By Dick Stark

In last week’s Weekly Star, I discussed BMC’s Innovation Suite, which is now available for partners and developers. Well, this week, RightStar held a What’s new in Remedy version 9.1, webinar led by Peter Adams, BMC Director of Product Management for Remedy. In addition to Innovation Suite, BMC has worked hard to deliver several new exciting capabilities. Here is an update.

As I mentioned last week, BMC is trying hard to maintain its status as the most innovative ITSM solution in the marketplace. With MyIT, SmartIT, Smart Reporting, and now the Innovation Suite, BMC has capabilities that are unmatched. What I didn’t realize is additional cool functionality added in version 9.1. Here are some of the highlights.

Data Compliance with Microsoft Office 365. This is a collaboration with Microsoft’s data loss prevention (DLP) module (included in Office 365). DLP allows users to define rules specifying what types of data users can put into emails, and into documents on SharePoint or in the cloud. For example, company policy may prohibit PII information such as social security numbers from being stored or emailed, and DLP can establish and enforce company PII rules. If a user violates this rule, then the DLP notifies the user of the policy breach, and corrective action, or an approval may be granted. Now, with the Remedy DLP integration, a better option is the creation of an incident in Remedy. With the power of Remedy incident management, the security issue can be better managed using escalations or reports to ensure data security compliance.

Asset Management on Every Device. With version 9.1, BMC added an extensive list of capabilities: more asset information (and views) on the Smart IT screens, a visible audit log, better drill down capabilities, and a new three stage bulk update capability. The new Smart IT user experience adds a new streamlined process making the asset management interaction more efficient and faster. In addition, MyIT now supports barcode scanning for viewing an asset, and also for bulk-receiving (like RightStar’s ScanStar).

Knowledge Centered Support (KCS). Version 9.1 now has a KCS certified Smart IT based knowledge management system. Remedy’s KM s offers a quality assessment build into every offering to ensure the knowledge is current and accurate. And now knowledge author performance can be scored.

At a government agency, RightStar is implementing an agency-wide Knowledge project using Remedy KM. The objective is to use Remedy KM to “shift left,” that is reduce calls to the service desk. RightStar is doing the analysis, workshops, design, and implementation of Remedy KM to provide the users with easy access to knowledge related to their specific job function. At this agency, knowledge management is not just for the IT team. It also includes accounting/finance, HR, technology services, and the enterprise application departments. The end-result should be less calls to the service desk and improved customer satisfaction.