By Dick Stark

Last  Wednesday, RightStar hosted a Webinar, “10 Ways to Get More from BMC Remedyforce.” RightStar’s Remedyforce business, business is going strong and other new orders are on the way, with several similar orders forecasted to book by the end of the year. Good thing Remedyforce just keeps providing more value. Winter17, the latest version will be out in January. Here are a few RightStar suggestions for customers to get more value out of their current Remedyforce system:

Editing CMDB Items in Bulk. Most users edit CMDB data on a line-by line basis which can be very tedious. By editing using “bulk mode,” a user can make multiple changes on the screen and then update all at once. This prevents the user from exporting the data to Excel, making the changes and then importing the data back in.

Adoption Dashboards. In the salesforce App Exchange there is a free app called Adoption Dashboard. We demoed why this is a great way to get started with Remedyforce. Adoption dashboards include: who is logged in, how many are using the system, logins by department, logins by region, and logins by role. Since user adoption is an important success factor, this helps pinpoint steps to ensure more participation and usage.

Validation Rule: Resolution. Validation rules require data entry fields to meet certain criteria or conditions. For example, if the service desk status is closed and the total characters are less than 20 in a description field, display an error message. This enforces more meaningful data that can become part of a resolution knowledge database.

Set Actions Visible in Self-Service. By making actions visible or public, the administrator can ensure that the end users see a specific field, for example a note. Of course, public or private fields should be carefully considered, based upon the level of transparency within the organization.

Allow clients to Add Notes in Self-Service. RightStar recommends checking the add notes box so that end-users can add notes to the incident. Otherwise, reporting an incident can be a frustrating experience for the user.

Incident Time Tracking. Since time is money and since some organizations actually track the actual cost per call or incident, Remedyforce allows technicians to check a box to denote time spend working or not working an incident. Reports can be generated by technician and incident type to determine which technicians are more efficient than others, which technicians “sit on incidents,” and which incidents take the most time to resolve.

List views in Administration. Administrators often get “lost” in the various workflow settings of incident, problem, or change management. By using the List View option, an administrator can look at workflow in a particular area like change management, instead of trying to sort through everything. This is a terrific timesaver when reviewing specific workflow.

What’s new in Remdyforce Winter 17? BMC promises that with this new release, especially Self-Service 3.0, Remedyforce takes a giant leap forward with self-service functionality.