Announcements

Q&A from New in v9.5 Webinars - July 2010

Darren — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 16:20:36 GMT

Q: Any changes to how Attachments sent by the customer are handled?
A: The method for adding attachments from the support rep and customer pages was improved. There is no only one button and once the file is selected from the browse windows it is automatically added.

Q: Sorry...how about viewing the attachment from the tech perspective?
A: Nothing changed as far as the support rep viewing of attached files. Please feel free to email us details on any enhancement ideas you have related to this though as your suggestions are always welcomed.

Q: Are there any new EUD access options to reflect the new Company structure feature? ie. Can an EUD User View Tickets for all Companies in structure?
A: The EUD options haven't changed, but since a single customer can be associated to multiple companies in the 9.5 version customers can be given the ability to see tickets for all of the companies to which they've been associated.

Q: Presumably there are modifications to the API on the back of this new release?
A: Yes, we expanded the API and now provide web services related to change management.

Q: Can there now be a notification sent to an EUD user when they send an update to the assignee via an EUD Ticket?
A: There were no modifications to the EUD related notification options in this release, but the EUD ticket view does now automatically refresh after an update is added so the user can see their update was added without having to refresh the page. Of course, that is assuming they have been given the permission to view that type of history when view incidents.

Q: Any new standard reports introduced with this new version?
A: A few asset reports were added within the 9.5 release and all of the data modules for the ad-hoc reporting function were updated to account for the new fields and functions.

Q: Are there any significant changes to CMDB?
A: There were no enhancements related to the CMDB in this release. If there are any you are hoping for in a future revision please make sure to email them to featurerequest@gwi.com so our development\management team can review them. The community forum is also a good place to post ideas and requests.

Q: Are you having any plans to support integration with MS Outlook for planning incidents and so on? ... with the calendar?
A: This is currently being considered for a future version of iSupport.

Q: Any changes to the way we are able to redesign the EUD?
A: Nothing new related to general EUD theme design in this release, but we are hoping to expand the view designer to the EUD related views soon.

Q: Any changes to html-email attached to a case?
A: This release doesn't include any changes to incoming email processing. Please let us know if there is anything specific you are looking for in this area.

Q: can you delete history where users have mistakenly added history to the wrong incident?
A: Support reps who have the data override permission can delete work and\or customer work history entries, but audit history will be added to the note the deletion.

Q: Can you integrate this with Google Apps for LDAP / IMAP purposes.
A: As long as they use standard LDAPv3 unlike Microsoft we would be able to work with them for directory integration. Same with email processing. If they stick with the POP3 or IMAP4 standards iSupport should work with it. Security for accessing the LDAP directory on a Google server is something I'm not familiar with so I can't offer information regarding that.

Q: What browsers are compatible with version 9.5?
A: You'll want to refer the requirements section of the install guide for more detail regarding version, but it is still the current version of the four top browsers out there; MSIE, Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome.

Q: Can you paste a print screen into the incident? Can it convert the print screen to a file without extra effort from the submitting user?
A: Screen shots can't be pasted into an incident they would need to be attached as a file from the EUD incident submission form.

Q: Can you upgrade from 8.5 to 9.5 or will we have to upgrade to 9.0 first?
A: You would need to upgrade to 9.0 first. All dot revision installers will only upgrade is your current installation is within the same generation. Major releases, dot zeros, will upgrade any current install from the previous generation.

Q: Do you still have to go into the history to view any attachments sent in on an incident ticket
A: Yes, the attachments are associated with the email and the email is associated with the incident ticket. I believe we are considering adding a configuration option that would allow the iSupport administration to choose to either keep this the same or have the attachments written into the incident on initial email to incident conversion. I'll make sure our development team knows you voted for this option.

Q: is there a different license file needed to go from 9.0 to 9.5
A: A new license file is required for v9.0.1, but if your maintenance agreement was current as of 7/13/2010 the license file you received for v9.0.1 will still work for v9.5. If you were upgrading from a version older than v9.0.1 you would be prompted to get a new license file from our server when you run the installer to upgrade to v9.0.1.

Q: Does 9.5 still require an address for every vendor as we often have vendors with no e-mail address?
A: Yes, email addresses are still required on customer profiles. Company records don't require them though and a company can be marked as a vendor.

Q: Is there any plans to allow for greater customization / interface design of the EUD?
A: Yes.

Q: Has LDAP been improved to support Kerberos vs. Windows Authentication?
A: There were no changes to the directory integration feature in this release.

Q: Does the main search feature now support searching on customer fields?
A: The drop down search on the support rep desktop that searches several record types simultaneously only uses the customer name fields from the records a customer is related with, but a few more customer fields are included when the system searches the customer table.

Q: I meant to ask: Does the main search feature now support searching on Custom fields...
A: You would have to use the view based searching in a view that contains your custom fields to have them included in your search. The drop down search that you can use even when you're not in a view does not include custom fields.

Q: Help me understand. Are attachments sent to the server or do they stay on the remote pc?
A: Attachments are sent to the server and stored with the database.

Q: I apologize if I missed this, but is there any way to (once we're upgraded to 9.5) to merge email addresses/customers together?
A: A merge function isn't included in this release, but is expected soon.

Q: I just went from 7.6 to 9.0 still playing, but are there plans to have hierarchy templates copy information from the parent ticket, rather than having to find the parent ticket?
A: There is a configuration option that allows the custom fields data populated into the parent record to be viewed from the custom field tab of all of the child tickets, but all of the other data needed by assignees of child tickets would have to be accessed via the related hierarchy screen or by linking through the other records.

Q: If updating from older version (7.x) are all our current configs and ticket structure maintained or do we have to re-write?
A: All of your configuration and data will come forward. You will just need to run a few installers as you'll have to update to v8 then to v9 and finally to v9.5.

Q: In regards to the creation of a "Survey Responses" view via view designer.

What fields are now available for us to track the completed resolutions from? In other words, are the fields for tracking the Ticket# and Assignee/Support Rep now available?

Also when listing the completed survey responses view lists all the survey questions for each survey in the view. So we have 15 entries for every single completed survey. Is there a way to prevent it from listing a separate entry for every single survey?
A: A link to the related ticket was added to the base view for surveys so the two fields you listed and many more from the incident are now available. The data will still return the same way though so each question will be listed\counted.

Q: Is it possible to increase the max size of the attachment in an incident?
A: The max size of a web request which would cover the attachment(s) can be increased via the web.config file(s). Please feel free to contact our support department if you have questions about this.

Q: Have any changes been made to the incident summary view for an incident submitted through email? As of right now it includes everything in the body of the message; including disclaimers.
A: The email processing function was not modified. It still processes everything in the body of a message into the description field.

Q: Is this a free upgrade or is there additional cost?
A: A current maintenance agreement is required to download the new release. If you have a current contract the download will be free.

Q: Is the functionality which deals with New Employees and Exiting Employees only found in the Service Desk edition?
A: The service catalog function shown in the v9.5 webinar is only available within the Service Desk edition of iSupport. There is a hierarchy template function within both editions that is similar though.

Q: Has there been any improvements made in regards to relating incidents?
A: A search option was added to make finding and associated child tickets easier.

Q: Is there a download option on the feature requests
A: There may be, but either way I'll forward this over for you as a feature\enhancement request. Thanks for entering your suggestion.

Q: Can you map the Customer Group when importing from SQL into iSupport
A: This isn't currently an option from the Other RDB directory integration configuration so I'll let our development team know that you would like to see it added.

Q: Thanks Darren, looks great!
A: Thank you.

Q: is there a way to stop escalation when the ticket is acknowledged.
A: The ticket acknowledgement option on the SLA has its own time limit and the timer for that time limit does stop when the assignee acknowledges receipt of an associated ticket. The time limits based on closure would not be affected by the acknowledgement action.

Q: is there any enhancement on scheduled tickets. Can we change a standard ticket to a scheduled type ticket
A: Since this wasn't included in v9.5, I'll forward your suggestion over to our development team so they can consider it for the next version.

Q: is there an option to send a ticket to KB directly.
A: Same options to send a ticket's information into a new knowledge base entry from the new menu option or from the prompt at ticket closure. Both options require a support rep to elect to have the knowledge entry created.

Q: On multiple email addressed - which email gets the routing notification?
A: The email address used when the original email from the customer is converted into a ticket is used for all notification related to the ticket. If the ticket is created via the EUD or by a support rep the customer primary email address would used for all notifications.

Q: Any easy way to tie asset management into sms?
A: Data imports can be setup if you want to pull data from any MS SQL based asset management system into iSupport. There aren't any asset integration features specifically coded for SMS.

Q: RE: asset records. Is there now a way to copy an asset record to duplicate it--one that may not be template-worthy?
A: No, the only way to reuse asset information when creating a new asset record would be to use the asset creation wizard.

Q: Thanks for the presentation, Darren. Many helpful new features.
A: Thank you to all our customers for their great suggestions and for their continuing support for the iSupport solution.

Q: Is 9.5 the last minor release before v10.0?
A: We may sneak one more dot revision in before v10, but it’s too early to say right now.

Q: The attachment count disappears in the version we are currently using (9.0.1.0). Is this an issue for everyone using this version? If so has this been corrected in version 9.5
A: Haven't heard of this being an issue in 9.0.1, but we'd be happy to someone from our support team work with you to resolve it if you're seeing this. If our support department had found this to be in issue in 9.0.1 prior to our code freeze date it would have been fixed in v9.5 so they should be able to help you resolve this quickly either way.

Q: Using the Service Request feature, is it possible to have items entered into the custom fields populate into the long description field? This will help keep multiple similar requests separate at a glance and more searchable.
A: Custom field data isn't written into the long description field, but the custom fields can now be included within support rep views.

Q: Has there been a calculated field added to the Rep Time worked table for total time for a day / week / mo?
A: There is a total time work option in the aggregates section of the work item base views, but you won't be able to summarize the total time worked across multiple work items for a period of time within a view. You'd have to use reports to get those summaries.

Q: When a ticket is created, is it possible to notify others automatically based on the person / company opening the incident?
A: Yes, company and customer records have others to notify tabs so you can have additional reps and customers listed as the associated company or customer records other to notify contacts.

Q: When creating FAQs do still have to use <html tags> to separate bullet points, currently they appear jumbled up together.
A: Yes. I'll make sure our development team gets this as a feature request. I'm not sure why we haven't already updated the FAQs so that they support the text editing we do in the text area fields in the other record types.

Q: When an end user creates a ticket, they can add multiple attachments (needing to hit add on each attachment), but when adding attachments on updating you do not hit add. Has that been changed to be the same when creating vs. updating?
A: The attachment function from the EUD was improved within the 9.5 release. It is a simple one button function now and multiple attachments can be added when submitting new records and when updating existing records. Another customer asked about being able to select multiple files in the browse windows and having them all pull in simultaneously, but the files do need to be selected one at a time.

Q: Will the short description populate the email subject line and the body in the long description?
A: Yes, although the long description actually gets both the subject and body of the email.

Q: Will users be able to open / modify attachments added to templates? Also can others to notify be done by groups?
A: Users can now open, modify and then reattach attachments that are included on templates in v9.5. Other to notify contacts are still just individuals, but customer records could be created to populated with distribution list addresses.

Q: Problem that I am seeing is that customers are in different groups and it is time consuming to modify each customer for approvals / OTN/ Can this be done by groups?
A: We have added a few view level functions for the customer profiles in the last couple releases. For example, you can now select multiple customer records and add/remove associated approval cycles, groups, cost centers, etc. Adding OTNs isn't currently a multi-record option so you'd still need to define these options on a company by company and\or customer by customer basis. I'll forward this over to our development group though so they can look into added some of these functions at the group level.

Q: Does your mobile app work on Windows Mobile as well as Blackberry?
A: The mobile interface is really just a simpler web interface. If the device your using is WAP enabled and your using an HTML compatible browser you should be able to you most of the mobile functions. Using a browser that support and has JavaScript enabled will give you access to the complete mobile feature set and a richer interface.

Q: If we upgrade from version 7.x do we have to rebuild our Helpdesk or does the configuration and ticket setup carry over?
A: Everything will come forward as long as you use the upgrade installers. From a version 7.x install you'd need to first upgrade to v8 and then upgrade to v9 before upgrading to the current v9.5 release.

Q: Are there any plans on making a report builder similar to the view creator?
A: No plans to replace the Microsoft SQL Reporting Services Report Builder integration we use for this now. If you are having any trouble with report builder please let our support team know so they can assist. It is pretty similar to our view designer, but actually has some additional capabilities our view designer doesn't have.

Q: Any plans for integration with a VOIP phone system?
A: This is something we do have our radar. I'll make sure our development team knows you have an interest in it as well. Thanks.

Q: Are you able to shut off the change acknowledgement email in the new release?
A: Yes, this was a reported issue in v9 that was corrected in the 9.5 release.

Q: Can change tickets be created via an email
A: Not in v9.5, but this is planned for v10.

Q: Can inventory scans automatically populate the owner on the asset record from the user signed into the machine?
A: The owner of an asset record created from an unattached scan does still have to be manually chosen. I know we've had request to try to come up with a way for the system to determine and set the owner value, but the information we obtain from WMI doesn't include a solid attribute for this. I'll let our development team know of your interest in this and maybe we can come up with a configuration option that you could use for this if you had something WMI reports populated with a value we could use to match the new asset to its owner.

Q: Does v.9.5 improve end user desktop printing so that it is similar to printing from rep interface?
A: The print option from the EUD hasn't changed. The print will print all viewable information.

Q: For reporting purpose, is there a way to view the latest history entry? Right now, we are having to add the latest update in the Resolution field just so they can be viewed/printed immediately without clicking on the "history" tab.
A: You can design ad-hoc reports that display only the most recent work history entries added to work items (Incidents, Problems, or Changes) It will require you to define a field that uses the MAX function on the work history date and time created field and then a formula driven filter that requires the date and time created on the work history entry to match the calculated MAX value.

Q: Is there a way to view latest history entry in that view?
A: You could sort a work history view to display the most recent work history entry at the top of the list, but it isn't possible to filter out the other work history entries from the view so they would still so below.

Q: I know you talked about VOIP integration any remote desktop integration..
A: We are looking into added remote control so thank you for inputting your question.

Q: Woo hoo thanks for the preview on building views!!!
A: I'm pretty happy about the preview option in view designer as well.

Q: Do you have a list of bugs fixed in this issue?
A: Don't have a publically available list at this time.

Q: Can users manage their own assets or CIs now?
A: End users, customers, cannot edit asset or CI records. They can only be given the option to select an asset they own when submitting an incident or change request.

Q: Is the time filter in views still locked to a date or will they view select any incident created after/before a time
A: Time filtering options were added.

Q: Does the cost model include an allowance for GST?
A: The new asset cost and price functions do not have a tax calculating function in this release.

Q: Does the EUD now allow end users to use views?
A: Still just the standard shipping views. We hope to be able to add a view designer option for EUD views soon.

Q: Has this version changed the incoming email handling to allow emails with an unknown address to be added as a default customer and not create a new customer?
A: This wasn't added in this release so you'll still need to account for new customer records when emails come in from addresses that aren't already associated with a customer profile. Hopefully, the additional email address function will help you a little for now and we can get your enhancement idea implemented in a future revision.

Q: We have used the Mobile on Windows Mobile 6 O2s and iPhones.
A: Great, thanks for responding to the other attendee's question regarding this.

Q: Do attachments get shown inline now?
A: Attachments would still show as attached files. Images can be inserted into many of the main text area fields though.

Q: Does this version have an option to change the colour of the desktop for VIP clients?
A: This sort of color formatting wasn't added to this release, but we are working on improving the formatting options available through the view designer and hope to introduce those improvements soon.

Q: Have there been any changes to escalations to allow a restart on change of SLA rather than staying at the current priority?
A: Nothing related to SLAs was changed in the v9.5 release. There are significant enhancements for SLAs planned as part of a larger feature add planned for the v10 release.

Q&A Sessions from the "iSupport 9.0 - CMDB" webinars - 12/16 & 12/17

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:23:56 GMT

Thank you all so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to attend our webinars last week! We hope you found them informative and are excited about the new CMDB feature in iSupport 9.0. As promised, here are the Q&A sessions from the events.

Q: Will there be multiple language support for the maintenance notifications?
A: No, still English only, but hopefully we'll be able to provide multiple language support some time in the future.

Q: What is the minimun cSupport version for upgrading to v9
A: The version 9 installer will require that your current install is at least version 8.

Q: can asset records be archived in iSupport 9
A: This will need to be passed to our development team as version 9 doesn't provide asset archiving. Thank you for the suggestion.

Q: We have users that use roaming profiles and move around, will this be created/update in real-time?
A: See next.

Q: In other words If I have a person that logs into PC A on Monday and then PC B on tuesday if I pull up CMDB to look at a ticket they submitted on Tuesday will it show PC A or B?
A: No, user/system relationships will not be automatically updated based on logins. A new feature we are hoping to have in the next version may help you accomplish this though. Can't share details on it now, but when we announce the next version we can revisit this.

Q: We are currently in the process of upgrading to 8.0. How should we approach upgrading to 9.0? We have just finished creating an environment for testing the upgrade.
A: I'd probably just go ahead and upgrade the test environment up to 9 and move right up to the newest version. I don't see any benefit in testing/implement 8 and then doing a second round for 9.

Q: Thanks - appreciate your time.
A: You are very welcome.

Q: Is this available in the Incident Managment version of iSupport?
A: No, CMDB and Service Catalog are only in the Service Desk edition of iSupport.

Q: Is there a release date for 9.0 yet?
A: 9.0 is currently available for customers on active maintenance and already running c.Support 8.0.

Q: Is the What's new in 9.0 Webinar viewable in that I missed the original webinar?
A: Yes, an archive of that webinar is on our website. Go to the "About GWI" tab and click on the "Events" section.

Q: Is the location field every going to be a drop down list for any of the databases?
A: This has been passed to our development group and will considered for a future revision. Thank you very much for sharing your ehancement idea.

Q: Is it possible to autolink AD computers to the AD user that is using it?
A: Not in the current release, but thank you for the suggestion. We will pass this along to our development group so they can look into the possibility of adding this to a future version.

Q: If you are not currently using Asset Management would it be best to set it up first then, CMDB? or does it matter?
A: If you can use the inventory scanning feature within iSupport's asset management module to auto-inventory network devices I'd say it would be best to set up asset management before CMDB. If you aren't able to use the inventory scanning feature or if you already have your assets documented in another Microsoft SQL based asset management database you could just skip setting up iSupport's asset management and start with CMDB.

Q: How can you tell if you have the Enterprise version?
A: There is an about iSupport link listed in the help menu on the support rep desktop. The page that comes up when you select that option will list which edition you have installed; Incident Management or Service Desk. CMDB is only included in the Service Desk edition.

Q: Where did you say the new PDF files will be located?
A: The PDFs are not posted on our website. Email your Account Manager or Sales@gwi.com to get a copy of them.

Q: Can you demo how an MSP would use CMDB to report to client monthly
A: Would need more information about the data you'd wish to report to your clients in order to provide more information. Please feel free to contact your account manager or our support team if assistance is needed.

Thanks again to everyone that attended the webinar.
Eric & Darren

iSupport 9.0 - Download Available Now!

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:25:12 GMT

Just in time to fill your stocking with joy...iSupport 9.0 has been released.

If you are on an active maintenance contract, and currently using c.Support 8.0, visit the downloads page (http://eud.gwi.com/ContentPages/Login.aspx), log in, and download the new version.

If you need other assistance or have questions, please contact your Account Manager or GWI Support.

Happy Holidays,
The GWI Team

Q&A Sessions from the "iSupport 9.0 - New Features" webinars - 11/17 & 11/18

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:39:39 GMT

Thank you all so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to attend our webinars this week! We hope you found them informative and are excited about the new features coming out in iSupport 9.0. As promised, here are the Q&A sessions from the events. Sorry it took so long to get them posted, we obviously had quite a number of them. A few, more technical questions are still being followed up on and will hopefully be posted later.

Q: 1. Can an incident be turned into a Change without creating a new ticket 2. if a person has multiple email addresses, can they be merged into one user? 3. Do you have the ability to include a standard answer from a pick list?
A: 1. A change can be created from an incident, but the incident will not be automatically deleted. Rather the incident gets associated with the new change request. The incident could then either be deleted or closed. There is even change management configuration option that you could use to make the associated incident auto-close when the change closes if this behavior is desired. 2. Customer records can't be merged at this time, but we will let our development team know about your interest in this so they can cosidering adding this function to a future revision. 3. There is not a pick-list where standard answers can be obtained, but two functions you might want to look into for similar capabilities would be incident templates and knowledge base entries.

Q: Can I restrict the menu a User sees based on the group they are in? For example, only a division manager could request a purchase, etc.?
A: Group access permissions can be used to restrict end user desktop links for most items, but right now the purchase request/order links aren't link to group access permissions. To restrict who can use purchase request/order links multiple end user desktops would have to be used.

Q: Are you supporting iSupport in an virtual environment?
A: Information regarding this is available within the system requirements section of the install guide for current c.Support versions and it will also be available in the install guide for iSupport when it is available. Basically, we will be able to support iSupport in a virtual environment, but we won't be able to make any guarantees with respect to c.Support’s performance or scalability in a virtualized environment.

Q: Have you enhanced the Purchasing module?
A: There will be a few enhancement to the puchasing module included within iSupport version 9. These will be detailed in the what's new PDF, but if you find that we haven't made the specific enhancements you're looking for please let us know so we can pass your requests on to our development team.

Q: Any enhancement to the EUD?
A: A couple of UI enhancements and the service request and service contract features can be used from your EUDs in iSupport version 9.

Q: Can Custom Fields go against a user-defined table as opposed to having to copy and paste a list of comma separated items for a Single Selection Drop Down?
A: Not at this time. Can consider for a future revision though.

Q: In Version 8 a view that was in previous releases such as "Open Incidents By Assignees and Days Open" was not available. Has this been solved in Version 9?
A: The data models used to create views will be extended in new version based upon customer feedback such as yours. If you find after upgrading we missed any fields that you need please let us know.

Q: Has an alternative ticket numbering field been implemented as we were previously advised? The current ticket number is long, non-sensical and cannot be easily communicated to and from end-users when referring to a ticket .
A: Yes, a custom number feature for work items will be included in iSupport version 9.

Q: can you go directly from 7.5 to iSupport 9?
A: No, you would first need to upgrade to version 8.0.1 and then you could go to version 9. You would be able to skip all of the 7.x version about 7.5 though.

Q: when working with the email notifications, you still do not start out with the standard default text? I know you can see the text in the manual but would be nice to have it appear and modify only what is needed. Thanks, Stan
A: Makes sense, we can submit to our development team a request to start custom notifications with the standard notification so if you just want to make small edits you'd be able to do so easily.

Q: Can you upgrade from version 7, 7.5, 7.6 to verion 9?
A: Major releases can't be skipped, but each major release install can upgrade any dot revision from the previous generation. So you could upgrade any 7.x install to version 8 using the version 8 installer and then run the version 9 installer when it's available to get current. If someone was on a version 6.x release they'd have to run the version 7, 8, and 9 installers.

Q: Have the FAQs been "fixed"?
A: All reported bugs will be addressed in the new release.

Q: Do approvers need to be Support Representatives?
A: No, approvers can be support representatives or customers.

Q: Has the EUD been changed?
A: A couple of UI enhancements and the service request and service contract features can be used from your EUDs in iSupport version 9.

Q: How does Service Catalog relate to Incident Categorization?
A: Not at all. Service catalog is not connected to incident management at all.

Q: Do you have a Best Practices guide for configuring Categories and Service Catalog and how they relate to incident and changes processes.
A: We don't currently offer any sort of best practices guide, but we do have several training courses that are reasonably priced and deliver a comprehensive understanding on the topics offered. We will have a Service Catalog course once iSupport 9.0 is released.

Q: How to create shared views (i.e. copy from my views to shared views)?
A: There is a single selection pick list field in a view definition that is used to mark a custom view private or shared. If you are the author of a custom view it will always appear in the my views folder even if you mark it shared. Other users you share the view with will see it in the shared views folder though.

Q: Is there a significant change to the API?
A: No although there will be some enhancements.

Q: is training free?
A: The monthly webinars we do are free, as are demonstrations from our Engineers, but the Training Courses are more more intensive and are a paid arrangement.

Q: Where is Request fulfillment (request is not incident and shouldn't be in the incident portion
A: Service request management interacts with change management so it isn't connected to incidents.

Q: Regarding email notification on incident events: can an automatic notification email be customized to send depending on the category or assignee in 9?
A: No, the content of a message can't be modified based upon an associated category or assignee, but are considering this enhancement for a future revision after version 9.

Q: will emailed attachments be saved as attachments or are they still 'stuck' in the work history of the incident?
A: Attachments that are emailed in are kept with the email that originates the ticket. To view them you will need to drill into the originating email.

Q: will you please add an iPhone app for GWI C.Support? Thanks
A: I know it is under consideration in Development.

Q: Can you please have incident activity present as an RSS feed stream so that I can check activity with an RSS reader
A: I will pass that as a feature request to Development.

Q: So how will we see Meters without Silverlight?
A: Basic charting options are still present for certain views for users who cannot leverage the Silverlight component.

Q: An example was used: HR fills out a template form for new hire and has various fields. Can a field be created that would accept text/typed comments?
A: Yes, we have both a Text Field, 250 characters, and a text Area, which will accept a paragraph.

Q: Are attachments which come in with the ticket now seperatly listed on the attachment tabs?
A: Attachments are listed on a separate tab within the record they are related to. If the question is about attachments on an email that come in that generates the ticket, no, those attachments remain with the email and do not get added to the ticket directly. You would have to drill into the email.

Q: Can iSupport run on a Virtual Server?
A: Yes it will, but we don't officially support that because the virtualization is underneath the application and not directly related to the application.

Q: Do support reps have access to update costs within service requests or does an administrator have to make those types of updates?
A: No. Administrator access would be required for this type of change.

Q: Does iSupport / cSupport 9.0 now support multi shift helpdesk hours for handling incident SLA escalations?
A: multi shift helpdesk hours can be accounted for by using muiltiple SLA actions.

Q: If an email comes in one email address can it implement one service template and if comes in another it implements a different one
A: Yes. The condition of the "to" address that the email came through is a condition you can base the rule upon.

Q: for the service request does a person have to sign into GWI or could they go to a webpage and fill it out and have it submitt it in for approval and completion by the Helpdesk.
A: Depends on how the system is set up. You can allow anonymous access on the end user desktop, but those users would only be able to see service request catalogs and items available to unauthenticated users. There are a lot of options on how to set this up for both authenticated and anonymous users.

Q: Can you upgrade right from 7.0 to 9 or do you have to upgrade to 8 and then 9
A: You cannot upgrade directly from 7.0 to 9.0. You will need to go to 8.0 first.

Q: If incidents are associated with a problem or change record, will categorization of the problem/change record be pushed down to all the associated incidents (or do they still have to be categorized manually, one by one)?
A: Newly created associated records will pull the categories from the existing source; associating an existing record retains its original category.

Q: Will you provide Reporting Services model(s) to support custom reporting? (Or some assitance interpreting the data model of the databases?)
A: Unsure of the question - iSupport will continue to have models for reporting as well as training on reporting.

Q: Can the EUD filter ticket VIEWING using the same categories used for ticket CREATION? (Users complain that they enter a ticket in a particular EUD, but see ALL tickets when they go to view them...)
A: Category based permissions will apply to both submission and viewing of tickets.

Q: Is Google Chrome Browser supported?
A: Yes, along with IE, Firefox, and Safari.

Q: is there now a timeout for a mobile user that forgets to sign out?
A: If a Mobile Desktop interface is left open, it will eventually "log-out" when the IIS web site refreshes. This may take some time depending on how the IIS site is configured.

Q: Is 'Time Open' column already in cSupport version 8 or is it new in this version 9?
A: Yes, it is currently in 8.0. It actually in Time Elapsed or Elapsed Time, and I've just changed the column heading to "Time Open" for my demonstration.

Q: Hi, is this only a working name of new version or have you re-branded cSupport?
A: This is a rebranding of c.Support. It is the same application, but it will now be known as iSupport.

Q: Is there IE6 support in v9.0?
A: IE 6, which was released in 2001 is a legacy product and is not offically supported in iSupport 9.0

Q: Are additinal licenses required to let users enter Service Requests?
A: Correct, a End User license will be required to access the EUD for a Service request.

Q: Is it possible to select more than one type of service request, per customer in the same transaction/incident?
A: You can only select one "root" service at a time, but there can be multiple service paths/service request types listed under that root service. It really depends on how you build the service request catalogs.

Q: Is there any integration with Colleague by Datatel?
A: iSupport doesn't have any integration hooks to any "specific" applications, but does allow for hooks to any contact and asset management systems that are Microsoft SQL back-ended.

Q: Will the custom views we setup in 8.0 transfer with the upgrade to iSupport 9.0?
A: Yes they will.

Q: Is it possible to give a support rep permissions to only one module (like Purchasing) of cSupport/iSupport?
A: Yes. Advanced permissions in the global configuration can allow that.

Q: When you say the custom number is dynamic, do you mean we could potentially put a third party's number (not incremental)? eg. service call to Dell or HP, etc. Does it have to be input at the time the incident is first created, or can it be added later?
A: The Custom Incident number can be set to Not Requred on save. So yes a third part reference can be added.

Q: Is the followup date audited now?
A: The Follow up Date notice is a reminder for the technician and is not an audited event.

Q: Is the CMDB relationship view limited to one layer below or more?
A: The CMDB relationship viewer does currently only show one layer below, to avoid getting into loops and circular relationships. You can however drill into any item to see the related CIs below it.

Q: is the service contract module like the one we had in the Notes version a couple of years ago?
A: The Contract module is all new and does not have the same restrictions of the older Domino product.

Q: Is there a plan to allow for a clustered or redundant configuration?
A: GWI is currently investigating this option, although it is not supported at this time.

Q: Is there a way to allow a users to make a support representative in their group out or in, if the user is not available that day
A: Any Support Technician that has Configuration rights can modify the available status of other technicians.

Q: Is there an association with Apple (i.e. iSupport)
A: No.

Q: is there any specific configurations for the browsers(firefox, safari) if using windows authentication
A: No changes are needed for Firefox or Safari at this time to allow the use of windows authentication.

Q: Is this demo geared specifically towards your web based product, or will these enhancements pertain to the IBM product as well?
A: The features shown in the webinars this week only apply to our web-based product.

Q: LDAP from Lotus Notes still supported?
A: Yes, we still allow a Domino Sync which is based on LDAP.

Q: The new GUI looks very nice - Is a user guide available (or will one be) to review the new functions?
A: Thank you for your feedback. The user guide will be available once the software is released. It can be found from the "Help" link in the top right corner. It will also be included in PDF format in the installer you download for iSupport 9.0. And lastly, you could also request it from your Account Manager.

Q: What if you're several versions behind in cSupport? What impact does that have on the new iSupport?
A: Any upgrade must come up to the next major version of the software to move forward. If you are several releases behind, you will need to move up to each major generation of the software to get to iSupport 9.0. For example, if you are on c.Support 6.5, you will need to upgrade to c.Support 7.0, to c.Support 8.0, then to iSupport 9.0. Our Support Team will be happy to assist you with this process.

Q: What is "Tech Support Que" all about, on Assignee?
A: That is just a queue that was set up for demonstration purposes. It was just configured that way to show how a queue might work, and is not a hard-coded assignee in the system.

Q: What kind of support do you have for intergrating with web services for creating tickets from other applications.
A: GWI has a API which is available for use. Please contact the support department for more information regarding the API.

Q: When is the release date?
A: There is no concrete date yet, as we are still finalizing the Q/A portion of its release. It is anticipated by end of this year.

Q: When will the download for v.9 be made available on your support site?
A: The head of Support determines when the download is posted on the support site. It is usually at the same time the new version is released.

Q: Will links be made available for the 2 PDF "What's new" documents mentioned? Like the Sales/marketing version (~10pgs) and Technical version (~70pgs)
A: We do not typically link the documents anywhere. Either can be gotten by simply sending an email to your Account Manager or to "sales@gwi.com". The Sales/Marketing PDF is already available, but the Technical version won't likely be released until iSupport 9.0 is released.

Q: Will location-based routing for email-submitted incident requests be available? For example, if we have end-users from various locations, currently you can only have email-submitted incidents route to one location/group. We'd like to have email-submitted incidents be able to location route to a support rep from the customer's location
A: You can set up inbound email addresses for the different customer locations to use, and on the definitions for those accounts, have them route within a corresponding support rep location.

Q: Will there be logical routing options or instructions (complete task 1, 2, 3 and depending on the result or response the ticket is routed to ….) A: Catalogs are predefined by the administrator, where options can be required or optional. They do not dynamically build choices based on selection.

Q: Have you tested the new version on Windows 7?
A: Windows 7, which has IE 8 by default, is supported as a Workstation OS.

Q: Will we be able to copy over current hierarchy from Incident Management to Service Management or will the templates have to be recreated?
A: Unfortunately, no, Incident Management templates and heirarchies cannot be linked to service requests. Service requests can only be linked to change tickets and purchases. You can, however, convert change heirarchies into service requests though.

Q: Will this webinar be available for download afterwards? I want to show this to my manager who is unfortunately not available to view this webinar toady...
A: An archive has been posted. Browse the "Events" page of our website to find the link.

Q: What is the intended release date of i.Support v9.0? And is there any particular reason you changed the name!?
A: The intended release date is end of the year. The name change has been in the works for years, as we have owned isupport.com for a long time, but working through the US Patent and Trademark process has been a lengthy effort. We believe the new name better describes our products and their functionality.

Q: Will you offer a 64 bit version of the software?
A: iSupport is supported in running on 64-bit environments, both Windows Servers and SQL Servers, but the application itself is not 64-bit application.

Q: Any plans on introducing the ability to cluster the databases?
A: iSupport 9.0 currently does not support database clustering. We will pass that along to Development for consideration.

Q: Do you need to have another license to setup a test environment on a virtual server?
A: You can use a copy of your current license for QA testing.

Q: Is it possible to have hidden fields on the Serivce Request that are only visible to authorized people?
A: Not at this time, but that can be sent to Development as a feature request if you like. (featurerequest@gwi.com)

Q: Is in new version a possibility to have reader access to configuration? Now you have full access or not at all...
A: No, access tot he Configuration allows edit rights at this time.

Q: Will we be able to query, external to GWI, the ticket database?
A: SQL reporting directly to the GWI database is allowed.

Q: Will emails being sent through tickets show everyone the email goes to rather than sending as bcc?
A: CC and BCC are options, so you can add in multiple receivers.

Q: Can emails be sent to users during the creation of a ticket rather than having to save and close and then go back into the ticket?
A: We have to have a saved incident so we can establish the customer so a save has to happen first.

Q: what data integration source do you use for your customer table?
A: We can Sync using LDAP to Microsoft AD, straight LDAP and then RDB from a SQL server.

Q: currently on 2006; can we go directly to 2009?
A: No you will have to go to each major release step in the path.

Q: Can you enter incidents and Service Requests as well as problems?
A: Please call GWI support department to discuss this question

Thanks again to everyone that attended the webinar.
Eric & Darren

Q&A Sessions from the "Take c.Support with You! Mobile ticketing in v8.0" webinars - 08/26 & 08/27

Anonymous — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:47:08 GMT

Thank you all so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to attend our webinars last week! We hope you found them informative. As promised, here are the Q&A sessions from the events. A few, more technical questions are still being followed up on and will hopefully be posted later.

Q: Will this webinar be available to people, who were now able to attend today? Thanks so much for a great session!!!
A: Yes, we recorded the webinar and people who registered for the event (whether they attended or not) will get an automated email with a link to that archive once we post the recording. The link is also located on our website's Events page (www.gwi.com/company/events).

Q: When someone assigns the rep a ticket - will they receive notification through the mobile device - or just through email like normal?
A: The notifications are the same. Depending on the applicable SLA the support rep's email and/or pager addresses would be used. These days the pager address field on the support rep profiles is usually populated with an alternate email address that they link to via the mobile device rather than to an actual pager. A URL link that allows the rep to open the ticket from a notification email they've opened via their mobile device can be included in the notifications.

Q: When I tested the mobile desktop before upgrading to version 7, all I remembered doing was choosing "yes" to enable, and then typing in http://csupport/rep/mobile to the URL - is this incorrect? It does not seem to work, and I would like to enable it.
A: Complete instructions for installing and configuring the mobile desktop can be found within the install and admin guides. If additional assistance is needed it would be best to contact our support team. The default install of the mobile interface would actually install the mobile desktop to a virtual directory of "mobile" so the URL would be http://yourservername/mobile.

Q: What functionalities of desktop c.Support are not available on the Mobile use.
A: The mobile interface currently only supports basic ticket creation and editing. Support tools such as category based scripts, the knowledge base, incident and hierarchy templates, asset management are not currently available via the mobile interface. We welcome input on which additional features you and your staff would like to see us add as we do plan on continuing to improve/extend the mobile interface.

Q: If I am logged in thru the desktop and then thru the Mobile interface am I using 2 licenses?
A: Yes, if both sessions occur simultaneously. The licensing function uses the user ID and the machine ID so if the machine ID is different two licenses would used. Multiple sessions open to c.Support from the same machine and user ID would only require one license.

Q: We use c.Support and have any where from 100 to 200 open tickets across our org. We have one assignee who we designate as the Queue (yet to be assigned to a tech) I would like the ability to search for tickets assigned to a specific user.
A: The assignee field is included in the search available from the mobile device.

Q: We run our blackberries with Lotus notes - does this effect us accessing c.Support?
A: Shouldn't be an issue. The mobile interface is 100% browser based so as long as your blackberry is WAP enabled it should work just fine.

Q: Are mobile licenses and ie session licenses the same?
A: Yes and No. If you have the incident management edition of c.Support one-time mobile access licenses would need to be purchased for your support reps before the mobile interface could be installed and deployed. Once the mobile interface is deployed the session licenses are used to control how many support reps allowed to login simultaneously. The sessions license take both IE and mobile browser connections into account.

Q: Our blackberries access the internet via our proxy server will this effect c.Support
A: Should be fine as long as the IIS server hosting the c.Support mobile desktop can be accessed by the mobile user (directly or through a proxy). The authentication process is forms driven so you'll be prompted for your user name and password after you've connected.

Q: This would be handy for taking inventory. Any plans to extend it to asset management?
A: We do have plans to extend the mobile interface so I'll happily pass along your suggestion to our development team.

Q: Please clarify the statement about not creating a Customer from the mobile device. Did you mean the rep cannot create a customer record via the mobile device?
A: Yes, at this time a customer has to be selected from the lookup as one cannot be created on the fly during the logging of an incident. We can submit a request to development on this though as this function could be added.

Q: What is the typical installation setup used for this? Multiple servers, placement of servers?
A: You typically would see the mobile interface installed to a different server than the one that hosts the main rep directory. Please feel to the install quide or give our support team a call if you'd like more information about deployment options equirements.

Q: One of my questions, we have c.Support hooked into active directory. As it stands, I need to reset people's passwords in their profile for them to be able to login. Can it be tied to their AD password instead?
A: This isn't something that can be done in the current release. We can forward this to our development team though so they could look into the possibility of added a secure method for doing this.

Q: Is the wap page the same for all devices?
A: Yes, although it can look a bit different depending on whether the mobile device support styles or not and how it does so if it does.

Q: The simulator is fast...what can of speed can we expect on the devices?
A: The mobile interface is very efficient so I think you will find it's speed to be very good in your environment as well.

Q: Can you do email status updates/requests via the mobile interface?
A: The standard email processing features would work with emails you'd send from your mobile device, but to actually do things like change a tickets status, priority, assignee, etc. you'd need to access the incidents via the mobile or support rep desktop interfaces.

Q: What is the cost for the module?
A: It is included at no charge within the Enterprise Service Desk edition of c.Support. If you have the Incident Management edition of c.Support, current pricing information can be obtained by contacting your account manager or by emailing sales@gwi.com.

Q: is it a standard module in c.Support v8.0?
A: The mobile interface is included as a standard module in the Enterprise Service Desk edition, but it is an add-on module to the Incident Management edition.

Q: How do access this from home?
A: See next answer.

Q: It works great on our wifi but I need to be able to work on tickets from offsite. Thanks for the webinar. Great to see you guys on facebook and twitter.
A: It sounds like the IIS server the mobile interface is installed to within your environment is inside your DMZ so you can hit it internally, but not from outside the network. You'll want to refer to the installation guide or give our support team a call if you're interested in installing it so that it can be hit from outside your network.

Q: can you set which custom fields show if you lower the Display in Incident Screen number?
A: Not at this time.

Q: does the mobile interface recognise permissions set on access ie if we aren't allowing users to change priority will the mobile interface not allow this and if a user doesn't have create ticket access will it allow it or not?
A: Yes, all support rep permissions are applied via the mobile interface.

Q: if a session is killed with a mobile user does it auto pickup as if nothing happened like it does for the rep page or do they have to log in again
A: The login may be cached in certain instances, but if something like an IIS or application pool recycle caused your session to drop I'd expect you'd be prompted to login again when you reconnect.

Q: Can new customers be added on the handheld?
A: Not in the current version although we will pass along a feature request for this to our dev team.

Q: Will Mobile Search look in both Description and Resolution areas?
A: I apologize that I mistakenly stated that the resolution field was included in the search during the webinar. The resolution is not searched. We can submit a feature request that resolution field be added to the list of fields that are search in the mobile search.

Q: Can a case be accepted without logging into c.Support via the mobile device. Such as replying back with the work "Accept" in the email.
A: No. A email can be processed into correspondence history, but the support rep acknowledge feature requires the acknowledging rep to login through the mobile of desktop interface.

Q: Are there any special settings that need to be made on our BES server?
A: No. The blackberry just need to be WAP enabled and connectivity to the mobile interface IIS install location.

Q: Are there any audio/visual indicators on the mobile device for when a new ticket is received?
A: The email notifications would still need to be used to let support reps know when they've received a new ticket.

Q: any plans to move beyond WAP since mobile devices are moving away from it?
A: We will adjust as needed.

Q: Where can I get a simulator for training our c.Support mobile users?
A: We downloaded the blackberry simulator we used for the presentation from http://www.blackberry.com/developers/downloads/simulators/index.shtml

Q: I'm playing with the site within IE right now. Is there a setting somewhere that would be blocking me from CLOSING tickets on the mobile site or is this not allowed period?
A: The only permission that would prevent you from closing a ticket would be the support rep permission for changing status, but that would affect you whether you access from the mobile or support rep desktop. If you're able to close tickets via the support rep desktop you should be able to put a ticket opened via the mobile desktop into edit mode, change the status to closed, and save.

Q: I do have permissions to close tickets but it is not even available as a link.??
A: The status field can't be changed until after the ticket is put into edit mode. Just click the edit link from the upper left of the screen and then the status field drop down should appear.

Thanks again to everyone that attended the webinar.
Eric & Darren

Combined Q&A Sessions from "The Power of Reporting and Ad Hoc Report Building in c.Support" Webinars - 06/24 & 06/25

Anonymous — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:08:28 GMT

Thank you all so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to attend our webinars last week! We hope you found them informative. As promised, here are the Q&A sessions from the events.

Q: Will there be a recording of this Webinar for other staff members to view, who were unable to attend today?
A: Yes, all attendees will be notified by email when the recording is posted.

Q: When downloading reports, is there a way to simply download the summaries without downloading the individual incidents? We thousands of tickets each month and really only need the summary information. It takes a long time to generate and download with all of the incidents included.
A: When a report is exported all of the fields/details are exported. You could use the parameter fields to reduce the number of tickets that export in each export if you don't need all of the incidents to export. For example, you could use the parameter fields to set the report to retrieve only one month's tickets prior to exporting. Your other option would be to create a custom report via report builder that contains fewer fields.

Q: Once you have a report viewed, can you export that data or save that somehow to put into e-mails, etc to send to other people
A: Yes, there is an export field displayed on the tool bar of the report viewer that lets you select an export format. You can also set up scheduled exports by using the report subscription feature Microsoft provides through there SQL Reporting Services (SRS) front end. To access the SRS home page you would use http://<your server name or IP>/reports

Q: If you have custom status, do those show up to select on the Status field on the report screen to limit what you see.
A: The predefined status filters in our standard reports are based upon the custom status values a customer has defined through configuration. When you are building your own reports our data models include a status label and a status type field so you can use either for display and/or filtering.

Q: Is there any way to generate a trend graph? For example, to show changes in incident velocity over the course of the past year? I don't see a way to select date ranges.
A: Date ranges can be selected via report filtering, but if you want to report the trends by something other than day you will most likely need to use the new field option and the functions available from the new field creation screens.

Q: Is there a way to remove the Reports tab from all users without having to log in as each rep. When you turn off the report access option in their permissions they can still get to the reports.
A: A code issue has been identified in the current release related to the preferences setting that allows the report tab to allows be displayed. Once the check box for always displaying the reports tab has been selected the reports tab shows for technicians who have lost the permission to view reports. This issue will be fixed in the next release, but until then the only solution short of access the support rep table to modify the preference setting via SQL would be the one you described.

Q: Is it possible to change the date format? e.g. UK format instead of US format.
A: Not sure about this one. It may be possible via Microsoft's SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio or via a SQL server setting, but I haven't been able to find a report parameter or setting that allows it to be changed.

Q: We need a report for a Hierarchies: Showing the details of the highest level, but the status of the underlying steps. Is that possible to build?
A: I don't believe this type of report can be build through Report Builder, but there is such a report for incidents and another for changes in the standard set of reports that ships with versions from 7.5 to current and more could be build through Microsoft's SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio.

Q: I don't have a question right now, but would like to receive the email of Q&A from this session.
A: We can do that. Thanks for attending.

Q: I create a Ad Hock report and publish it. But I need that report to manipulate dates. how do I use parameters in Ad Hoc reports?
A: Open the report you defined via report builder and click the filter button from the tool bar. In the filter definition screen drag the date field(s) you want to use for filtering and drag them over to right frame. If you want to date fields to prompt before the report is generated right click the field name and select the prompt option. If you want to date range you can click the "equals" link SRS defaults to for a date filter and change it to before, after, etc.

Q: Fantastic, thank you
A: Our pleasure. :)

Q: Please send me the link for the recording of this webinar. I am very interested in creating AdHoc reports.
A: You will get an automated email from GoToWebinar, once we post the archive out on their site. Should be in a couple days. Cheers.

Q: Does version 8 work well with Novell's Groupwise for connectivity on email send/receive. We are presently having some connectivity problems between GWI 7.6.1 and Groupwise 7.x.
A: Shouldn't be an issue even in 7.6.1 as c.Support interacts with the mail server via SMTP for outgoing and either POP3 or IMAP4 for incoming mail. We'd be happy to assist you with any issues you are running into so please feel free to contact our support team anytime.

Q: Can you have hyperlinks to tickets in custom reports?
A: Unfortunately, Microsoft hasn't provided the ability to create hyperlinks in reports build through SRS Report Builder. You would need to get Microsoft's SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio if you want to build reports that include drill throughs and/or hyperlinks.

Q: can you filter the matrix report by current month so we don't have to change the report each month?
A: When you add a date field as a filter you'll see a relative date selection that allows you to set up reports with that type of filter.

Q: Thanks, very interesting.
A: You are very welcome and thank you for attending.

Q: Can we add our own data models to the report builder?
A: Yes, but to do so you would need Microsoft's SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio.

Q: By default, do the reports count the archived tickets?
A: No, archived tickets are not included within the standard incident reports and since we don't currently provide a data model for building custom reports based on archived tickets I will be passing a feature request over to our development team asking that a data model for the archive be added.

Q: Can report generation time be automated? We would like to list, for instance, all incidents opened in the past week and would like to issue it weekly.
A: This can be done with filters and the subscription feature referenced above.

Q: Along the same lines, can c.support send reports to users automatically, at a certain time or date?
A: c.Support can not, but this can be done through SRS. Just open the c.Support reports through http://<your server name or IP>/reports and you'll see a new subscription button at the top of the screen. Click the button and you'll be able to define distribution details including a schedule.

Q: Will this webinar be available for download?
A: Not for download, per se, but an archive will be posted for playback at your leisure.

Q: Why don't all reports have a date filter? For example, we need to view survey results by date.
A: Not sure why some of the shipping reports have date filters and some don’t, but we will pass your suggestion to add them for all reports over to our development team so they can considering adding them to the reports that don't have them currently.

Q: where do you enter an SQL statement for a report?
A: When using the data models via MS SRS Report Builder the SQL statements are pre-defined in the models. If wanted to write your own SQL queries you'd have to use Microsoft's SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio.

Q: When scheduling reports, can printer output be an option (in addition to email and file path)?
A: Not to my knowledge.

Q: When scheduling a report, can you set parameters to show like tickets opened from the 1st day of month until current date?
A: If the filters you want are available in the standard date filters, formula fields can be defined to calculate date ranges and then those custom formula fields can be used to define the filters. Relative date filters are available within the standard date filtering options.

Q: Can models be copied and modified? If so, how?
A: The data models can be modified, but Microsoft's SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio would be required.

Q: not a question-- thanks for all the report work! this is much improved and will save me tons of time!!! looks great
A: Thank you.

Q: I would like to know the reports used for the example in webinar are built-in from ad-hoc reports or visual studio?
A: The standard shipping reports in c.Support were built through Microsoft's SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio.

Q: How to Drilldown the Field
A: Drill down reports and hyperlink fields that drill down to the underlying records can only be created via Microsoft's SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio.

Q: How do I add multiple custom fields to a report?
A: The current data models only allow all applicable custom fields to the record type used in the report to be listed. For example, if I added the name (label) and value fields from the custom field table to an incident report, all of the custom fields associated with each ticket would be listed in one cell. Our development staff has been asked to investigate how we might be able to update the data models for custom fields so individual custom fields could added as separate entities.

Q: How can I build a data model? Do you have a document I can use as reference for this?
A: To design and build report models, you must install the SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio component of Microsoft SQL Server. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc678411.aspx is a good place to start if you are interested in building data models.

Q: Do you have to use all "group by" fields when changing the "group by"?
A: Yes. I'll pass a feature request to our development team so they can look into the possibility of adding a show/hide type of a check box for the groups.

Q: Added to my question... print seems to not work either. Do you think printing not working is an issue with my server?
A: Yes, a Microsoft update (KB956391) from late last year broke SRS printing.
See http://blogs.msdn.com/brianhartman/archive/2008/11/05/client-print-fails-to-load-after-microsoft-update-956391.aspx for more information.

Q: You did not specify but I am guessing this is all in 8.0 correct?
A: SRS integration was first introduced in c.Support version 6, but the number of standard reports and included models has grown with most every release since then.

Q: Has the exporting function been fixed? PDF and Excel reports are not properly formatted and require lots of work (excel) or are unreadable (PDF).
A: The exporting function is part of Microsoft SRS. From my experience, exporting to Excel 2007 works well, but exporting to PDF is essentially just like taking a screen print and pasting it into a PDF. If there is anything we can do to the formatting our standard reports that you think would make exporting easier please let us know so we can pass your suggestions over to our development team.

Q: Do you have a list of all available reports?
A: Drillthru Incidents by Date Closed
Drillthru Incidents by Date Created
Drillthru Incidents by Escalation
Drillthru Incidents by Priority
Drillthru Open Incidents by Company
Drillthru Open Incidents by Customer
Drillthru Related Incidents With Time Worked
Incident Velocity and Next Escalation
Incident Velocity with Incident Priority and Next Escalation
Open Incidents by Priority
Open Incidents by Time Worked for Company and Customer
Open Incidents by Top Companies and Customers
Top Level Incidents With Time Worked
All Incidents – Incident Volume by Day by Hour
All Incidents – SLA Results by Month Opened by Category
All Incidents – SLA Results by Rep Group by Rep by Status
All Incidents by Category
All Incidents by Company by Category
All Incidents by Company by Customer by Status
All Incidents by Department by Category
All Incidents by Department by Customer by Status
All Incidents by Month Opened by Category by SLA
All Incidents by Rep Group by Rep by Status by Priority by Route Count
All Incidents by Rep Location by Category
Archived Incidents by Assignee Group by Assignee
Closed Incidents – SLA Results by Month Closed by Rep by Status
Closed Incidents by Rep by Rep Group by Month Closed by SLA
Closed Incidents by Week Closed by Rep
Open Incidents by Days Open by Rep
All Incidents – Time Entry Details by Asset Type by Asset
All Incidents – Time Entry Details by Company by Customer by Department by Location
All Incidents – Time Entry Details by Date by Rep by Incident
All Incidents – Time Entry Matrix by Date by Rep by Incident
All Incidents – Time Entry Matrix by Rep Group by Rep by Company
All Incidents – Time Entry Matrix by Rep Group by Rep by Dept by Customer
All Incidents – Business Time Open Statistics by Overall Close SLA
All Incidents – Time Open by Month by First Level Category
All Incidents – Time Open by Month by Rep
All Incidents – Time Open by Month by Status by Priority
All Incidents – Time Open by Priority
All Incidents – Time Open by Rep by Category
All Incidents – Time Open by Rep Group by Month by Category
All Incidents – Time Open by Rep Group by Rep
All Incidents – Time Open Statistics Matrix by SLA by Rep by Priority
Inventory Scan Results
Inventory Scan Results by Host Address by Free Drive Space
Inventory Scan Results by Location by OS by Address
Inventory Scan Results by Manufacturer by Model by OS by Address
Inventory Scan Results by Services by State by Host Address
Top Level Changes With Time Worked
Drillthru Related Changes With Time Worked
Assets by Type by Incident Count
Surveys – All Requests by Survey Title by Question
Surveys – Response Rate by Survey Title
Surveys – Responses by Survey Title

Q: Can you use corresponding survey data and incident data in the same reports?
A: You can build survey reports that include information from the associated incident tickets.

Q: Can you schedule a weekly report to show results only for that week (for the last 7 days)?
A: When you add a date field as a filter you'll see a relative date selection that allows you to set up reports with that type of filter.

Q: can you save a particular report view/filter once you have it set the way you want it?
A: Not in the standard shipping reports.

Q: Are we looking at v7 or 8?
A: Darren is using a v8 demo set, but nearly all of this SQL Reporting functionality has been around for the last few versions.

Q: can you report on specific custom fields? line spacing is not efficient.
A: We are working to improve the options for custom field reporting.

Q: Can you include custom field data into the reports?
A: Yes you can.

Q: can you filter by category
A: Yes.

Q: Can the date range be filtered for a specific range like 30, 60 or 90 days? Versus having to enter specific days.
A: Yes, there's the ability to use relative date filters.

Q: Can I modify a standard cSupport report?
A: This can be done, but it would require SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio.

Q: Can a report cross modules for reporting on common data (such as category or custom field) in the incident, problem, change and asset mods?
A: Our current data models support reports that include related work items such as incidents that are associated to problems, but they wouldn't currently support using something like category of assignee as the binder. It could be done through SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio though and we will ask our development team to consider building some addition models that would support ad hoc reports like that.

Q: Are there documentation on the table or relationship structure of the database so we know what tables we need to create reports from reporting services
A: We do not provide any database documentation at this time.

Thanks again to everyone that attended the webinar.
Eric & Darren

Q&A Sessions from "Customizing the c.Support Desktop" Webinars - 05/20 & 05/21

Anonymous — Tue, 26 May 2009 21:51:33 GMT

Thank you all so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to attend our webinars last week! We hope you found them informative. As promised, here are the Q&A sessions from the events.

Q: Is there a way to set an auto-refresh in the new version?
A: Refresh rates can be configured for each desktop content frame added to a tab.

Q: Is the upgrade from 7.1 to 8 as seemless as previous upgrades?
A: Yes, but keep in mind the view engine changes will mean some additional steps (post upgrade) will most likely be needed to ensure your support team members have all the views they need.

Q: Since this version is quite different, will support be able to help me setup a test environment?
A: You are always welcome to contact our support department if assistance is needed with an upgrade.

Q: Do I need the upgrade or is there a general v8 setup
A: The c.Support installer offers a prompt that allows you to select upgrade or install.

Q: how do I download ver 8? 7.6 is all that is showing up on support page for download
A: The upgrade process to V8.0 is being handled directly through GWI's Support Team. They have been sending out emails for a while with details. I would contact them directly at "support@gwi.com" and let them know you would like to begin the upgrade process. OR...work with your Account Manager, who can also facilitate that process.

Q: Are there APIs available to receive work order requests from other systems and respond to those systems with updates?
A: The Enterprise Service Desk edition of c.Support does include an API for Incident Management. If you'd like details please feel free to contact your account manager or our support team.

Q: When you perform an upgrade, can you install this version without the SQL component?
A: Yes, you can upgrade the IIS portion and SQL portions independently, but both must be the same version for the system to function correctly.

Q: Can I setup defined desktop views for groups?
A: Yes

Q: Can this run on a 2008 server
A: Yes

Q: Can you set the default tab for all support reps before going live?
A: Yes, there is a global tab for all reps that you can populate with your own custom content.

Q: Are there significant changes to the EUD, particularly the Submit Incident page?
A: Not in version 8.

Q: Does this version have a followup agent that runs nightly?
A: The follow up date function that allows for nightly follow up emails is still included.

Q: Can you force a tab to be the default view for a group?
A: Not in the version 8 release, but this will be considered for a future release. Right now the default tab you define is global for all support reps. Support reps can change which of tabs they have access to show or hide from the tab menu and they can select a default tab and tab order via preferences.

Q: What about Customers.... are there ways to make specific customers only visible by different units
A: This is currently not an option, but we will forward this to our development team as a feature request.

Q: Has speed improved in version 8, from a Desktop standpoint?
A: The new view engine should offer improved performance. In our internal testing view loading was significantly better with the version 8 views.

Q: What are VIP Users is this new ?
A: Many companies define custom SLAs that associate with specific users that are VIP users within their environments. When an incident is opened for one of the users that is associated with the VIP user SLA the notification and escalation settings that are applied can be different than those applied to a regular user.

Q: Is this software available to download yet?
A: If you've attended one of the free certification classes you are able to download version 8. If you haven't yet attended a class please contact our support team to schedule or you can wait until the July general release date to get version 8.

Q: Can you modify a view to add a custom calculated column. For example, the number of days open.
A: There are some pre-defined calculated fields such as elapsed time in the view builder base views, but custom calculated fields would have to be added via custom SQL views. They could not be defined within the c.Support View Designer.

Q: How many known issues have come to light during upgrades from v7x to v8?
A: Not sure the exact number of issues that have been identified in version 8 to date, but we do have a maintenance release that will address the ones that have been reported due out soon.

Q: Is there a limit on the number of rules that can be applied to a view?
A: No limit is coded into the product.

Q: We currently are using Version 7.6.1.0 and are dealing with a timeout issue where c.Support logs us out after a short period of time. Has this been addressed in 8?
A: This sounds like something that may be environmental so it would be best to have our support team assist. As far as I know, there were not code based issues related to this that needed to be addressed, but if any had been reported to our development team prior to version 8's release they would have been corrected.

Q: i might've missed this at the beginning, but is there an easy way in v8 to restrict categories for a certain end user desktop? it sounds like we have to do it using user group restrictions in v7.5 which is not always ideal
A: Still just the group based restrictions as in version 7.5, but we will consider your request for a future revision.

Q: can you copy a tab?
A: Not in the current release, but will be considered for a future release.

Q: will you post this webinar on the community blog?
A: A recording of the webinar is available. https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/966176025

Q: Can assets be assigned/associated with specific groups?
A: Currently assets can be owned by one or many customers and/or a company. Groups can't be assigned as the owner of an asset and there isn't currently any filtering of assets by group. We can pass this along to our development group though so they consider adding groups into the asset owner/permissions mix in a future revision.

Q: If you create a tab and share it, can you then close it and it will still be available
A: Yes, after closing it, you just click the add tab button (+) and then select the "add existing tab" option when you want to reopen it.

Q: How do charts work when the logged on users is in multiple groups
A: The @my groups filter will look filter to all of the records for all of the groups the logged in user belongs to.

Thanks again to everyone that attended the webinar.
Eric & Darren

Q&A Session from "c.Support v8" Webinar - 03/12 (plus a few unanswered questions from 3/10-3/11)

Anonymous — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 19:54:59 GMT

Thank you all so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to attend our webinar on Thursday! We hope you found it informative.

Here is the Q&A session from that webinar, as well as a few questions that got held over from the 3/10 and 3/11 webinars that needed answers from GWI Development. There is also a post that contains the other Q&A sessions from the previous two webinars if you care to view those as well. (http://community.gwi.com/forums/t/209.aspx)

Q: Will your software be compatible w/ Safari and Macs?
A: Still only for customer access in version 8. We hope to be able to support additional browsers for support representative access in a future release, but MSIE will still be required for support representative or higher levels of access in version 8.

Q: Will there be a feature that will allow approvers to approve/decline/comment/cancel changes waiting for approval via email?
A: The approval functions will still require a connection to the related record in version 8, but we will share your question with our development group and ask that they considering adding support for email based approval processing to a future revision.

Q: Will custom fields that have been created in prior versions, be available when upgrading to 7.6 and 8.0?
A: -Yes, no data will be lost when upgrading. Some standard views that ship in pre-version 8 releases will be lost, but it will be possible to recreate them through the new view designer.

Q: Will c.Support work with IE 8?
A: Not sure, we will do complete system testing with IE 8 as soon as we can once it moves from Beta to Gold status.

Q: Can you prevent users from creating their own tabs?
A: Yes, all of the new functions have associated permissions.

Q: Why did you change the view engine? Is it faster?
A: Yes, the new view engine should offer improved performance and it will also offer customers the opportunity to custom the views to their own requirements and preferences.

Q: When will Version 8 be coming out?
A: Version 8 is currently working through the Q/A process and is scheduled to be available in early second quarter.

Q: Can you have a multi gauge instead of one gauge per chart?
A: Each gauge will only be able to display one value, but multiple gauges can be created from the same view and multiple gauges can be displayed on the same desktop tab.

Q: What is the release date?
A: Early second quarter is the most current information we've been given.

Q: This question is about the new alerts. Can you send the same alert to multiple pager numbers?
A: The email address and pager addresses are obtained from the associated support representative profiles and you can still only define one email address and one pager address per support representative. You can associate more than one support representative with the same alert.

Q: Is there some type of training material available or a PPT presentation that we can show the staff before we upgrade to V8? Since there is major GUI changes, I think they'll need to see this before the actual upgrade takes place.
A: As this is a significant change, GWI Support will work even more closely with customers on this release to ensure a smooth upgrade. Once c.Support v8 is officially released we will also deliver a "What's New In" guide, Admin and User guides, as well as the webinar archive online to review at your leisure. A test upgrade is also possible, as is "training," but that is a paid service.

Q: I just want to confirm an issue we've had has been fixed in this version: In the End User Desktop, when you click the Read link next to a Headline or FAQ, the details opened in a bubble which went down under the screen and could not be read.
A: Yes, this issue will be fixed in version 8.

Q: Not a question -- Thank you for having this webinar, and for continuing to make improvements to the cSupport product.
A: -Thank you very much. Your time and support for our solutions are appreciated greatly.

Q: Have you added the ability to view the due date and time of an incident based on the incidents SLA working hours and when the close SLA would be exceeded?
A: This information can be accessed from an incident ticket, but isn't currently included within the view builder query for incidents. I'll ask our development team to add this to the incident view building query, but if they aren't able to get it added we can assist with building a custom query that contains that field post release. Once the custom query (view) is added to the c.Support database you'd be able to build views against it through the view designer.

Q: What are the browser requirements and browsers supported?
A: -The browser requirements aren't changing so you'll still need an IE 6 or 7 series browser for support rep or manager access and an HTML 4.0 compliant browser for customer access.

Q: How about the ability to watch trends for open # of incidents opened or closed during a specific period?
A: This will be possible with the new view, chart and alert building tools.

Q: Will you be able to create calculated fields and have those displayed in your views?
A: Some calculated fields like elapsed time since created are included in our base queries, but others could be defined in custom queries and then used within custom views.

Q: firefox support
A: Still only for customer access in version 8. We hope to be able to support additional browsers for support representative access in a future release, but MSIE will still be required for support representative or higher levels of access in version 8.

Q: approvals can be shown there? in the custom view builder
A: The approval information in the base queries is very limited. Our development team will be expanding this as time permits, but if they don't get all of the fields you need into the base queries prior to the ship date, custom queries could be added to your install post upgrade. After you upgrade and start building views, just let our support team know if you don't find what your looking for in the list of fields available for the record type your defining a view to display.

Q: Does v8 work in Internet Explorer 6?
A: Yes

Q: Do you accept multiple email address to the support system as well as the response out? Such as support@email1 and support@email2 will both be logged in the system and respond with outbound email accordingly.
A: This won't be available in version 8, but is high on our list of planned enhancements so I expect it will be included in one of our next few releases.

Q: Did the EUD interface change?
A: Not at this time.

Q: Can you hide stock views and control which views reps see?
A: Yes

Q: Can the new version allow a support rep to check in and out multiple reps without being a gwi admin? I.E. Supervisors checking in and out their staff?
A: No, but this has been submitted as an enhancement request so our development team can consider it for a future revision.

Q: Can we get a power point presentation of today?
A: We do not have a PowerPoint presentation of the webinar, but we will email out a link to an archive recording of the event you can watch again at your leisure. That email will go out once the archive has been posted. Thanks.

Q: Are there any additional data fields in the database that would cause issues with the older DBs from previous versions?
A:There will be additional tables and fields in the c.Support database. The installer should be able to update your database with these changes without any issues, but if you've modified the database or have other concerns please feel free to speak with one of our support technicians.

Q: Is there a set of default tabs that cannot be removed and for shared tabs can users select to not display a shared tab even though they are part of the shared group?
A: There will be a couple of pre-built tabs so you'll see similar tabs to the pre-version 8 release you've upgraded from, but you'll be able to modify or delete these. You can close selected shared tabs so the don't show on your desktop until they are reopened.

Q: Are multiple levels of alerts? (1 at 30 tickets next at 40 tickets)
A: This will be possible, but it will require multiple alerts. Only one threshold can be defined per alert.

Q: Are there new SQL Reports built in?
A: I don't believe any new SQL based reports are being added to version 8.

Q: Will it fix the WMI issue when you run an inventory scan with a PC with more than one processor that it will show a duplicate asset?
A: This is a known issue that is being addressed by Development, but is unfortunately not covered in v8.

Q: any way to display how long a ticket is open - display time between open to close ticket?
A: There is an elapsed time field that calculates how many hours and minutes it's been from the ticket creation to current. This value will be total time not business hours.

Q: DinkerBiddle & Reath>We recently upgraded to the latest version. However we encounter long delays when attempting to select a category. This was communicated prior to the upgrade that this would be a feature that had improved in speed. I manage the Chicago Help Desk and the slowness issue is my staff's number one complaint. My peer in the Philly office encounters the same issue. The server resides in the Chicago office. Please assist or comment on the slowness our entire IS department experiences when using C Support.
A: Here are some data we collected in performance testing. When selecting a category, it uses the tree node select:

   100k records: 7.6 tree node select avg = 1900 ms
                           8.0 tree node select avg = 1100 ms

   200k records: 7.6 tree node select avg = 2800 ms
                           8.0 tree node select avg = 1200 ms

So, our findings indicate that tree node select (i.e., category select) is more than twice as fast w/ 200k records. With 100k records about 57% faster. This is subject to variations for server configuration and other settings specific to a customers environment.

Q: can we get a listing of the standard views which will be included in V8?
A: Look for the attachment to this post named "v8ShippingViews.xls" (link located at the top by the post title)

Q: Regarding reporting, based on assets and scans. Presently we're seeing duplicate entries for most all software, due to the fact that it becomes processor based in the reporting. For example, I'm seeing 2x the correct number of installed Office 07 licenses. Is the reporting cleaned up more in v.8 so I can deal with items such as this?
A: GWI Development is aware of this issue, and it will be addressed in an upcoming release.

Q: When copying Categories does it also copy your custom fields?
A: Yes.

Q: Does this version now support reporting on more than one custom field?
A: Please contact support on this as previous versions should allow reporting on more than one custom field. There were no changes to the custom field reporting functions in this release, but if we can improve them for you in a future revision we'd welcome your suggestions.

Q: Are views exportable?
A: You will still be able to export data from your views. In fact, we've added a PDF and Word file types as export options.

Q: What fixes have been added to te reporting feature?
A: We'd need more detail on what you consider broken, but aside from updating some reporting schema, there were no major changes to the reporting feature in v8. Feel free to contact GWI Support with any reporting functionality that is not working the way you expect it. (support@gwi.com)

Thanks again to everyone that attended the webinar.
Eric & Darren

Combined Q&A Sessions from "c.Support v8" Webinars - 03/10 & 03/11

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:01:06 GMT

Thank you all so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to attend our recent webinars! We hope you found them informative.

Here are the combined Q&A sessions from the first two days of this webinar. I'll post Thursday's Q&A session separately, rather than wait to post what we already have here. Many great questions were submitted on the first two days, though, so we figured everyone would benefit from seeing them all.

Q: Will version 8.0 be able to automatically incorporate embedded images from email sent to Gwi? (note: I am not referring to attachments)
A: Not at this time. I'll pass that to GWI Development for future consideration though.

Q: Will v8.0 support customized "incident custom notifications" per SLA there is?
A: Not at this time. I'll pass that to GWI Development for future consideration though.

Q: Will the new version work with Firefox and/or Macintosh, or is it still IE limited?
A: Still IE only for support rep or higher level of access.

Q: Will all existing data be imported during an upgrade?
A: Yes

Q: Why not drag and drop? AJAX has been doing that for a while...
A: Not sure

Q: I wonder if you are going to be ever utilizing RSS feeds for alerts?
A: Not at this time. I'll pass that to GWI Development for future consideration though.

Q: How much will version 8 cost?
A: If you have a current maintenance agreement the upgrade will have no cost. If you do not currently use c.Support or if you don't have a current maintenance agreement please contact your account manager or our sales team for more information regarding pricing.

Q: When entering a ticket how can the page refreshes be avoided? since the incident is not save until you press save. Pulling from drop downs, and selecting categories takes a long time
A: Tickets pop up into new browser windows so the desktop content auto-refreshes won't affect any tickets that are being entered/edited.

Q: We are way back on 5.5. What is our upgrade path?
A: Each major release installer will bring forward any release in the previous generation. So your upgrade path would be: 5.5 > 6.0 > 7.0 > 8.0

Q: We are going to build a new server to host C Support Ver 8, what is the best way to migrate from the latest C Support 7 version?
A: Please contact support for more information about this.

Q: IS there a way to alert a tech that he has an appointment due? i.e. Calendar reminder to call user at 3:00
A: Not at this time. I'll pass that to GWI Development for future consideration though.

Q: What is the expected release date?
A: c.Support v8 is currently working through the Q/A process, and the current status has it scheduled to be customer ready by early Q2.

Q: We are at version 7.0. Can I upgrade straight to version 8 or do I have to upgrade to 7.5 then to 8?
A: You will be able to go right to version 8 as the version 8 installer will be able to bring for any 7.x install of c.Support.

Q: Question on views - can we drag custom fields that we created into a out of the box view?
A: Only global (form specific) custom fields can be added to copies of shipping views.

Q: Is there any plans in the future to add a forum to the EUD? I think it would be a great thing.
A: We've had discussions about this, but no definitive plans to date.

Q: Any thoughts on a 'live chat' feature or something like go to my pc type support built into c.Support?
A: Yes, like forums we've had discussions about this, but no definitive plans to date.

Q: Is there going to be a way to go back to the OLD way to have FAQs open when you click on them? When we put the FAQ at the bottom you cannot read it because the screen gets longer however when you try to click the scroll bar the faq goes away and the page returns to normal size again. Crazy endless loop that one.
A: Won't be going back to the old way, but should be corrected in version 8.

Q: Any changes to the EUD? For instance when we add a website part and someone tries to read an FAQ entry it goes BEHIND the web site. Also is there a way to change the height of the things we put on the EUD?
A: Some fixes, but no other changes.

Q: Is there a way to auto-refresh a view?
A: Yes, auto refresh rates can be configured when the view is added to a desktop tab.

Q: What version do you have to be at to be able to upgrade to 8.0?
A: Any of the version 7 releases.

Q: Is the EUD going to be visually different as well?
A: No

Q: Is that permission based?
A: Yes, There will be permissions for tab, view, chart and alert building.

Q: will you keep an archived list of the old views so we can reference in the future after the upgrade, in order to create these new custom views that no longer exist
A: An archived list of views in 7.6 will be kept for reference and is available by request at sales@gwi.com

Q: How about customization of the end user desktop?
A: No changes.

Q: Who can I direct questions to after the webinar? Darren? Someone else in Sales?
A: if it is of a technical nature, Darren would be fine. If it's "sales" related, your Account Manager would be better. If you're unsure, feel free to ping me. Eric - eanderson@gwi.com

Q: Darren & Eric: thanks for the presentation. Exciting changes. I will email my technical questions re: the new release to Darren.
A: -Thank you

Q: Does this require Sql Server 2008?
A: No, SQL 2005 and 2008 are both supported.

Q: do you have to be at version 7.6.1 to move to version 8.0
A: No, the version 8 upgrade installer will be able to move any 7 series install forward.

Q: Do you have a "What's New" document for V8?
A: We sure do. Send an email to Sales@gwi.com for a copy.

Q: Currently tickets can be escalated according to an SLA. Does v8 support a "de-escalation process" via SLA so that tickets of a certain classification can essentially "age closed" after an established period of time.
A: Not at this time. I'll pass that to GWI Development for future consideration though.

Q: Are any of the forms customizable in v8? (ie: can fields be removed or additional fields added, to streamline entry?)
A: No changes to this in version 8. There are configuration options that allow certain fields to be enabled or disabled and that allow custom fields to be added.

Q: Will version 8 still be dependant on IE? Will it also be compatible with IE8?
A: Version 8 will still require MSIE for support rep and higher levels of access. MSIE Version 8 will not be supported officially until after it moves from Beta to Gold and we've had a change to complete testing with the Gold release.

Q: Will the inventory management have any tie ins to Microsoft SMS?
A: The integration feature in c.Support will work with any MS SQL Server back ended system.

Q: Can you set alerts when someone responds to a survey? have the survey results emailed to someone
A: Not at this time. I'll pass that to GWI Development for future consideration though.

Q: Can you push these views to multiple users or groups?
A: Yes

Q: Can you push custom views to groups or multiple individuals?
A: Yes

Q: Can we create views or reports from our custom fields created in Incident or Change Management?
A: Global (form specific) custom fields can be used in custom views created from our base entity queries, but category specific custom fields can not. Custom queries could be written to retrieve category specific custom field information that could then be used in custom views and reports.

Q: Can anyone create a custom view or only the administrator?
A: View, chart and tab building permissions can be given to support representatives.

Q: Have you built in an interface for Palm Pilot's/PDAs?
A: There is a mobile interface for incident management included within the service desk edition of c.Support.

Q: will we be able to import current tickets into new version
A: An upgrade install will be available. No data will be lost when upgrading.

Q: or even all current tables of databases?
A: -See above

Q: Are there any significant changes to the Change Management module in version 8?
A: No, other than you'll have the ability to create custom change views, charts and alerts.

Q: Any changes to the EUD?
A: No

Q: Any changes to the KB?
A: No

Q: How often does GWI have upgrades for cSupport Incident Management? We just upgraded from 7.0 to 7.5.
A: Three a year on average.

Q: Will we be able to have multiple incoming email addresses being sent to cSupport? For example support@yahoo.com and techs@yahoo.com. Both coming into our cSupport server and each one being assigned automatically to a different queue?
A: This can be done already by using aliases. We may add support for multiple email boxes to be used in a future revision, but this will not be included in version 8.

Q: Will we be able to choose to open an incident in a separate browser tab, rather than opening a new browser window?
A: Not at this time. I'll pass that to GWI Development for future consideration though.

Q: We have a problem viewing custom field info on CLOSED incidents. The entire 'form' is disabled, so we can't, for example, scroll a field to see what value the operator chose for that field (without reopening the ticket to reactivate the control). It would be nice if the data was simply write-protected in the database to prevent changes on a closed ticket, rather than having the application controls disabled.
A: Please contact support as you should still be able to navigate the form without reopening.

Q: will this c.support allow us to search by typing part of aname, or is this total mouse enabled
A: The customer search function that pops up when selecting a customer for an incident, change, purchase request, etc. will not change in v8.

Q: Will this be an in-place upgrade from version 6.0?
A: You will need to upgrade to version 7 first. The version 8 installer will bring forward any 7 series install.

Q: will there be a recording of this demo for us to access later?
A: Yes. We are recording this webinar, and there will be an automated email sent to all registrants with a link within a day or two.

Q: Will people currently using v7.0.1 be required to upgrade to v7.6 first before v8 ?
A: No, see above.

Q: Will it be possible to assign more than one assignee to a single incident at a time
A: Not at this time. I'll pass that to GWI Development for future consideration though.

Q: Will it be possible to change an open date to reflect correctly to actual date example not able to put a ticket in until Monday morning but problem happen on Saturday
A: No, but a custom date field for the incident/problem start date could be added and used in custom views and reports.

Q: When can we get the document that lists all of the new features and improvements with Version 8.0?
A: A "What's Planned in v8" pdf exists currently. A more detailed "What's New in v8" pdf will be finalized by our Technical Writer once v8 is finalized. You can request either document through your Account Manager or by sending an email to Sales@gwi.com.

Q: or is it on the website already?
A: The pdfs are not placed on the website. Please see above.

Q: What is the back end database, will the new version support the SQL Server 2008 platform
A: The requirements for version 8 are the same as the requirements for version 7.6.1. Both SQL 2005 and 2008 are supported.

Q: What changes are there for configuring forms for the EUD?
A: None

Q: Are there any improvements to the approval cycles - like adding a SLA to approval
A: Not at this time. I'll pass that to GWI Development for future consideration though.

Q: We will be able to scan third-party networks for customers we support to add to Assets?
A: Asset scan requirements/functions will not change in version 8.

Q: Is the upgrade free?
A: If you have a current maintenance contract the upgrade is free.

Q: is the EUD getting an update as well?
A: No

Q: Can you access multiple 'customer' databases as well?
A: Not multiple SQL sources.

Q: Is it possible to set up alerts for individual incidents?
A: The alert feature was not intended to apply to individual tickets even though it may be possible to setup an alert based on a view or chart that filters to one ticket.

Q: Is there a way to track, within each incident, how the incident was reported? For example: "walk-in", "phoned in", "emailed in", "EUD".
A: There is a source field that gets populated with information about how the ticket was created, but if you want the custom labels you listed a custom field would need to be defined in configuration.

Q: The print utility now allows us to choose which parts of the incident we want to print, for example: "customer", "description", etc. When I select "history", all of the history prints out, which includes audit history, customer history, etc. How can I limit the history to print only Work History?
A: We can submit a feature request based on this.

Q: In v8.0, do you have the ability to add information from the custom tab (incident) into views?
A: Only global custom fields can be used in views created from the base queries that will ship with c.Support. Category specific custom fields could be used if custom queries were added via SQL.

Q: For the Shared Access Tabs, are people restricted to sharing by their group membership, or do all groups/techs appear when they go to share?
A: If you have been given the permission that allows you to create shared tabs all of the groups and support reps will be listed in the sharing lists.

Q: When will the functionality be implemented, to import data into cSupport? For example, categories listed in a spreadsheet; import into cSupport; Data entered on the custom incident field (tab); etc.
A: Development of these features isn't currently scheduled.

Q: Can the chart data be exported and displayed on a large monitor, such as those found in a NOC, without having to login to cSupport under a tech profile?
A: Access to charts does require a support rep login.

Q: How complex is the upgrade?
A: The upgrade will not be complex, but because the view engine is being completely replaced you may need to spend some extra time post upgrade to build your needed/preferred views.

Q: do you have a place for approvals. due to the Sarbanes-Oxely initiative, it requires approvals at various levels; does your product allow for the tracking of approvals?
A: Yes, approvals have been supported for several releases.

Q: cool new features!
A: Glad you like them.

Q: Can you use wild cards in the new global search?
A: No, but it the search begins as soon as you enter a character and is then refined as more characters are added so it's almost like a wild card character is entered at the back of the search text when the search is initiated.

Q: Can we add incident specific custom fields to a view filter?
A: Yes. Custom fields defined at the global incident level can be included within views and used as filters.

Q: Can the filter be based on input parameters at report run time? e.g. user enters a date range?
A: No, but searching is still supported so once the view is loaded date filters could be passed via an advanced search.

Q: Can I upgrade to version 8 from 7.5?
A: -Yes

Q: Any changes to the EUD side?
A: No

Q: Are the hours open always based on business hours or is there total time open field and business hours open field?
A: Right now the elapsed time is based on total hours not business hours. We will hopefully be able to add a total business hours option as well before the v8 release, but if not we'll get it added to the list of enhancements for the following release.

Q: After I install the 8 version I will lose my views?
A: Yes, if you've created custom views in a pre-v8 release they will need to be recreated after upgrading to version 8.

Thanks again to everyone that attended the webinar.
Eric & Darren

Combined Q&A Sessions from "Centralize Support for Multiple Business Units" Webinars - 01/21 & 01/22

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:09:33 GMT

Thank you all so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to attend our recent webinar! We hope you found it informative.

Here are the combined Q&A sessions from the two events. Many great questions were submitted on both days so we figured everyone would benefit from seeing them all.

Q: With the Active Directory Sync. Can you sync with more than one AD Server (tree)?
A: Yes, the active directory synchronization feature was enhanced to support this a few releases ago, so as long as you're using a fairly recent version you'll be able to synchronize with multiple AD Servers and/or trees.

Q: What are the authentication ways to connect to exchange (from 7.5, has that changed with 7.6)?
A: Nothing changed in regard to the SMTP\POP3\IMAP4 authentication options from version 7.5 to 7.6.

Q: We'd really like to filter incidents in an EUD based on the incident category, rather than the group held by the customer. We have separate EUDs for the different support groups, but when users view incidents in the various EUDs, they see a mix of incidents from all the departments servicing the incidents, rather than just the incidents serviced by one group.
A: This will be submitted as a feature request so our development team can consider it for a future revision.

Q: We have created two Incident templates for our end users. One for general Help Desk, one for a Communications HDR's. But we have to share the custom fields we have setup for each. Is there a better way to create a more custom EUD experience ?
A: The custom fields could be associated with categories rather than with the incident form so they'd be filtered based upon the template or category selected.

Q: Please discuss the use of "Location" field for setting up multiple business units. We want to tie one or more groups to each location and restrict on location and/or groups.
A: Locations can be used to control support representative permissions, but the location attribute is associated with the support representatives only. The support representative groups do not get linked to the locations. Using the location filter does allow greater flexibility though, as it supports groups that work across multiple locations, but only want supports reps that need access to their group's records to see those that apply to the support reps location.

Q: Nice webinar, thanks for inviting me.
A: -You are very welcome, thank you for attending.

Q: Is there any plan to apply group permissioning to the custom views area?
A: The custom views area will be getting replaced very soon. The new view builder will have many enhancements including the application of permission filters to custom views.

Q: Hello... when applying incident templates, why does the function overwrite existing data in the problem field? our incidents are created via email. and are overwritten when applying an incident template. can this be modified?
A: Since there isn't a way to configure the system to prevent this currently we will submit this as a feature request.

Q: Is there a way to limit routing to business groups? We have four units at different locations which have multiple groups at each. This makes routing by group very complicated.
A: As there isn't currently a routing method or permission that supports what you've described we will forward this to our development team as a feature request.

Q: is the number of representative licenses cumulative?
A: Yes, support representative licenses are concurrent access licenses that are shared among all business units.

Q: Is it possible to route tickets based on category and not webpage?
A: Yes, skills based routing matches the selected category to the support reps an administrator has associated.

Q: I have the mail rule assigning an incident template based on which alias the email came in on... the incident template is what asks for the default assignee. I'd rather it dump into the support rep group than go to an individual support rep.
A: Templates can be configured to chose an assignee by applying a load balanced routing method such as group based - load balanced routing, but if you'd rather give the members of a group the chance to pull tickets out of a group queue you can set up a support representative entry with a name like Group A Queue for each group and select this fictitious support rep as the default assignee for the group's templates.

Q: Mail rules requires a default assignee... can the default assignee be the group not a person?
A: Same answer as above.

Q: I am new to the product. Can a single ticket be routed to multiple techs. For instance a new employee setup would require many tasks.
A: a single ticket can only have one assignee at a time, but can be routed any number of times. For multi-assignment work flows like new users setups the hierarchy template function should be reviewed. Using this function you can predefine any number of individual tickets, each having a different assignee, category, etc. that need to be created together. When the series of assignments is needed it can be created simply by selecting the predefined hierarchy template.

Q: how do you set the administrator report level permissions
A: Report permissions can be set on the support rep and support rep group configuration pages.

Q: we are using v 7.5 can you please show how to get to the permissions page 1 more time
A: If you aren't seeing the permissions tab on your support rep and support rep group entries in configuration you'll want to check the Global Configuration page. There is a radio button on the functionality tab that turns Permissions on and off. Once you've turned on permissions you'll get the additional controls.

Q: can there be different admins for different groups
A: There can be multiple administrators, but the administrator role is not filtered in any way. There isn't a way to restrict an administrator to changing only the configuration entries that apply to their group.

Q: Does routing work with agent availability? Agents checked out do not get tickets routed to them?
A: -Routing does consider support representative availability. If you are checked out tickets will not be routed to you.

Q: can new categories be added with "chane" access type - no admin rights
A: New categories entries can only be added by administrators.

Q: Do you have a white paper that gives you detail (best practices) on setting multiple locations for support (LA & NY) by time or by customer
A: We do not have a white paper that covers locations specifically, but the support representative location feature which is used to associate support team members with their time zones is covered within the c.Support administrator's guide. The easiest was to access this guide is to click the administrative assistance link from the help menu on your support rep desktop.

Q: Can you have the reply address from GWI be different for each business unit?
A: Not currently, this is already on our list of items being considered for a future release though. We'll share your interest in this enhancement with our development team which may help it float to the top of list a bit more quickly.

Q: can you have a customers that use AD and some that use GWI authentication?
A: Yes, but this requires the creation of separate end user desktops; one for each authentication method.

Q: Can you have a mixture of login type customers? For example, some active directory synced and then some having to register as a user. The reason for the question is that we have shared workstations on our plant floor that auto login as a generic AD user to the workstation and therefore could not be identified. We also don't have AD logins for every plant employee that might need to report an incident to another business group.
A: Mixed authentication methods from one desktop is not supported, but separate end user desktops can be created for each authentication method. You'd just need to make sure the users know which URL to go to based upon how they need to authenticate.

Q: can you create sub groups?
A: Sub groups can not be created.

Q: can a technical support rep create a ticket with their categorization and route it to a customer service rep? Will the customer service rep see the ticket?
A: A support rep can only route tickets to another group if their permissions allow it. If a support rep has the permission to route to support reps in other groups and they sent a ticket with a category member of another group can't see to a member of that group the receiving technician would be able to see the ticket. If the ticket is your assignment the category based access control is overridden.

Q: Can the knowledge base entries be isolated by group for the EUD?
A: Yes, group access based on categories can be used to filter the knowledge base.

Q: How do support centers differ from groups?
A: Support centers are locations where support is provided. There can be multiple groups at each support center.

Q: Can licensing be assigned by business unit, so a biz unit that says they need 1 rep doesn't glom up 3 licensing, for example?
A: Not currently so we'll pass this to development for consideration.

Q: Can end user signature lines be removed from e-mail submitted requests when ticket is created?
A: Not currently so we'll pass this to development for consideration.

Q: Can agents be turned on or off at the group level or associated to the group?
A: Not sure I understand this question. Agents that automate things like notifications, SLA's, asset scanning, etc. are global. Please feel free to submit more detail about what you're looking for on this through our forum or to us directly if you'd like more information.

Q: Can a group transfer request to another group?
A: If the permissions you've given them allows it.

Q: how would mail-in requests be handled for different groups?
A: This would depend upon the mail rules you define in configuration.

Q: are there different levels of permissions within creating a ticket?
A: Yes.

Q: Different levels of permissions for supp reps to see different Incident level Custom Fields?
A: Custom fields are not filtered by permissions.

Q: Can you utilize Active Directory to integrate customers for EUD only? and then using Domino directory for Incidents?
A: No, if the users are listed in both sources whichever source is listed in the higher position would control all of the user fields.

Q: Also can you route tickets by the geographic area that the user belongs to? Thanks.
A: Yes, this requires the creation of support rep locations via configuration. Once the support rep locations have been created customer groups can be linked to them and the end user desktop(s) can be configured to use location based routing.

Q: Can you post a section on the forum about how to route tickets based on categories. Thanks.
A: We call category-based routing skills-based routing. If you search the c.Support administrators guide for skill-based routing you'll be able to review this feature in detail. I will also add a forum entry on the topic when time permits. We will also consider this feature for a future webinar.

Thanks again to everyone that attended the webinar.
Eric & Darren

GWI Software Webinar - "Centralize Support for Multiple Business Units"

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:35:49 GMT

Hello,

GWI Software is pleased to announce the upcoming webinar; "Centralize Support for Multiple Business Units."

Back by popular demand, and particularly appropriate for tough economic times, this 30-minute webinar will highlight how a single instance of c.Support can be configured to easily accommodate numerous support centers, locations, or individual business units while protecting the data shown to different groups within those units.

Dates/Times for the webinar:
Wednesday, January 21st at 11:00am PST - Register at... https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/967092618
Thursday, January 22nd at 9:00am PST - Register at... https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/794001363

Sincerely,
The GWI Software Team

Combined Q&A Sessions from "c.Support 7.5's Purchasing Functionality Overview" Webinars - 11/19 & 11/20

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:47:05 GMT

Thank you all so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to attend our recent webinar! We hope you found it informative.

Here are the combined Q&A sessions from the two webinars. Many great questions were submitted on both days so we figured everyone would benefit from seeing them all.

Q. will we get a copy of the presentation? will this webinar be available online later for others that I work with to view?
A. Anyone who registered (whether they attended or not) should receive an automated email from GoToWebinar with a link to the archive once it's been posted, typically within a couple days. Also, archived webinar links are posted on the Events page of our website at www.gwi.com/company/events.

Q: What reports do you get with this in Assets Management?
A: There are several views included for purchasing and a data model is included for SQL Reporting Services so custom reports can be defined, but there are no standard purchasing reports provided in the current release.

Q: Under the Description field for ....more ... is there a limit to the amount of data that can be entered here?
A: The short description is limited to 100 characters, but the comments field is only limited by SQL limitations for a text field.

Q: Related to billing for hours to deploy a purchased asset....does this require the purchase is tied to an incident so that hours can be tracked? Otherwise, how does the install time get recorded so that it can be billed back?
A: A purchase order does have to be associated with an incident or change request before the time worked can be added for billing.

Q: We are on GWI 7.0. Can we go right to 7.5 or do we have to go to 7.01 fiurst?
A: You can go directly from 7.0 to 7.5.

Q: Is there anywhere within the purchase request and/or approval area where an accounting code can be entered. We need to code each purchase prior to accounting receiving the PR. If not, perhaps this can be placed as a request for a future update.
A: Custom fields can be defined through configuration for the purchase form.

Q: Is there any way to get the links to highlight over the link menus in eud? If not, please put in a feature request.
A: We will submit this as a feature request.

Q: is there an option for purchase appoval process?
A: Yes, approval cycles can be defined for purchasing. If an approval is required a the purchase request remains a request until approved at which point it becomes a purchase order.

Q: Is there a Closed Loop process/escalation/notifications to assure follow-up on receipt, asset creation/update etc...?
A: There isn't currently such as function. This will be submitted to our development team as a feature request.

Q: Is Microsoft Excel 2003 the only format that this feature will utilize? Are .csv file compatible?
A: At this time only MS Excel 2003 is support.

Q: Is it possible to customize reports to look at purchase requests by approval status?
A: Yes

Q: Can the purchase approval be set to auto-forward to the appropriate persons?
A: Yes

Q: If we order in bulk quantities, is there a way to keep track of how many items have been purchased and decrease the quantity reported in stock? Does it keep an inventory basically...
A: The purchasing module can create asset records for the bulk items that have been ordered once they are marked as received, but there is a function that allows you to select the assets that were created when they are used so that they would be deducted from the total. The current asset management features do not provide the type of parts inventory capabilites it sounds like you are after. We will submit as a feature request.

Q: I dont think you mentioned enabling customers to access purchases on the customer record.
A: -The is a new check box in the customer profile that must be checked before a customer will be allowed to create and submit a purchase request through an end user desktop.

Q: Do you support sending the PO's to the vendor? If so, how are they sent to the vendor?
A: Yes, PO's can be printed or emailed.

Q: How are the PO's received when the order arrives? How do you close the PO?
A: Each line on a PO has both a quantity ordered and quantity received field. As items are received the quantity received field(s) are updated and once all items have been received the PO status is changed to closed.

Q: Can you export a purchase history?
A: Yes, data about purchases can exported from purchase views and reports.

Q: can you create your own type of PO #'s? ie: IT09-1 followed by IT09-2, IT09-3, etc.
A: There is a request number field that you could populate with your own request numbers, but it would require your staff to enter your custom request numbers manually.

Thanks again to everyone that attended the webinar.
Eric & Darren

GWI Software Webinar - "c.Support's Purchasing Functionality Overview"

Anonymous — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:25:02 GMT

Hello,

GWI Software is pleased to announce the upcoming webinar; "c.Support's Purchasing Functionality Overview."

Comprehensive purchasing functionality enables you to manage the complete lifecycle of the IT service process, and track all aspects of a project from start to finish. In this 30-minute webinar we will overview the new Purchasing functionality that was released in c.Support 7.5.

Dates/Times for the new features overview webinar:
Wednesday, November 19th at 11:00am PST - Register at... https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/913979831
Thursday, November 20th at 9:00am PST - Register at... https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/834488458

Sincerely,
The GWI Software Team

Combined Q&A Sessions from "New Features and Functionality in c.Support 7.5" Webinars - 10/21 & 10/22

Anonymous — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:06:31 GMT

Thank you all so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to attend our recent webinar! We hope you found it informative.

Here are the combined Q&A sessions from the two webinars. Many great questions were submitted on both days so we figured everyone would benefit from seeing them all.

Q: Will this webinar be available to download?
A: An archive is available for playback at your convenience. (https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/921060394)

Q: Will this release allow you to import custom assets fields?
A: Yes, the asset import was enhanced to allow custom fields to be mapped in and populated from an import.

Q: Will the subject line auto populate the short description field of an email?
A: Yes.

Q: Will the custom fields flow down through child tickets in an hierarchy ticket?
A: Yes

Q: When will the mobile feature be available for end users?
A: This will be considered for future development. Thank you for the feature request.

Q: When synching groups do the Groups have to match exactly in AD and c.Support?
A: If a group that is in AD is already defined within c.Support they would have to exactly match in order for AD to take over management of the group record. If an AD group hasn't already been created within c.Support it will be created upon the first run of the AD sync and then only updated when changes occur within AD.

Q: On purchasing can end-users add items "on the fly"? Type in various items?
A: User can not add items in on the fly by typing in items descriptions. They have to pick from the list of defined products. A generic product could be added to the list and the free text comments field could be used to allow the user to details other items they hope to order though.

Q: What about the time of change in change management?
A: The change dates are still just dates, but enhancements to include time and technician scheduling have been documented and are being considered for a future release.

Q: We have a remote site - in Pune, India and they often complain of slow performance. Is there anything we can do to distribute the architecture or improve response?
A: Nothing new in the architecture that would allow the software to be distributed in a different manner.

Q: Talk about the "Your Label here"
A: The "Your label here" tab displayed in the demonstration set is the tab that would display custom fields. The label of the tab can be configured to the c.Support Administrator's preference.

Q: Reporting on Surveys doesn't easily associate the Incident No. and response in a usable format.
A: A data model for surveys was added to version 7.5 so if you need a survey report that isn't currently shipped standard you will be able to create custom survey reports in the new release. This should address your concern.

Q: Is there any way to copy a asset I know you can create a new one or delete one but can you copy one?
A: Not an available feature in 7.5, but you might want to look into the multiple asset creation wizard if you are needing to create new asset records from a standard template.

Q: Has there been any improvements in searching capabilities since ver. 6.5?
A: I would like more details about the improvements you'd like to see as I don't believe we have any enhancement requests documented in this area. There have been any changes to the search engine, but with the expansion of views there are more search options in the newer releases.

Q: Does this version allow you to insert a user defined field into a correspondence template?
A: The ability to include form specific custom fields in a correspondence template has been in the solution for several releases, but category and asset type specific custom fields can not be inserted.

Q: On the EUD, does this version allow users to view all incidents for all users or do they still need to know the incident originator's name?
A: The EUD ticket views have been improved. There are now additional options that allow tickets from multiple users to be viewed in a single list.

Q: How does workflow work in the new purchasing system? How many tiers of approval?
A: The approval engine that was already available in version 7.0 for incident and change can be used for purchasing as well. Approval cycles can include any number of approvers who can be notified concurrently or in a serial fashion.

Q: Can I view this webinar on my own is it recorded?
A: You should receive an email within a day or two with a link to the archive. If not, we post those links on the "Events" page of our website under the "About GWI" section. Or click on the link provided in the first Answer on this thread (above).

Q: Can a form built in Outlook be implemented in c.Support for a new hire process? If not, what's the best way to translate that form so that it can be accessible to the HR group to submit from the EUD?
A: Not exactly clear on what you're after hear. It isn't possible to transfer data from an outlook form into specific fields within a c.Support ticket. The information should be able to be processed in as an attached file though if it's brought in using the email processing feature.

Q: are you able to get the GWI purchase order feature to work with iSource?
A: This is not a included feature.

Q: Are we able to change field names in the incident creation screen? For example, we are using the Customer ID field to store Student ID information.
A: The standard fields can not be relabeled via configuration.

Q: Are we able to change what information from a ticket gets printed out?
A: The printing option for the incident ticket did get enhanced to allow for the selection of ticket fields and tabs for printing. In previous editions the print out included everything.

Q: Will we now have an option to choose the ticket numbering scheme (eg. 102308001) (mmddyynnn)
A: Not Available in v7.5 although this is high of our list of future enhancements.

Q: I already have the What's New document from my rep. When will the updated user and admin manuals be a available? Are we able to get a copy of the screens that will be changing so we can start to plan accordingly?
A: Please send an email to your account manager or to sales@gwi.com for follow up on this. Manuals usually aren't available until the product get releases.

Q: Are custom fields searchable?
A: Searching any record type based on any field requires a view that contains the field(s) you want to form your search around. For example, if you wanted to search incident tickets based on your custom fields you'd have to open the All Incidents - Incidents with Custom Fields by Date view. Searches passed to other views that do not display the custom field data would not consider the data in those fields.

Q: Any plans to allow screen captures to be stored within the problem incident rather than stored in external files linked to the incident?
A: We have received this as an enhancement request previously and hope to be able to offer it within a future release.

Thanks again to everyone that attended the webinar.
Eric & Darren

GWI Software Webinar - "c.Support 7.5 - New Features and Functionality Overview"

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:33:21 GMT

Hello,

GWI Software is pleased to announce the upcoming webinar; "c.Support 7.5 - New Features and Functionality Overview."

In this 30-minute webinar we will overview the new features and functionality that will be released in c.Support 7.5. The content of this webinar will only focus on the new features of c.Support 7.5 and will not cover pre-existing core functionality. A 60-minute webinar is also available that will overview the whole functionality of c.Support 7.5. View www.gwi.com/company/events for more information on that webinar.

Dates/Times for the new features overview webinar:
Tuesday, October 21st at 11:00am PDT - Register at... https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/478791026
Wednesday, October 22nd at 9:00am PDT - Register at... https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/921060394

Sincerely,
The GWI Software Team

GWI Software Webinar - c.Support 7.0 Service Desk Edition - First Steps to ITIL: Incidents, Problems, and Changes

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:53:37 GMT

Hello,

GWI Software is pleased to announce the upcoming webinar; "First Steps to ITIL: Incidents, Problems, and Changes."

In this 30-minute webinar we will discuss the role of Incident, Problem, and Change Management within ITIL, as well as the initial steps to roll out these important features in your help desk.

September 24th at 11:00am PDT - Register at... https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/271132984
September 25th at 9:00am PDT - Register at... https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/974328396

Sincerely,
The GWI Software Team

Combined Q&A Sessions from "Leveraging Hierarchy Templates in Your Incident/Change Management" Webinars - 8/20 & 8/21

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:23:49 GMT

Thank you all so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to attend our recent webinar! We hope you found it informative. If your company is interested in gaining a deeper understanding of this topic, GWI Software does offer two related training courses on the topic of Hierarchy Templates. Contact a GWI Software Account Manager for more information or to schedule a course time. (Sales@gwi.com)

Here are the combined Q&A sessions from the two webinars. Many great questions were submitted on both days so we figured everyone would benefit from seeing them all.

Q. when you add a subcategory when creating a template, you mentioned that for example sub1-a can be worked on before you can work on sub1. So task sub 1-a has to be completed before task sub 1 can be worked on?
A. Yes, a ticket that is dependent upon a sub ticket won't be created until the sub-ticket has been closed.

Q. When will custom fields be able to propagate down from the parent ticket?
A. Custom fields do propagate down on change requests and also on incident hierarchies that are created by support representatives. In the next release the custom fields will propagate on incident hierarchies that created via end user desktops as well.

Q. When using the Hierarchy Templates, if the parent work order (Employee Termination) has an attachment, will the subsequent tickets (Step 1 - 6) have the attachment also?
A. No, the attachments would have to be manually copied to the child records or the assignee's of the child records would have to use the link the parent record that displays in the related hierarchy section of their record to access the attachment on the parent record.

Q. The hierarchy templates are created by your company or we need to create them ourselves
A. You would need to define your own hierarchy templates. We do offer training and consulting if assistance is needed.

Q. Is there a way to schedule a task for a future date?
A. Scheduled incidents tickets can be created, but not within a hierarchy.

Q. If you create sub tickets under different sub tickets are the higher tickets relying on this sub tickets?
A. Yes, the ticket that is highlighted when the add or add existing link is selected the highlighted ticket becomes a parent ticket to the new one that is added and will become dependent to the new child ticket. The parent ticket will not be created until the sub ticket is closed.

Q. Does the dependency work the same as sub ticket?
A. Not clear on the question, but I hope the answer above helps.

Q. If we send notifications to the user that a ticket has been created, does the user only get one notification for the parent ticket only?
A. Notifications on each ticket or change request within a hierarchy on determined by the applicable SLA. The child tickets could be associated with custom SLAs that include or exclude the customer notifications.

Q. Can change management tickets be linked to incident tickets and vice versa?
A. Yes, Change requests and incident tickets can be associated (linked).

Q. How do you track projects? Is this through categories?
A. Please feel free to call or email us if you like to discuss this as it's not clear what regarding project tracking you are referring to from this question. If you just want to track the type of projects you are managing categories should work very well, but depending on your needs other features such as custom fields and status', change hierarchies, etc. may be beneficial as well.

Q. Due Date Interval Implies that the SLA is defined in calendar days. Does this interval override an existing SLA or is it to be used in place of an SLA? Advanced Tab > Due Date Interval
A. The due, implementation, and review dates are additional date fields with associated notifications. They will not affect the SLA time limits and notifications at all. The incident ticket only has SLA time limits and notifications where the change request has both SLA and due, implementation, and review dates and notifications.

Q. From a reporting standpoint, is the status of the H.Template reported (as blown SLA or made SLA) or do all of the subtasks get reported with respect to the SLA status of each individual task. This can mess up reporting.
A. If the child records have SLAs with time limits defined they will be included in the SLA reporting. If the child tickets are associated with SLAs that don't set time limits they will be excluded from the SLA reports. When defining custom reports the child tickets could be excluded from SLA reports even if their associated SLAs included time limits.

Q. Does load balancing consider both assigned incidents and change tickets?
A. No, the load balancing only considers the same ticket of work item that is being assigned. Good feature request that we'll submit to our development team.

Q. Can sub tasks be edited simultaneously? Different people work on different tasks that are some times independent of other tasks but part of the overall request?
A. Yes, as long as the tickets have been open.

Q. Can hierarchies be nested? If I have an existing hierarchy defined, can I make that a child of a new process?
A. Existing hierarchies can be copied and pasted into another hierarchy template by using the Add Existing and Insert Existing options, but once copied they would be new records so any edits that need to apply to both copies would have to be manually applied to all copies. It is also possible to use more that one hierarchy template when creating an incident or a change hierarchy. For example, a staff member could create an incident or change template and then select a hierarchy template to create the core tasks to a process. The tech could then use the new related incident or change link from one of the tickets within the hierarchy they just created and then select another hierarchy template to extend the hierarchy with the additional tasks.

Q. Can each template linked to a Company?
A. Not sure exactly what you're asking for here so please feel free to call or email if you'd like to discuss. Templates can't be associated with a particular customer and/or company, but if you wanted to create template that designed to structure a work flow for a specific customer/company and let your techs or an email rule chose the right template based upon the customer/company you could do that.

Thanks again to everyone that attended the webinar.
Eric & Darren

GWI Software Webinar - c.Support 7.0 Service Desk Edition - Leveraging Hierarchy Templates in Your Incident and Change Management

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:09:16 GMT

Hello,

GWI Software is pleased to announce the upcoming webinar; "Leveraging Hierarchy Templates in Your Incident and Change Management."

The use of effective hierarchy templates is fundamental to unleashing the power of your help desk software and delivering automation and efficiency to your service activities. This 30-minute webinar will show you how to define, create, and implement powerful hierarchy templates in your incident and change management activities.

August 20th at 11:00am PST - Register at... https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/132087377
August 21st at 9:00am PST - Register at... https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/919686239

Sincerely,
The GWI Software Team

c.Support 7.0 Service Desk Edition; Approvals Management Webinar - ARCHIVE

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:00:28 GMT

Here is the link to the archive of our recent "Approvals Management" webinar. The file is hosted through Citrix's GoToMeeting service and may require you to quickly fill out a few information fields. The event ran about 40 minutes long with the Q&A session included at the end.

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/863521738

For c.Support users who found this topic of interest, GWI Software also offers a training course that would deliver a deeper understanding of using approval management within "Service Level Agreements and Notifications." Information on that training can be found by visiting the training section of our corporate website, by contacting your GWI Account Manager, or by emailing Sales@gwi.com.

We hope you enjoy,
The GWI Software Team

Combined Q&A Sessions from "Using Approval Management with c.Support v7.0" Webinars - 7/23 & 7/24

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:48:22 GMT

Thank you all so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to attend our recent webinar! We hope you found it informative. If your company is interested in gaining a deeper understanding of this topic, GWI Software does offer a training course on it. Contact a GWI Software Account Manager for more information or to schedule a course time. (Sales@gwi.com)

Here are the combined Q&A sessions from the two webinars. Many great questions were submitted on both days so we figured everyone would benefit from seeing them all.

Q. You had shown various approval cycles. i.e Open Pending Approval. Where are those setup?
A. The status values that are in the pick lists on the approval cycle configuration page can be customized from the Incident and Change Management - Basics configuration pages.

Q. What type of notification or what does the end user see when a change is either declined or approved?
A. Email. There are several approval events that can be setup with automated notifications and the receipients lists for each events is similar to the SLA events with the addition of the Approvers.

Q. We are running 7.0.0.0 and we don't have these tabs. do we need to upgrade to 7.0.0.1?
A. The approval feature needs to be enabled on the global configuration page.

Q. So the approvers will need access to c.Support, correct?
A. Correct, an approvers needs access, but they do not have to be given support representative level access. An approver with End User Desktop (EUD) access can review and approve or decline an incident or change request record.

Q. We support several different companies - can we have different approvers for each company?
A. Approval cycles can be associated with companies allowing you to have the system automatically email the appropriate approvers for the company the customer submitting a ticket that requires approval is from.

Q. Is this webinar recorded?
A. A recording of this webinar will hopefully be available sometime next week.

Q. If I identify an approver defined as a Client only, and they only have access vie EUD, can they approve?
A. Yes.

Q. If the requester is from EUD, can they identify their Approver on the fly. For example, I am request a monitor, but my Manager needs to approve.
A. No, requesters can't choose the approver for their request. The approver would need to be associated with the requester (customer) ahead of time so the system would be able to check the requester's record to determine who their manager is.

Q. Can you set up a time limit on the approvals? Meaning if it doesn't get approval within 72 hours, then the incident is suspended or elevated?
A. A time limit on the approvals is not currently available. If the status selected for the record as it's awaiting approvals is an open status the SLA time limits would be active, but those limits are based on ticket closure rather than approvals/declines. We will submit this as a feature request.

Q. can we set up an approval cycle to go directly to the submitters direct manager?
A. Yes, Approval cycles can be associated with customers. If an approval cycle associated with the customer is called by a requests SLA the customers manager(s) will be setup as the approvers from the request.

Q. When will cSupport be linked up to the AD? This feature makes more work if you have many groups and managers in your organization.
A. Synchronizing AD groups and memberships is something we are trying to squeeze into the next release. It has been requested by several clients.

Q. Can we create an approval cycle that would not count against the origial SLA of a particular ticket category?
A. If you don't want the time the ticket/request spends awaiting approvals to count against your SLA time limits you'll just need to define a suspend status for the approval initiated status on the approval cycle definitions that you define.

Q. After an approval cycle is approved is there a way to automatically route this incident to another rep.
A. There isn't a way to reassign a ticket automatically once approval has been received. The ticket/request doesn't get assigned to the approvers when it is generated so the appropriate assignee that should handle the record once it gets approved should be setup as the default assignee. Once the ticket is approved an automated email message can be directed to the assignee so they know that their assignment has been approved.

Thanks again to everyone that attended the webinar.
Eric & Darren

GWI Software Webinar - c.Support 7.0 Service Desk Edition - Using Approvals Management to Create Efficiency, Savings, and Compliancy

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:37:16 GMT

Hello,

GWI Software is pleased to announce the upcoming webinar; "Using Approval Management to Create Efficiency, Savings, and Compliancy."

Attend this 30-minute webinar and learn how c.Support 7.0's approval functionality can enable your company to standardize common procedures and create a level of automation that will deliver greater time and money savings. Also, if your company faces regulatory standards like Sarbanes-Oxley, the approval function can provide the required historic trail.

July 23rd at 11:00am PST - Register at... https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/863521738
July 24th at 9:00am PST - Register at... https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/522364365

Sincerely,
The GWI Software Team

GWI Software Webinar - Configuring c.Support 7.0 to Address the Needs of Multiple Business Units

Anonymous — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:55:26 GMT

Sometimes a feature is rolled out in a new release of c.Support without much fanfare or awareness of its true power. Did you know that a single instance of c.Support 7.0 can be configured to support multiple business units while protecting the data shown to different groups within those units? Could other departments in your organization leverage the benefits of c.Support; all from the same instance you're working from now?

GWI Software is pleased to announce the upcoming webinar; "Configuring c.Support 7.0 to Address the Needs of Multiple Business Units."

Attend this 30-minute webinar and learn how to configure c.Support 7.0 to roll out the cost saving and productivity benefits of our application to other business units in your organization.

June 18th at 11:00am PST - Register at... https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/144032339
June 19th at 8:00am PST - Register at... https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/388057860

Sincerely,
The GWI Software Team

Announcing c.Support 7.0 Service Desk Edition webinars

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:00:40 GMT

Last week we announced the upcoming release of c.Support v7.0 with editions for both Incident Management and the Service Desk. At that time we also noted that during this week we would announce a series of webinars that customers could attend to get an overview of the new feature sets. GWI is happy to announce the following free webinars.

c.Support Service Desk; 4/24 9:00am PDT
c.Support Service Desk; 4/25 1:00pm PDT
c.Support Service Desk; 5/1 11:00am PDT

More dates and times may be announced depending on necessity. For more information please visit our website which will have information posted to it later today. GWI's webinar information page.

If you have any other questions, concerns, or feedback please use the appropriate contact method below.
Support Inquiry - support@gwi.com or 360.397.1099
Sales Inquiry - sales@gwi.com or 360.397.1098
Webinar Inquiry - marketing@gwi.com.

Because all GWI customers on active maintenance are being "grandfathered" into the Service Desk edition, we are not currently announcing a webinar series for the Incident Management edition. If you would like to see an overview demonstration on that edition, please contact GWI Sales or your Account Executive today.

We look forward to seeing you in the webinars. As always, thank you for your support of GWI Software and c.Support!

Sincerely,
The GWI Team

c.Support for Microsoft Windows Version 6.5.1 (upgrade) is Now Available!

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 15:59:49 GMT

GWI is pleased to announce the release of c.Support v6.5.1 (upgrade)!

Continuing the evolution of our already robust feature set, c.Support v6.5.1 adds significant enhancements to c.Support’s Asset Management capabilities as well as other new features like knowledge feedback and rankings, multiple Active Directory synchronization, a complete c.Support Desktop redesign, and much more.

c.Support v6.5.1 is commercially available now. Current GWI Software users with an active maintenance license may upgrade at no cost by contacting their sales or support representative. For pricing and further information, please call GWI Software at 1-888-494-7638 or e-mail sales@gwi.com.