Clarity SM Reviews

• SLA escalations: The SLA escalation feature is accurate and helps the service management team to manage the services delivered, as well as to monitor the performance of the analysts working on the tickets.
• Multitenancy: This feature allowed multiple logically separated entities to work on the same ticketing system. There was complete data isolation.
• Ease of editing code: The code behind the UI and the functionality is quite easy to edit and does not require much learning time.

Multitenancy has helped to use a single solution for multiple departments. This way, there was a single ticketing system for many departments, which saved a lot of cost and helped the departments with organizing their requests.

There are later versions available that we are not using yet. Many desired improvements have already been included in those versions.

Nonetheless, here are a couple of ways they could improve the product:
- Better reporting: Data specifying which ticket spent how much time in which status should be easily available/stored somewhere.
- Readily available plugins: Plugins should be made available for integration with third-party tools that are commonly used (e.g., Nagios). Such integration needs to be developed externally. This improvement can make the tool really popular.

I have been using it for four years.

I have not encountered any deployment, stability or scalability issues.

No issues with stability. This depends on the level of customization done.

Technical support is 8/10.

I did not previously use a different solution. We have been using this product from the beginning. It was chosen because of the features available at the given cost.

Initial setup was straightforward.

One-time setup was done by a vendor team and later, other implementations were done in-house. The documentation is sufficient to help with the implementation and scalability should be kept in mind when implementing.

For organizations that are beyond the startup phase but are still not very huge, this is the ticketing system to choose.

The most valuable features of this product are security, scalability and the possibilities for customization.

We can’t compete with the price against small local vendors. Demanding customers are our market.

We have mainly made money by selling our consultant services around it.

Some the features that can be improved are:

• Usability: xFlow is a great step forward, but further steps are needed. Public bids in Finland often require HTML5 UI. xFlow fulfills that requirement.

• Public bids in Finland often do not permit browser plugins: Java or Adobe Flash Player. In such cases, we just have to offer other solutions since Visualizer requires Flash. Thus, there is a need to get rid of Flash.

• Internalization: Check out language plugin in ServiceNow. CA is quite far behind in this area.

I have used this solution since the year 2009.

Some bugs have been found during the years, but they have been resolved.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

It’s okay. We have had issues while getting fixes for a few older releases.

We had tried a local competing solution in the years 2014-2015. Their UI is much more suitable for sales presentations. However, they have too many issues with stability and their technical support is at a very poor level.

ITSM deployment projects are always quite difficult.

CA is competitive, i.e., if there are a lot of end users compared to number of analysts. However, that is not always the case.

We considered both global and local vendors.

A customer comment after our sales presentation (CA Service Desk Manager + CA Control Minder): "We have finally found a vendor who is serious about security."

The most valuable features are the service catalog and process automation; in deployment, the ICT automation and self-service.

• Self-consumption of services by end-users
• Standardization
• Automation with increased effectiveness

I would like to see integration between the service management products and consolidated application of patches.

We have used this solution for five years.

I did not encounter any issues with stability.

I encountered issues with scalability. The solution is 32-bit.

I would give technical support a rating of 9 out of 10.

The initial installation was simple. The initial configuration and integration between products was complex.

Make sure you have a strong official CA support presence.

With CA SDM, my entire service management business is ITIL aligned with better productivity across all IT processes. From incident management to release management, CA SDM empowers and energizes ABS and their clients.

We are ITIL compliant and we have a lot of experience implementing IT services. We offer these facilities to our clients and customers. SDM has many automatic functions that allow us to offer value when implementing business rules in a short time and without code, just by configuring the tool.

We are an enterprise that sells IT services and all our areas involved in IT processes use the tool.

I think each tool suffers difficulties when a customer has requirements completely outside the standard, which is very common.

Technical support is good, once scaled to a second level. But usually, there are difficulties in the first approach.

CA develops and acquires enough tools and adds them to its solutions, but does not necessarily fully integrate them before releasing them. That also makes initial implementation difficult.

And finally, CA currently has problems delivering the tool in the cloud. CA tried to insert a new tool in the cloud but failed. Today, only MSPs can deliver the service, but not CA directly.

We have been using CA Service Desk Manager for 12 years.

In 12 years, we had only a pair of important isolated stability issues.

We have not really had any scalability issues. Rather, the companies are the ones that often do not have clear information about when they have to make the jump to a next level.

We have a lot of experience and do not have much need of manufacturer support. But, like most large companies, it is an area of opportunity.

We looked at open-source solutions and other branches like IBM or Remedy. SDM, at the time, offered critical differentiators that made us change and stay until now.

SDM comes preloaded and preconfigured. We have started a service desk in a week, but without a doubt, the difficulty comes from the customer environment; the volume, the processes to be assembled, their level of maturity, etc.

It is not the most expensive nor the cheapest solution. It depends on the negotiation with CA, but in general I think it is a fair price.

We evaluated BMC Remedy and ServiceNow.

I would recommend evaluating the tool with companies that have already implemented it. It is very important that you can find references that can be consulted.

You want to know about their time of experience in the market, whether they are certification tested with the manufacturer with an expert level, and are a reliable business partner for implementation.

The completeness of information on each ticket is one of the most valuable feature of this solution. We are able to gather information either directly from the product interface or from data extraction. Any reports that our analyst users request are available in some fashion.

It is often the center point of reference on discussions of either outages in other applications or planned modifications in hardware or software.

There is nothing major in this product that needs improvement; maybe more documentation is needed for database relationships.

Although, the documentation in the Administration references, is very detailed and complete with respect to the internal/external table names, field definitions and relationships, it is difficult to determine database table inter-relationships, without examining and tracing paths. A person needs to start with a major table, and follow each reference field to the next table.

It would be beneficial, if there were diagrams with basic table interconnections within the major areas, such as Contacts, tables relating to Change Orders and the same for Incidents/Problems. This way, it would be much easier for the support specialists, who are just learning the system, to know where to find ancillary information related to the main tables.

I have used this solution for five years; probably even longer on the previous version, before my time.

I have hardly ever encountered any stability issues. There are very few instances of unplanned outages – at the most 1-2 per year.

We have not had the need for scaling it. This product was configured in a way that we could use it for many years.

CA technical support is outstanding. They are very responsive and always have an answer.

Previously, we used an older version of the CA product that was no longer officially supported.

Since we were not upgrading but installing a new instance, the setup was very complex. We had to define all the configuration items and establish user update routines specific to our installation. However, there were CA support individuals on-site who were very instrumental in a successful installation.

Personally, we did not evaluate any other solutions. We were upgrading an existing product.

You need to plan ahead and talk with the CA installation support in order to define as many of the user areas as possible, prior to beginning the setup. This can help you have an easier method in setting up areas such as ticket categories and workflow steps. Otherwise, there could be a delay in installation while these are defined.

One of the features of this product is to elevate the customer experience. Due to the constant needs of the experienced customers, we always have to make changes with the way we are working so as to achieve satisfaction for our clients; this application has many ways to do that.

We have certainly increased our quality level.

First of all, the system is more robust. In this way, we can elaborate on more complex services. At one time, we had a lot of processes.

Secondly, the application has the possibility to integrate with other systems and transforms more solid information.

Lastly, owing to the integration with BI, we now have various possibilities to create reports in which we can see where and when we need to modify our processes. Therefore, there was a decrease in the number of open and duplicate tickets.

One area of this product that needs improvement is the user mobile experience. We need to get more solutions on the mobile devices of our clients so that they have the same mobile experience as they have on the computer.

I have been using it for about four years.

Particularly, I didn't have any issues with stability.

None of my clients have reported any scalability issues, neither have I experienced any issues.

CA technical support is one of the best that I've seen.

I have used a different solution before but it wasn’t what my clients really needed; thus I moved over to this product.

The setup was straightforward, i.e., once you have almost everything planned, it is quite straightforward.

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

We had evaluated and looked at the second product in the market.

Plan every step that you need to implement and always look ahead to what your client would need in order to get there.

The process automation component is incredibly valuable. It cuts down on the workload of teams, organizational and clerical work, and allows employees to be more efficient.

I would like to see not having such strict compatibility requirements when working with other applications. This is just limited to certain parts of the application, though, such as email and how it interacts with certain servers.

This solution doesn’t always work in the real world with company and security requirements.

To clarify further, there are some parts of the application that have some inflexible settings, i.e., for the Maileater feature, you can only specify certain ports, encryptions and 1 certificate. This doesn’t always play nice with the email servers. For example, what happens if the settings that CA SDM send, are not the recommended settings that the email server is expecting? Maileater is the biggest issue we’ve had recently, and I’d provide another example, if I could. It is an issue to keep Java up to the latest security level, as it makes working with CA SDM also a little slow, but that seems to be a universal issue with many applications.

The company has had the product for a while. I have only been using it for a year.

They have two setup options. I can only comment about the advanced availability setting, which is stable.

There have been no issues with scalability.

The support staff is amazing and if they weren’t, I would have given this solution a lower rating.

I was only involved in performing a reinstall on our development environment. The setup was easy. The documentation could have been better for a couple steps, but support was able to help.

The product works very well when using all the recommended apps with it. I suggest using the recommended or preferred hardware and OS for the product so your life will be a lot easier.

The most valuable feature is the usability of the search when you want to find other tickets that relate to the incident you're working on.

We have all of our different ticket types in one area. There are incidents, requests, and change requests all tied into one application, so you don't need to go to different tools. It makes it easier to find all the data in one spot.

I don't know. There's really nothing that I can think of. Everything always can be improved.

It's really stable. We haven't had much downtime, so it's been a very solid product.

I haven't used technical support personally. My boss uses CA technical support. He handles all the issues.

Our old solution was not meeting our needs. It was very hard to use. It was causing a lot of people issues, so we needed to find something new.

I wasn’t involved in the initial setup, but I heard that it was pretty straightforward. They didn't really have very many issues. The CA people were able to help out with any problems we had.

I don’t think we looked at other vendors before choosing CA.

Have resources available and people who are dedicated to the product.

When we select a vendor, we look for a company that's a leader in their industry, or somebody who has the backing to support the product that they sell.

It allows us to integrate all our processes into one. It allowed us to retire several disjointed custom-built solutions. It helps us to fulfill requests and change orders.

Our key requests are being implemented in the next release. There is a knowledge management portion. It is very cumbersome to create a knowledge management document. That’s one area that could be improved.

The Knowledge Management module in Service Desk Manager is cumbersome and hard to use. It’s not so bad for browsing and viewing knowledge documents, but to create content is extremely time consuming.

The main problem we have is, you can’t simply paste screenshots into the knowledge editor, they first have to be uploaded and then, attached to the document. We would love to have the ability to copy/paste screenshots into the knowledge editor, similar to how you can add images to an email.

The only time we ever have stability problems is when our environment is not stable, so it's a perfectly stable product.

It is very scalable.

They typically get back to you quickly regarding the less complicated requests. For more complicated ones, they obviously take longer; but they're always excellent.

I only got involved a few months after it was implemented.

Try not to bite off more than you can chew. Try not to piecemeal.

We emphasize a partnership with the vendor and their ability to understand our business. The more they understand about our business and our goals, the better aligned we are. It is not always just about the technology or whatever the functionality is.

We have integrated Service Desk Manager fully from servicing the customer, right down to the network configuration. It's fully integrated. That provides many customer benefits, and enhances our customer experience as well.

Service Desk Manager keeps our customers updated regularly regarding any network outage and aware when we will respond to his request and when it will be repaired. Our customers receive better service and we also have a better experience serving them. The CA tool is actually helping us and we can see drastic improvement from it.

The view we now have of our customer base, and how they link to the network is more of a bottom-up approach. I would like to see it from a top-down approach. We want more visibility into how the network layers are linked. That's the next stage that we are working toward.

I also want to see how we can bring DevOps automation and lifecycle development into the equation, and evaluate how that helps us to mature much faster.

We have been at this more than a year. It's quite performance stable. We're doing more enhancements to our setup. The initial implementation covered 70% of our network. So now, at full capacity, we're adding additional features and have implemented more enhancements. There is deeper integration with our business systems and operating systems that give a fully integrated view regarding how CA Service Desk fits into the bigger service offering.

Currently, we are busy migrating customers to use to Service Desk. We are going to scale up to about 4 to 5 million subscribers. This will allow us to further extend our look at network integration as well. It's going to extend far.

We've got onsite technical support from CA. My impression is that they have improved drastically since we started.

We had a request to scan the market. CA was the best product at that time. They needed to make sure that our service catalog was communicated regularly within our business, so that everybody is briefed on what is new and how CA has evolved.

We needed a product that would integrate with our architecture. This is important, because we were looking for a specific piece, and it fit the puzzle nicely. There were certain features we were also looking for; a set of business requirements that we had to fulfill. That was basically our criteria.

I was involved in the initial setup. The first one was quite complex because we had to integrate into legacy systems. We had to integrate into new solutions with other suppliers and integrate into the integration bus, so it was quite complex.

There were other suppliers that we also looked at and compared. We looked at the Asian companies.

What helped us is that at the beginning is that we had a lot of offshore support. The best is to get CA onshore support. Then they understand the culture of the company. It's not only from a documentation point-of-view. They understand how to interact with different people. I recommend this even if you are based abroad. A local presence for us meant a lot.