Request for Post


Do you want a post about something in particular? Do you want a deeper development of one post, or a second part of it? Do you want me to analyze a product? If the answer to the above questions is yes, please add a comment ... Read the complete post

Estimating the required number of licenses


Sometimes when starting a new BMC Remedy implementation project, the customer, or your boss, demands an estimation cost of licenses and maintenance. If you have a reduced number of users, you can figure the number of required licenses. But if your case is more ... Read the complete post

What is new in BMC Remedy ITSM 8.0


WWRUG12 is just about closing the paper submission, and today has arrived a very big one: What's new in BMC Remedy ITSM 8.0. So Now it's completely official, the new version will be presented to public during the WWRUG12. In this post I will review the submitted ... Read the complete post

Adding custom permission groups to ITSM foundation


When starting to customize ITSM applications is easy to arrive at one point where it is important to differentiate between users, for privileges or different workflow behavior. Two main approaches appear: to use support groups or ARS permission groups. The first solution is easy ... Read the complete post

Understanding the Request Id field in BMC Remedy


ARS identifies fields by a number id. Some id's are retated to special functions. Maybe the most important of all is the field id '1', often called the Request Id or Entry Id. Understanding how this special field works is very important for any ... Read the complete post

Functions in BMC Remedy ARS


We all know that Remedy's developing paradigm is very different from traditional programming. We have no code, no loops, no functions nor any other classical element. But, classical programming has a long way and a lot of minds thinking about it. So there are ... Read the complete post

Operational Categorization for BMC Remedy


In a recent post I covered how the different categorizations for BMC Remedy Service Desk should be interpreted. The operational category is maybe the most important of all. In this post I will review the most important facts that an operational categorization must accomplish and ... Read the complete post

Naming convention for BMC Remedy Action Request System


Let's talk seriously, Remedy has one of the worsts code organization systems in the world. Also, BMC has not published any best practice guide for developing (apart of the best practice customization mode). So, any developing company must establish a set of best practices ... Read the complete post

BMC Remedy Incident Management Categories


One of the main best practices to focus when implementing the BMC Remedy Service Desk is the correct use of categorization tools. Each element can be categorized in order to obtain the next main advantages:In this line, the difference between a correct and wrong ... Read the complete post

Case Insensitive mid-tier login


In a previous post, I explained how to switch your complete ARS instance to case insensitive. But, is it really complete? No. Definitely not. There are some hidden functionalities that remain case sensitive, like the login system. To turn the Remedy login system to case insensitive is something impossible ... Read the complete post

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» Problem Management

Applying ITIL on Small Sized Organizations

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Jose Huerta in ITSM, Other Comments | 1 Comment

The first day I attended on an ITIL formation, the teacher told us: “ITIL is suitable for all sizes and types of companies, the secret is to know how adapt it.” But the more I understood the ITIL philosophy, the more I thought that it was designed for big sized organizations. Only in managers and coordinators, you can count more than 30 people. So how can it be adapted to small sized organizations?

In this post I will cover the mayor adaptations of the ITIL framework to IT departments of less of 20 people. … Read the complete post

Automatic assignment for BMC Remedy ITSM

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Jose Huerta in Newbies, Remedy Comments | 7 Comments

Almost every decent ITSM tool offers the admins to configure a set of rules to assign or route tickets to proper support groups or specialists. BMC Remedy ITSM Suite is no different, as expected, and has its own assignment engine. But I the result is a bit confusing and maybe not as useful as it could be. The result is a overloaded system, difficult to maintain, or worse, not using the assignment engine.

In this post I will review the BMC Remedy ITSM Suite’s assignment engine. … Read the complete post

Organizing your support groups in levels

Posted on January 22, 2012 by Jose Huerta in Best practices | Leave a comment

BMC Remedy Service Desk allows us to relate each support group to a support level. This classification comes from an ITIL recommendation. Most Remedy implementations declare the level of the support group but don’t utilize it extensively. It is easy that in a multi-tenancy environment each company uses it’s own classification criteria for support levels. Or worse, each Remedy administrator selects a level when creating the group almost randomly.

As in a lot of other configurations, having a consolidated criteria can provide us with a lot of information when analyzing the service.

In this post I will review the support level concept and provide a recommended classification. … Read the complete post

Sharing Categorizations between applications

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Jose Huerta in Best practices | Leave a comment

BMC Remedy applications typically categorizes their requests in an operational and product scopes. These categories can be shared, so all applications feed from the same categories list, be particular, so each application has his own categories, or using a mixed strategy.

In this post I will cover my recommendations when designing the categories for all applications. To share or not to share, that’s the question. … Read the complete post