CA Service Management

  • 1.  Employee Time Cards

    Posted Aug 04, 2016 03:13 PM

    One of the challenges we've had as an organisation is getting CA Service Desk to capture employee time worked. As part of our setup we even worked with a consultant to create custom fields to record this in the activity logs for tickets. This is critical for us to record and report on labour utilisation. Other platforms like ServiceNow have this feature built-in and I was wondering if there are plans in the road-map for CA Service Desk to include this as part of the standard feature set such that we won't have to do customisation as it causes challenges with upgrades and such.



  • 2.  Re: Employee Time Cards

    Posted Aug 04, 2016 05:45 PM

    Hi Michael,

     

    We currently have some information stored like this; could you please expand on what you are trying to do?

     

    For instance: there are session logs that show the time that a user is logged into Service Desk.  Additionally, the activity log for a ticket shows the work done on the ticket as well as the user who performed the work, and the time spent.  You could run a report based on either or both of these to determine how long users were logged into Service Desk on any given day.  The report may need to be customized, but you should not need to customize Service Desk itself to accommodate this (which will make upgrading less time consuming).

     

    If you have any questions about this, CA Support is available to assist in answering those, and we can work with you to find an intermediate solution until something more elegant is implemented in a future release of Service Desk.  You can also raise an enhancement request here on the Communities to help emphasize that this is a priority feature that should be included as possible.

     

    I hope that this answers some of your questions, but we are here to assist you with anything else that you need!

     

    Regards,

     

    Marty Malecki

    CA Support



  • 3.  Re: Employee Time Cards

    Posted Aug 04, 2016 06:12 PM

    Hi Marty,

     

    Yes, I'm aware you can have time associated with activity logs but we wanted to explicitly log employee labour. For example, a ticket may require a resource to be dispatched to the field with a time card which is then input as a labour entry into the ticket when they return to the office with the signed copy. Additionally, some contracts may deliver professional services on a draw-down of hours and time spent needs to be explicitly entered into the relevant tickets. These labour entries are used to run specific reports for work effort and billing (depending on the contract).

     

    Because of the very specific use for this information it was thought that the existing time capture mechanisms within activity logs were insufficient. For our purposes, the traditional time card was the best solution for this. In other parts of our global organisation they have started moving toward a cloud-based solution from ServiceNow and one of the features highlighted is the facility for time cards. I am hoping that CA has this feature as a near term enhancement which would warrant keeping and upgrading our platform (and hopefully moving away from customisations).

     

    Regards,

    Michael Reid



  • 4.  Re: Employee Time Cards
    Best Answer

    Posted Aug 04, 2016 09:23 PM

    Hello Michael,

     

    If you're after something quite specific like this or finding out if it is on the Roadmap, it is best to open an Idea (enhancement request), as that brings it formally into that process.

     

    The basics of the ServiceNow solution appear to be Tasks.  So you should be able to approximate something like that in SDM - with setup and perhaps customisation, depending on how far it is needed to be taken.

     

    Log Comments for example, have a field that you can allocate "Time Spent."      So your labour entries could go in as Log Comments. Then reporting could tally them up.

     

    Issues and Change Orders both have simple Workflow Tasks, which can track the "Actual Duration." Then again, track via reporting.

     

    CA PAM has more complex Workflow, with the ability to reach out by Web Services and other means to other applications. This can be quite powerful. There is nothing to stop you, in theory, interfacing with any hand held device that the field agents may use, such as scanning bar codes on activity sheets.

     

    Web Services could be used as a front end. Build a front end which allows the entry of Time Cards, which then updates the issue. Either to a custom field or using one of the standard fields/update mechanisms.

     

    In short.

    • If you want a specific feature brought into product, I recommend an Idea.

     

    • If you want to achieve something now, with what is at hand, then there should be a way of doing that.
      Ranging from "Change process, no customisation" to "Full customisation and integrations." It is probably a good idea to talk with a CA Business Partner or CA Services for an initial discussion to clarify the requirement, and what is feasible in practice.

     

    Or of course, specific questions here on this Community. If you enter in a Search term of "track time" for example against this Community, you'll find a bit of prior discussion along similar topics. So I'm sure that someone has implemented something similar or can make suggestions.

     

    Thanks, Kyle_R.



  • 5.  Re: Employee Time Cards

    Posted Aug 04, 2016 10:16 PM

    It is a relatively minor customisation to create a new Activity type ('Record Time') and add it to the Activities menu.  But I imagine this would get some support as an Idea - please raise one!

    Regards,

    James



  • 6.  Re: Employee Time Cards

    Posted Aug 05, 2016 03:29 PM

    Yes, we did do a customisation as mentioned in the opening of my discussion. What we added specifically was a field for work type so that the specific activity could be captured. I will however take the advice of Kyle and yourself and open an idea. Thanks!