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Hornbill Takes ITSM (and ITIL) Social and Mobile

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April 24, 2011

Hornbill Takes ITSM (and ITIL) Social and Mobile

By Brendan B. Read, Senior Contributing Editor


More individuals—including employees—are relying on social media and mobile technologies: namely highly functional smartphones. These trends are forcing IT support to adapt, which means looking for and adopting solutions that can help them manage these channels. Tools that are ITSM (IT Service Management) and ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library)-compatible: which in turn rely on ITIL-trained-and-certified support reps to effectively utilize them.


To assist, Hornbill Service Management has just come out with a blended social/mobile solution: Supportworks ITSM Enterprise v.3.2, which integrates Twitter and smartphone-based support with the help or support desk. IT departments can now improve service delivery by proactively identifying and responding to service issues that often fail to surface in traditional communication channels. Supportworks ITSM Enterprise v.3.2 combines these new capabilities with a range of ITIL-compatible enhancements.

Specifically Supportworks ITSM Enterprise v.3.2 enables help/support desk staff to:

--Search Tweets. Searches for specific hashtags, words or phrases can be saved and scheduled to run automatically, with real-time results displayed and options available to reply to the tweet

--Monitor mentions and issue updates. Track what customer followers are ‘tweeting’ and enable immediate access to these followers and the ability to broadcast service updates

--Resolve customer records from Twitter ID. Match tweets received from customers with records in the Supportworks database to create an auditable record of interactions and ensure greater consistency across all support channels

--Raise a Tweet as an Incident. Reply to a tweet from within Supportworks or raise an Incident, Service Request directly from the tweet. In turn, a new call form is opened, the customer details are resolved and relevant information is copied from the tweet

--Manage multiple Twitter accounts. Use Open Authentication (OAuth) to integrate several Twitter accounts with the Service Desk, enabling support staff to tweet and reply from accounts they are approved to use

Supportworks ITSM Enterprise v.3.2 now also includes an updated Mobile Web Client with a more intuitive interface. In just a few clicks, support staff on the move can log, update and resolve requests, as well as authorize and update tasks without having to enter large amounts of text. This mobile functionality can be utilized on a variety of popular smartphones including Blackberry, iPhone and Android (News - Alert) devices.

Additional enhancements to Supportworks ITSM Enterprise v.3.2 include updates to business process features in areas such as user authorization and task setting. There are also new Configuration Management Database (CMDB) settings.

“Having the ability to proactively address support issues is an ongoing challenge for IT,” says Patrick Bolger, Chief Evangelist at Hornbill. “This is particularly important during a time when there are an increasing number of savvy users such as ‘digital natives’ and Generation Y in the workplace. Customer demand, especially from service desks providing IT support to this audience, led us to look at the opportunities to develop social functionality into our service management solution, Supportworks.”

“Our first priority has been to enable IT support teams to incorporate a social monitoring capability into their support offering,” adds Bolger. “We are increasingly seeing examples where users air their frustrations via social media channels long before contacting the service desk. In these instances IT is the last to know, which not only let issues fester but can damage the reputation of support teams. With Supportworks v3.2, service desks can discover, react and resolve requests via Twitter and create an auditable record of these interactions in the Supportworks database.”

It takes considerable—and certifiable--skills to use IT support tools effectively, including those that are ITSM-based and ITIL-compatible. The RCCSP Professional Educational Alliance offers extensive in-depth ITIL training and certification at a wide range of locations as well as virtual classrooms. Visit the firm’s web site via the links above to learn more or call 708-246-0320.


Brendan B. Read is TMCnet’s Senior Contributing Editor. To read more of Brendan’s articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Patrick Barnard







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