CA Service Management

New Customer Related Materials for CA Cloud Service Management
Are you interested in hearing more about how CA customers have taken advantage of CA Cloud Service Management's capabilities? With the announcement of the solution on June 17, we have also released a number of customer testimonials. On the product page, there is a “BrainShark” video wherein we interview Stephen Lack of DecisionOne. There is also another video of this sort on the Apps Associates reference page.

Finally, don't miss the customer panel BrightTalk webinar from June 19. We had speakers from UST, Fujitsu, Park Place International, and CSS Corp as panel speakers. The panel provides great information on the usage of the solution, the benefits, and the future direction.

Enhance the Value of Your CA Technologies Solutions With Customized Support From Premium Support Services
CA Premium Support Services offer two fixed-price programs to improve the value of your CA Technologies solutions and increase the productivity of your IT staff.

• Enhanced Support Services provide customers with a designated CA Enhanced Support Engineer to assist with specific products through the solution lifecycle. These resources work as a virtual extension of your IT staff to understand your business and IT needs, expedite issue resolution and assist with solution-specific assessments and planning.
• Customer Success Advocates serve as your primary point of contact to enhance your experience with CA Technologies solutions. Working closely with you, and across the CA Technologies Development, Services, Support and Education organizations, these resources help you receive increasing value from your solution.

IT Asset Manager End of Service and End of Life Announcements

CA Asset Portfolio Management r12.6 End of Service Announcement
As of August 19, 2015, CA Asset Portfolio Management 12.6 and all related service packs will reach End of Service. For more information, follow the link above.

CA Asset Portfolio Management r11.3.4 End of Service Announcement
As of August 19, 2015, CA Unicenter Asset Portfolio Management 11.3.4 and all related service packs will reach End of Service. For more information, follow the link above.

CA Software Compliance Manager End of Life Announcement
As of September 09, 2015, CA Software Compliance Manager will reach End of Life. This means CA Software Compliance Manager will no longer be enhanced and that maintenance and technical support will be discontinued on that date. Please note that this notification is applicable for both versions (R12.0 and R12.6) of CA Software Compliance Manager. CA Software Compliance Manager has been replaced by CA Software Asset Manager, a product that provides superior capabilities for managing software assets. For more information, follow the link above.

CA Technologies Product Documentation Is Evolving
CA Information Services is on a journey to evolve our product documentation. Previously, we implemented the CA Answer Bar, which allowed our customers to access product documentation, KB articles, education courses, and more from one location.

Now that we have improved search on CA Support Online, access the CA Service Desk Manager product page to find all technical information. The CA Answer Bar will be decommissioned in mid-July 2014 and you will be automatically redirected to the CA Service Desk Manager product page.

Later this year, look for CA Service Desk Manager technical information on wiki.ca.com, a collaborative environment that allows you to:

• Find answers quickly with intuitive search
• Access up-to-date information on mobile devices
• View new "Flipboard Product Cookbooks"
• Export content to PDF
• Rate or comment on any topic, and provide feedback to CA Technologies

A Message from Chris Hackett - Community Advisor for the Service Management Communities
CA User Communities are another great way to help with issue resolution. Amazing things happen when like-minded people come together in the spirit of common interests and goals. CA community members help one another solve problems by joining a discussion, asking questions, posting content, attending webcasts and more. Please take a moment to check out some of the great features in the CA Service Management and CA Cloud Service Management Communities!

While there, check out these webcasts you may have missed!

• CA Nimsoft Service Desk Just Became CA Cloud Service Management! June 17, 2014
  Hear why top industry analysts are almost as excited about this major new release as we are. Learn about the BIG new features that warrant the name 'CA Cloud Service Management', including Asset Management and Discovery, Advanced Reporting, and Hybrid Automation that connects, integrates and automates workflows in cloud, on premise or hybrid environments.  See these new features in a live demo that says it all!  And hear about webcasts and other learning opportunities you don't want to miss.
  • WebEx Recording
  • YouTube Recording

• CA Service Management Community Webcast - June 03, 2014
  Based on community member feedback from the January 2014 session, CA Support presents a follow-up session on the new Advanced Availability feature that was introduced in CA Service Desk Manager 12.9.  This session focuses on specific use cases, with CA Support providing both content and demonstration on how Advanced Availability can be used in real world environments.
  • YouTube Recording
  • WebEx Recording

• Increase IT Self-Service Adoption & Satisfaction
• Setting the IT Service Desk on Fire
• CA Cloud Service Management - Customer Review Panel
• What You Need to Know About Service Desk in the Cloud
• Transitioning from "Log and Flog" Service Management to Proactive ITSM!
• Mobility. Social Media. Self-Service. Welcome to Today's ITSM Reality!

CA IT Asset Manager and CA Service Catalog Enhancement Requests Now Submitted via the CA Communities
Customer suggestions for product improvements are an important part of the solution life-cycle.  While we may not always be able to act upon your suggestions, we appreciate you taking time to provide us with your insight.

Based on valuable inputs from customer interactions at CA World®, User Community meetings and other feedback, we have reviewed our enhancement requests process and are making a significant change to the current system.

This change is being put in place to allow us to respond to customer suggestions in a reasonable and transparent manner. A major component of this change is that we no longer will have DAR/Enhancement Request process currently managed through CA Technical Support.

The CA IT Asset Manager Product Team is adopting the CA Community based Ideation solution, which is available to you through the CA Service Management Community.  CA Community will be the ONLY system for CA ITAM enhancement requests which started in March of 2014.

The CA Service Catalog Product Team is adopting the CA Community based Ideation solution, which is available to you through the CA Service Management Community.  CA Community will be the ONLY system for CA Service Catalog enhancement requests starting July 09, 2014.

What is "CA Community based Ideation"?

The Ideas portal within the CA Service Management Community provides additional opportunities to discuss feature enhancement requests with other CA IT Asset Manager or CA Service Catalog Customers, as well as members of the Product Team. These discussions lead to further evaluations of the feature enhancement request based upon community input and interest.

What will happen to the existing, unimplemented enhancement requests?

Any enhancement suggestions submitted using the DAR system for previous versions of the products IT Asset Manager or Asset Portfolio Management and Service Catalog will be reviewed to see if the functionality requested is already present in the latest versions 12.8 or 12.9 of ITAM or Service Catalog, respectively.  If so, the enhancement will be considered as implemented.  If not, we will review them and provide a disposition according to our standard process.  At this time, we are not planning any functional enhancements to the ITAM 12.0 (including UAPM 11.3.4) or ITAM 12.6 releases.

It is highly recommended that you submit an Idea through the Ideas tab of the CA Service Management Community if you had an enhancement request or a feature that:

• Was submitted earlier as a DAR for any of ITAM or Service Catalog releases, AND 
• Has for some reason not yet been incorporated, OR
• Continues to be a significant business challenge for your organization

• Logon to the CA Service Management Community.

If you are not already a member of the community, we encourage you to join/follow right away.

• Select “CA IT Asset Manager” or “CA Service Catalog” from the “Products Covered” menu on the right side of the page based on the idea that you submit.
• Click on the 'Ideas' tab at the top to view the existing Ideas and see if it has already been suggested. If it has, you can vote on it and add a comment.
• If you have a new idea, click on the “Create an Idea” link on the Actions menu at the left.

Once your Idea is submitted, all members of the Community can view, comment, provide suggestions, discuss alternatives, and vote on ideas to define the highly popular features. This increased collaboration between the ideating customer, fellow customers, and the CA Product Team helps us identify what is important to the Community.

The Product Team will then be able to make considerations for the ideas that top the list and incorporate these into product planning.

CA Service Desk Manager Content Revamped for 12.9
Just a reminder that based on your feedback, the SDM 12.9 content was modularized so it is more relevant and consumable. Many topics were also expanded to provide more in-depth information. For your reference, below is a listing of the previous course titles mapped to the new course content along with comments for the change. All courses are now available and we look forward to any additional comments. Please visit the Service Management community to provide your feedback.

Role-Based Learning Paths Make it Easy to Get the Right Knowledge Into the Right Minds
Like the GPS system in your vehicle, Learning Paths provide recommended training direction and sequencing specific to a user's role with a product. Simply put, role-based Learning Paths make it easy to get the right knowledge into the right minds. Log onto ca.com/education to learn more.

Get Educated!
With CA Education, you can learn how to properly use your CA Solutions so you can spend less time on the phone with the help desk and more time getting your job done. A schedule of upcoming courses can be found on the CA Education website.

CA Services helps you derive maximum benefit from your investment in CA Technologies solutions, deliver greater business results, and speed time to value. Click here to learn more.