It’s 14.4 O’Clock in the Cloud

I can’t believe how fast time flies. It’s been only a few weeks since our last release and already our next Cloud release is about to be launched. SysAid 14.4 is packed with really great features for all of you to enjoy, and of course several more fixes and improvements.

I’ll guide you through some of my personal favorites.

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New Report: Track SR Field Changes

We added a new report that runs on the history records of the Service Records (SRs) and can report any changes in field values. You can:

• Define the threshold for the report that includes the number of changes.
• Select any field, from Priority to Category and even Assigned Admins.
• Get the initial value and the current value with the details of who updated and when.
• Display in the report all the values that appeared for the selected field during the SR’s lifecycle.

I’m sure you’ll find this report very useful, especially those of you who follow the CSI (Continual Service Improvement) processes. You can track the quality of services and the processes behind them by identifying areas that need improvement. For example, when there are a lot of changes to the assigned admin or category or even priority, then all these changes affect the quality of service you provide; this report will help point out the SRs you would probably want to look into in your weekly/monthly review.

Links Between SysAid Items and Solution Models

In Release 14.4, be sure to pay attention to the following set of features regarding linked items in SysAid.

• We enhanced the linked item functionality allowing you to link practically any item in SysAid (e.g., SRs, knowledge base articles, assets, users, projects, CIs, company, etc.) to any other item. This allows you to create the relevant links that make sense in your internal processes.
• We also made it possible to create related items in templates so that when you create new SRs from templates the links will be included automatically.
• We added a new field in the SR form called Solution Model. When you have a well documented process for solving a specific issue, you want to make sure your IT team follows that process and doesn’t “reinvent the wheel” each time they run into similar issues. You can make the most out of this feature in 2 simple steps:
  1. Make sure to link your KB articles (that contain the knowledge to solve issues) with any relevant entity in SysAid, such as: assets, CIs, users, companies, SLAs, groups, templates, and more.
  2. Once you have those items related, all you need to do is add the Solution Model control to your SR form. You probably want to locate it on top near the title. This control stays hidden and doesn’t consume any of your screen space.

Once you use a template that has a KB article attached to it, or select an entity that is attached to a KB article, then the KB article will be presented to you and your team so you are aware of the suggested solution model. This way you can make the most out of the existing knowledge and ensure it is being presented to your team whenever relevant, as opposed to asking your teams to look it up each time. Try it out, I promise you will love it!

Speaking of the Knowledge Base, I want to mention that following requests from many of you, we also added a full history log for KB articles. Just like the SR history log, the modify time and user is displayed along with the revision version of the article. This provides a full audit trail for your knowledge base articles!

Weighted SRs

Saving my favorite feature for last.

Now IT Managers can assign a weight to their staff’s SRs to determine the order for handling the SRs according to true business priorities. This way you can make sure that the SRs that require immediate attention won’t be missed, regardless of their priority. Every admin will clearly see SRs in his/her queue that have been given weight, to indicate that they should be dealt with first. Clicking the new icon also sorts the weighted SRs according to their actual weight value, floating them to the top of the admin’s list no matter what filters are applied and no matter how the list is ordered. Your admins will easily see the true priority the business has assigned and you can rest assure that your team is putting effort in the right place and in the desired order.

As always, to enjoy the new features, make sure to opt-in.You can read more about them in our Online Help – available in your SysAid from your Personal Menu on the top-right of the screen.

There are more features included in Release 14.4. Check out the Release Notes, and I can’t wait to tell you about some of the new features we are already working on, but I’ll save that for a different blog post.

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