It's pretty basic, but it gives them the means to reach out to IT so they don't have to pick up the phones. That's one of the big benefits.

Also, the flexibility in the tickets that are created, and what we can change and modify, is a big benefit.

There is a lot of flexibility in the system. There has not yet been a case where we've had people come to us and say, "Hey, can you guys do this?" and we can't. Some of it is obviously a little bit more complicated at times, but the flexibility in the system provides a lot.

Giving our end users what they need to perform their jobs better is highly valuable.

One thing that I'd like to see is with the Scoreboard usage. Right now, you have to create the Scoreboards individually for roles or users. If they could separate that functionality, and create the scoreboards separately, and then just link scoreboards to roles and users - that way you could reuse the same ones - that would be a huge benefit. I know, because they're a nightmare to manage at times.

Overall, the stability is pretty good. I think we step on our own toes when it comes to stability, more than the stability of the system itself. If you configure it to the specs, it seems to be working perfectly fine.

The scalability is pretty good. We've introduced new environments, new remote offices, into it and are able to incorporate them with pretty small impact.

I like the technical support. I've had pretty good instances with it, and feedback. They're really quick, typically. Even when I have really problematic issues, not just Service Desk related, they stick with me so it works out well.

We were a CA house, and then we outsourced to a company that brought Remedy in for the ticketing system. When we got rid of them, we needed to bring our own ticketing system back, and we brought CA back, we brought Service Desk back. We could have gone elsewhere, but we chose to bring it back into the environment.

I was involved in the upgrade, the most recent upgrade that we did, not the initial setup. MGM Resorts has been on it for a while, but I did do the upgrade.

I was pretty new to it, and we've done patch upgrades since then. There are a lot of steps in it. But what I'm seeing here, at the CA World conference, is that they have new utilities that make it more seamless. I'll be interested to see when we go to '17 what that does for it.

We didn't. Because we had been a CA Service Desk house before, we brought it back in.

Our users access it via the web. We have external and internal sources, and we're now introducing the mobile app portion so our computer engineers can respond to tickets remotely.

We're not currently using xFlow. I'm trying to push my boss to use it because I think there are benefits of having everything right there in your face. Service Desk right now, you have to really get into the tickets in order to get to some of the stuff that xFlow has puts right there.

Our most important criteria when selecting a vendor is seeing their desire and interest in making sure they understand what we need, and then making sure that they can do that. If they can't do that, see what improvements they can make to give us at least steps forward towards something that we may need.

I would highly recommend Service Desk Manager. The use, from an administrative stance, is pretty simple; and even from an analyst and employee's stances. It's an easy to use system, as far as ticketing systems go, because some of them can be really inundating and complex. Service Desk is pretty straightforward as far as use goes.