What's New in ServiceWise 6.5.1
See what's new in ServiceWise 6.5
See what's new in ServiceWise 6.1
TechExcel ServiceWise provides a businesses with a powerful incident and change management solution. Using TechExcel ServiceWise, support organizations may optimize every aspect of their support processes including the management of incidents and events, the company knowledge base and assets, and professional services and service level agreements.
New features and enhancements in ServiceWise 6.5.1 include:
- Event Variables
- Enhanced CTI support
- FormWise reports
- Web activity reports
TechExcel Service Suite on DevSuite.net
TechExcel ServiceWise and CustomerWise are now available as hosted solutions through TechExcel DevSuite.net.
DevSuite.net is a hosting solution that provides the same level of configuration as a local installation in a hosted environment. Use DevSuite.net for hosted evaluations or hosting your entire production TechExcel solution.
Company Hierarchy Enhancements
The company hierarchy is a representation of a business as a hierarchical structure consisting of sites, divisions, departments, and groups. At each level of the company hierarchy, project administrators may define one or more team groups as applicable to that level in the company hierarchy.
Using this framework, project administrators may now define flexible issue notification and issue escalation conditions that limit the scope of a notification or escalation rule based on company hierarchy settings.
In ServiceWise 6.5.1, administrator-defined incident notification and escalation rules may now be targeted at specific sites, divisions, departments, and groups. Company hierarchy conditions may not be defined for event notifications or event escalations.
TopIncident Routing Enhancements
In ServiceWise 6.5.1, enhanced incident routing enable project administrators greater control and flexibility to define incident routing automation rules. Incident routing criteria enable the administrator to route incidents to specific support engineers based on a combination of incident property definitions, employee property definitions, and company hierarchy definitions.
In the past, incidents were routed to applicable support engineers based solely on incident property values.
Incident routing rules may now be based on incident property definitions, employee property definitions, and company hierarchy definitions.
- Incident routing criteria identify a range of incident property values that determine whether a support incident is routed to the project members defined applicable to the routing rule.
- Employee routing criteria identify a range of employee property values including the Employee Status, Job Role, and Cell Phone number properties. Employee routing criteria enable organizations to ensure that support incidents associated with a particular employee are always assigned to the right support engineer.
- Company hierarchy routing criteria identify a set of sites, divisions, departments, and groups. Company hierarchy routing criteria enable organizations to ensure that support incidents associated with employees that belong to a specific site, division, department, or group are always assigned to the right support engineer.
Incident, employee, and company hierarchy routing criteria may be combined to define precise incident routing that may result in better incident assignment and resolution times.
Redesigned CTI Data Connector Interface
TechExcel ServiceWise CTI tools enable support teams to improve customer support over the telephone through the CTI Data Connector (CDC) from Mirage Computer Systems. ServiceWise CTI integration offers support organizations inbound and outbound calling features designed to improve efficiency.
ServiceWise 6.5.1 features a redesigned interface that facilitates the the integration of TechExcel Service Suite with third party phone systems. Improvements include:
- More detailed caller and incident information.
- Incoming call events with existing incidents.
- An improved installer facilitates the installation of the CTI Data Connector on the client machine or network server.
- A new quick link that enables agents to update any incident directly from with the CTI interface.
Enhanced Graphical Workflow Editor
ServiceWise 6.5.1 features an enhanced graphical workflow editor that provides improved workflow drawing controls, grid overlay for aligning state nodes and transition lines, and options for exporting workflow diagrams as VDX files. Graphical workflow enhancements include:
- Improved graphic controls enable project administrators to customize the appearance of chart, box (workflow state), and arrow (transition) attributes.
- A workflow grid — a grid of intersecting horizontal and vertical lines — may be laid on top of the entire chart to aid in the design of project workflow. Project administrators may customize the space between grid lines, the style of the grid (lined or dotted), and enable chart objects to align with the grid.
- Workflow graphs may be exported as VDX files. VDX is a vector file that is associated with the Visio XML drawing file. ServiceWise workflow graphs may be exported and manipulated in Visio. However, VDX files cannot be imported into ServiceWise Admin.
Enhanced ServiceWise-DevTrack Integration
ServiceWise interproject incident management enables support organizations to copy incidents from one project to another project, create links between incidents in different projects, and track linked support incidents or development issues.
In an integrated ServiceWise‐DevTrack system, support engineers may create development issues in a DevTrack project based on the bugs submitted by company employees. Interproject linking enables support engineers and, optionally, company employees to track the status of that development issue through the Web Conversation page and Employee Web Portal.
In the Employee Web Portal, company employees may view their product or service requests and track the development status, target release date, service status, and other development issue properties.
Event Variables
Event variables, a new feature in ServiceWise 6.5.1, enable project administrators to create more powerful and versatile event templates whereby event property definitions determine which project members are identified as applicable owners of that event.
An event variable is administrator‐defined variable that represents a group of project members that may potentially be assigned an event in project workflow. Each event variable is defined by one or more event variable values, and each of these values may be tied to multiple account types, team groups, group folders, and system variables. The selection of a particular event variable value determines who may own the event.
Project administrators may create two types of event variables: linked event variables and unlinked variable values.
- A linked event variable is tied to an existing event property and the event variable values are identical to the property values of the linked property. For example, if an event variable is linked to the Priority field the event variable values might be High, Medium, Low.
- An unlinked event variable is not tied to any event property and all event variable values must be custom-defined by the project administrator.
Every event variable value may be linked to one or more account types, team groups, and group folders as well as multiple system‐defined variables. When an event is defined by the event variable value that is linked to those objects, the project members represented by those account types, team groups, group folders and system variables are defined as applicable owners and their names are displayed in the Owner dropdown list in the client.
In addition to the administrator‐defined account types, team groups, and group folders, seven different system variables may be linked to each event variable value: {Customer-Contacts}, {Parent Incident Owner}, {Primary support}, {Secondary support}, {Primary support applicable}, {Secondary support applicable}, and the {Auto assign} variables.
Event variables provide organizations with greater control over the distribution of events by enabling them define event ownership rules that are based on field selections. Event variables may also be used to store additional information for reporting.
Web Activity Reports
Web activity management is the measurement of activity in the Employee Web Portal that enables the business to quantify employee interest in products and services. Each page viewed by a employee is registered as a web click and tracked as a web activity event in the project.
ServiceWise features four types of web activity reports that enable the business to assess employee web activity: the web activity distribution report, web activity distribution by group, web activity trend report, and web activity trend by group report.
ServiceWise 6.5.1 introduces two new group web activity reports:
- The web activity distribution by group report shows the relative arrangement of events across multiple user-defined groups. Data may be viewed in terms of raw numbers and as a percentage of the total population. Custom-defined groups of web click events (web click categories) are subtotalled in the report.
- The web activity trend by group report shows the relative distribution of events in a project over time based on a user-defined set of event properties. Custom-defined groups of web click events (web click categories) are subtotalled in the report.
Report authors may define any number of custom web click events based on the web click event type in the Web Access manager of the ServiceWise Windows client. (Employee Web Portal login events and DownloadPlus events are system-defined). Each web click event is linked to a specific Employee Web Portal URL and a web click event is created whenever an employee accesses that page.
Custom web click events may also be grouped into distinct web click categories that the organization may wish to track together. Common web click categories include banner ads, white papers, web casts, seminars or any other item that an employee may access through the Employee Web Portal.
In ServiceWise 6.5.1, report authors may define customized event template groupings that enable them to view logical groupings of data based on sets of web click events.
Web activity management is a feature of TechExcel FormWise and requires the purchase and integration of FormWise with ServiceWise.
New Employee Change Log
The New Employee Change Log shows detailed information about employees including the name of the project member that made the change and the time and date of the change.
Project members may optionally display or hide the event change log using controls in the User Preferences manager.
New Event Change Log
The new Event Change Log shows detailed event activity the time and date that events were created or modified and the name of project member that made the changes.
Project members may optionally display or hide the event change log using controls in the User Preferences manager.
Quick Event Modification by E-mail
Company employees that are required to approve or modify events may now access the Event Editing page through links embedded in e-mail notification messages.
The new mail merge field {Event Quick Access for Users} automatically inserts a hyperlink within the body of e-mail notification messages. By clicking the hyperlink, employees may instantly access the Event Editing page and update the event. Recipients of event notifications may update and approve events quickly without having to log into the project.
On Owner Change Notification Trigger
In ServiceWise, an incident notification trigger is a specific incident management task—such as the submitting, forwarding, or closing of an incident—that prompts the incident notification action or actions (e-mail actions, pager/PDA actions, or mobile phone actions).
ServiceWise 6.5.1 introduces the On Owner Change incident notification trigger. The On Owner Change notification trigger enables project administrators to define rules for notifying notification recipients whenever an incident changes owner in workflow.
DownloadPlus Support
DownloadPlus, a powerful file download management application is now available for integration with ServiceWise. DownloadPlus enables administrators to control download activity and create download surveys.
Downloads may be protected based on numerous definable criteria and all download activity and survey information is associated with the employee. DownloadPlus helps administrators protect downloadable content and also makes finding the right download easier for end users.
FormWise Reports
TechExcel FormWise, the web-based form and survey manager, now includes Distribution, Trend, and List reports enabling users to perform more detailed analysis of all feedback captured using FormWise web based forms.
New reports may be used to identify trends in customer satisfaction, gain customer insight by analyzing distributions on form input, and create lists of form responses by customer, segment, or other user defined data.
Enhanced Project Integration
Administrators and business managers now have the flexibility to create seamless workflows and business processes among different teams and projects. The following enhancements provide enhanced integration between projects.
Interproject Copy Actions
Define action buttons in the user interface that make it easy for users to perform interproject copy of incidents. Administrators may define who can see the buttons, when they appear during an incident workflow, and who can perform the actions.
Automation Between Projects
Interproject Copy Action enables automatic incident creation between linked projects based on a workflow transition or state change. The incident may be created automatically with or without end-user interaction. In addition, automation may be configured in a "daisy-chain" where automated actions cause other actions to occur in linked projects.
Interproject Copy Status Automation
Improve workflow efficiency between your teams by allowing a status change in one project automatically update the status of an incident in another project.
Interproject copy status automation enables administrators to "tie" workflows of different projects together for a more cohesive process.
Linked project incident info page is more configurable – Define foreign project information sections that appear in Linked Info tab.
Definable Employee Web Portal Sections
Project administrators may now define each page section title and page table title in the Employee Web Portal.
Definable Employee Web Portal page and section titles enable project administrators to define the specific terminology used in a project or process.
