Clarity SM Reviews

• We have our AT side, which we use for our service desk. 
• We use it for our software development lifecycle. 
• We use it for our CIS Admin change, so any kind of changes that are happening. 
• We also have a CRM system that was built a hundred years ago. 
• It is used to manage our resorts, and our resort operations, and then also our call centers.

The database. The front-end is a little dated. They are working on it, but it is a little dated. So, the database and the power that is driven behind the database.

It has made us a lot more organized, and a lot more aware of what needs to happen. Just now, some of our teams are really adopting the managed change, such as using the product instead of emails back and forth. 

The UI needs to be upgraded.

It is pretty stable. I have had a few problems with stability, but I do not think it is actually the fault of the product as much as it was the vendor that installed it for us.

I can do whatever I want on it. I have it customized.

Technical support is sketchy at best. I have an open ticket right now that has been open for a few weeks. They are a challenge to work with. It took three weeks to get it escalated up to where it probably needed to be in the first place. I do not call support unless something is really broken and I don't know how to fix it.

I was involved in the upgrades. From the old database to the new database, I did that upgrade, and actually a fresh install, which was very straightforward. That was version 11 though. The newer versions have become a little bit more complicated to do a fresh install on, rather than doing an upgrade. They are a little bit easier to upgrade versus doing a fresh install.

A vendor team.

Give it a shot, but go through a partner.

It does what it is supposed to do. I can make it do more than it is supposed to do. I can customize it as I want. Most of the time the customizations will upgrade, but if they do not, I can reach out to people and find a different solution. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Whether or not they are going to help me.

I function inside of CMDB, Chain Configuration Management Data Base. I use it to work with our change management process, or configuration management process. To reduce down time, mean time to repair, audit functionality. Pretty much everything within CMDB, which is a subset of Service Desk.

It's a part of of a tool that other people use, and the big part of the problem with CMDB is getting a high rate of adoption. CMDB is not something that people see as a necessity, especially technical people. They don't want to deal with auditing, they don't want to deal with a lot of that stuff. So the fact that it's something they're already familiar with is a big deal. For a lot of companies, it's not built into their service desk, to my understanding. So that's a good thing about it. 

It's fairly easy to use, from a UI standpoint. Those are the main things that I would say are good about it.

It helps us have a clearer understanding of our environment, that's the big part of it that I use. As far as the ticketing part of that, it integrates within our email. If you're an end user, just a person, you don't need to go the website at all, you can do almost everything through email, so that is nice. 

I would like to see the API cleaned up. Right now, because of the way CA works, they combine a lot of applications. That's just the nature of it, they can't fix that probably. But the API is a mess, it's hard to navigate, hard to figure out. The documentation is okay, but from a back-end standpoint it's kind of difficult to work.

At our company, I think it's pretty stable. We have a good set of people working on it. I don't typically have any problems, with the front-facing part of it. There are not any really issues of stability from what I can see.

I would say we're a small to middle-sized company, and we haven't had any issues with anything like that. I wouldn't say it's a problem for us at all.

They've been good. My biggest problems have been working through the API for Service Desk, it's kind of a mess, that would be a nice way to put it.

They've been able to help me to get through, to where I need to go. Without that it's difficult, to say the least.

My company has been using CA for a long time.

I've been a part of PoCs at our company. When looking to invest in a vendor, the criteria include

• cost -  obviously a big concern
• functionality - if it's going to work within the tools that we have now. 

We're really big into automation, so integrating with other tools that we have is important. And CA - since we use so many of their products, between the mainframe, Service Desk - we really do use quite a bit of what they have. So they have a leg up as far as that goes.

I've worked with quite a few different products, from ServiceNow to Remedy, a lot of ticketing systems and the like. This is my first CMDB, as my main function. I would rate Service Desk lower than some of those other ones that I've used, because it seems like it's a little bit behind with innovative type of stuff. I like the UI, it's good. I would say, stand-alone, if I wasn't comparing it to anything else, it really does do what I need it to do, so I would give it a seven or an eight out of 10. Comparing it to other things, it would be about a six, because I think other software is better.

In terms of advice to a colleague looking at similar solutions, it would really depend on what they need. If they were looking for CMDB functionality, I think it really does do a good job of that. I think if you have other CA products, it does a good job of integrating with a lot of that. But I would encourage them to look at other products as well. I don't think it's an "industry leader." I think it's right up there with other tools, but depending on what you're doing and your environment, I think it's on-par with everything else.

Working problem tickets and change orders.

It has a lot of information, the way we have it set up, that you can use. We can attach documents and do screen prints.

Keeps track of any issues that we're having, as well as any changes that take place. 

As an end user I don't probably use it the way that other people would use it, but maybe automatic opening of tickets for other products would be helpful.

I think that we would like to see tickets opened and closed automatically. We would also like to see different functions for employees versus administrators versus managers; people being able to lock down certain features once they are there. That could be available now and we just don't have it turned on.

I have a feeling that the newer release has a lot of things in there that are useful for us, I've just haven't seen it because we don't have the newest release in.

It's stable. We're running an old version of it, it's a few years old.

I don't know because it's the same as when I started using it a few years ago.

I've used technical support, but not for this product, only for the products that I support. But, in general, my experience with technical support from CA has been good. There have been no surprises in my recent interactions with CA, they've been good.

No, we had an earlier release of Service Desk Manager. 

When selecting a vendor our most important criteria are support, stability, and availability of the product in the future.

Just make sure it has all the features that you're looking for in your particular environment. 

Some of workflows became centralised and the complexity of approval cycles decreased via this tool. In general, it has helped us to implement some ITIL practices easily. 

• Logging every action in Service Desk Manager (SDM).
• Unique ticket number for every case (incident, request, problem, change, etc.) and tracking cases with ticket numbers.
• Out-of-the-box functions
• ITIL compatibility

• Reporting side 
• Workflow engine 
• Knowledge base 
• SLA calculation and customisation

The SDM administration and customisation need deep information about architecture and vendor support continuously. Therefore, the quality of support service is very key.

For PAM and BO, it is very hard to create and manage reports, dashboards, or workflows. These topics cause difficulties on application usage for analysts and end users. 

Some processes stop from time-to-time and require a restart. Also, sometimesexporting lists (incident, request, change, etc.) to Excel does not work and requires a restart.

No issues.

Based on what we have gotten from our local technical partner and vendor, I would rate them as a three (from 10). It can be said that the most important thing is selection of your vendor. CA tools can be very useful when you have the right vendors on board, otherwise it becomes a disaster for your organisation.

We have been using this product for eight years and nobody remembers the reason for the switch, however we are going to switch this product due to lack of technical support and legacy structure for the version which we were using. 

Initial setup was complex, because components (SDM, BO, and PAM) were on different servers and a lot of configuration was needed during the setup. 

The product has several licensing models. In our corporation, we are using a concurrent licensing model and there is no cap for the license due to licensing model being ethical. I think pricing of this model is suitable for growing corporations.

Not applicable.

Find a local partner, one that has full competence on this product, or take extensive training for your technical crew about the product from global vendor. Understand the strengths and weaknesses of product and evaluate these with your needs. If it needs more customisation, think twice. 

However, there is a huge difference between the reviewed version and the recent version of this product. The newer version is far better than the reviewed version. Do not forget that this review has been given for version 12.9. (This review has been shared while version 14.x has been in market.)

The most important part is the user experience. CA Service Desk Manager provides a great and helpful experience. It's a tool with constant updates and always thinking about and looking out for the user.

It's a powerful tool that is able to do everything. Anything you need, CA SDM can help.

CA Technologies have been improving the customer experience when we're talking about UI, probally it's comming soon a great UI about usability.

It's comming with v17 a great functionality about upgrade - it's easier than ever.

I've been implementing the solution for more than a decade, in different companies of different sizes and in different industries. It's adaptability is incredible; you can codify and change almost everything. Therefore, the solution is working for our needs.

The solution could include in your own license other products to help your own customers embrace more disciplines to their needs.

With a small licensing of these products, it's possible to present all the power of the power of suite.

I have used it for more than a decade.

Usually everything's OK.

I have never encountered any stability issues.

I encountered a scalability issue with an older version. Nowadays, it is better.

Customer service is really good.

CA Support is improving its work. The support workers have a lot of experience, and they think fast to solve our problems.

I previously used other solutions, but they were not as powerful. I'm working as a single MSP and work with different solutions.

It's as easy as a Windows install. You can check on CA Communities.

Using CA Service Desk, the companies grow up.

I do not know. I never can compare these numbers.

No comment. Ask me privately.

I can help you to check and evaluate options; compare the solutions. Therefore, the first step is: Compare the same thing with the same thing, apples to apples, but I cannot tell you which is the better choice of fruit.

The new xFlow interface that was introduced for Level 1 analysts really helps the them to achieve the best and fastest result for their users/customers.

First, based on certain ticket attributes, the heat of tickets is calculated and the list is sorted so the analyst can always continue to work on the ticket with the highest priority.

Then, ticket data is analyzed by the system to give analysts hints on experts or similar tickets/solutions.

Last but not least, the research tool is great to search the internet for solutions and get information back to the ticket.

The intelligence introduced into the product keeps getting better the longer you use it. Unified Self Service gives our end users an interface that attracts people and which they want to use, as it looks great and the offerings we provide makes their work life easier.

The methodology introduced for Level 1 analysts needs to be taken to Change Management Process. It would be useful to be able to look in Change Management and see the current status of the process. For example, it could show that this change has five steps and the analyst is performing step three. Also, end users would benefit from this step view.

Change Management is the most complex ITIL Process. Here a clear guidance for the person in action or all actors are important. Currently, there is room for improvement.The change process has a variable amount of steps to complete, depending on several attributes. If you look into a change, you should directly see that you are on step three out of seven, so you have a clear idea of how many steps have to be completed and how many are already completed. It gives you a good understanding of where you are in the process.

We have been using the solution now for eight years. It has given us a huge benefit in our daily work.

We have not had any problems with stability. We run the system for multiple customers and as a SaaS offering with very good stability.

The solution scales very well. A greatly improved version was introduced 3 years ago and since then, we have not had any issues with scalability or stability.

the SLAs provided are real life proven, we faced some priority 1 issues and got quick solutions and it works throughout their support centers.

We have experienced very good technical support. When you prepare for a go-live, you can engage with a dedicated technical support engineer in advance to get priority support in case issues occur during, or shortly after, an upgrade.

We used in-house solutions and it did not give us the coverage over all the ITIL processes to provide professional service/support.

Setup and integration went smooth. After installation, we were able to import ITIL content to get started modifying the processes to our needs.

we did a in house implementation only for difficult integrations/customizations we involved the vendor. They have professionals that know the software very well.

Pricing is simple, as it’s per concurrent analysts.

We looked into other vendors too, such as Cherwell. But this is already 7 years ago. Since then, we observe the market and review our decision every two years to make sure that our decision is still right.

It provides great possibilities. To get the most value out of the solution, make sure to get your people in service management and administrators trained.

This product has so many adjustment possibilities for many different clients.

One of the features of this product is to elevate the customer experience. Due to the constantly increasing needs of the customers experience, we always have to make changes in the way we are working to provide satisfaction to our clients. Thus, this application has many thousands of ways to do that.

• We certainly increased the quality of our work.

• The system is more robust. We can elaborate on a better and complex service. At one time, we had a lot of processes.

• The application has the possibility to integrate with other systems. This, in turn, transformed the information to be more solid.

• Due to the integration with Business Intelligence (BI), we had possibilities to create reports. In these reports, we can see, in-depth, about where and when exactly we need to modify our processes. Therefore, there was a decrease in the count of open and duplicate tickets.

One area that this product can improve is in the mobile user aspect. We need to get more solutions to our client's mobile, so they will have the same mobile experience that they have on their computer.

I have been using it for about five years. I started to use this system as a customer and after a short time, i.e., within a three month period, I specialized in it. Now I am working as an administrator.

I didn't particularly have any issues with the stability.

None of my clients have reported any scalability issues. I didn't find any such issues either.

The technical support is the best support that I've seen. They are very fast and provide security, in terms of responding to my tickets. Even if they don't know the answer immediately, I don't need to wait so long to receive their response back. They are always positive.

I have used a different solution before, but it wasn’t what my clients really needed. The other systems don't have a variety of services that CA SDM has included under only one system. If CA SDM doesn't have a particular feature, then CA has facility integration with its other systems.

The setup was straightforward, once you have almost all the things planned.

It is a bit expensive, but you definitely get what you pay for. It is worth it!

Plan every step you need for implementation. Always look forward to every step that your client would need in order to get there.

We use it for incident, problem, release, change, knowledge, and configuration management.

With its scalability and ability to connect with various systems, we have been able to exchange data with several systems automatically.

The UI is old school with a lot of windows opening and slowing down the process of ticket creation by the end users. The reporting ability of the tool needs to improve drastically. Currently, the solution is provided with Business Objects (BO) and is too slow to use for every day reporting.

I have used this solution for 18 years.

Once in a while, the processes crash and we are yet to find a root cause for it. The product is very sensitive to small network outages (even for 1-2 seconds).

There were no scalability issues.

The technical support is provided, but it is often too slow. Hence, it requires us to implement a workaround, since the fix has a long way to travel. It often depends on the person who picks up the issue on the other end.

The initial setup is tricky. There are a lot of things to keep in mind, especially when everything is moving to the cloud or is virtual. Scalability becomes a challenge if we use the wrong resources.

There is always a challenge with the cloud solutions, such as ServiceNow. But the level of customization that we can do with the tool is normally not possible with the other tools in the market. The UI should be more intuitive.

The needs an improvement with its UI which looks old school. The product also is quite complex to implement. However the framework it uses is quite scalable and the product can be customized a lot.