DRYiCE Gold BluePrint on Cherwell R4

Release R4 of DRYiCE GBP on Cherwell platform focuses majorly on enhancing the capabilities of DRYiCE GBP in harmony with the underlying Cherwell platform. Apart from this, we have also introduced exciting new features such as a walk-up support widget for customers, a new capability called sentiment analysis on incident form, automatic notifications for expiring CIs and assets, and many new widgets and graphs for enhanced reporting capabilities.

Walk-Up Support

• A new ‘Walk-Up Support’ widget has been introduced in the  “Contact Us” section of the self service portal to provide status of tickets and support available at a location. When end users click on the widget a walk-up support page will become visible on their screen. Upon clicking on the ‘Select Location’  button on the page, end users will be redirected to a walk-up support location page with the following fields. A ‘Welcome’ text field to display location specific information to end users. A ‘Description’ field to provide details of the selected location. A ‘Support Hours’ field to specify active hours of a location for accessing walk-up support. A ‘Change Location’ button to enable end users to change location, if required. The page will also have the following two widgets:
  1. An ‘Up Next’ widget to list all new walk-up tickets at the location, sorted in the ascending order of ticket creation. The details of ticket will include ‘Walk-Up ID’ ‘Requester’, ‘Check-In Time’, ‘Created Date and Time’. 
  2. A ‘Serving’ widget to list all walk-up tickets with status as ‘In Progress’ for a selected location. The details of ticket will include ‘Walk-Up ID’, ‘Requester’, and ‘Owned By’.
  The ‘Check In’ button at the bottom of the page will be disabled if the walk-up ticket is submitted outside the operating hours of the selected location. End users will be allowed to submit the ticket for a different location by changing the location. The walk-up support section allows end users to select a walk-up support location based on the availability and type of service as specified in the ‘Support hours’ and ‘Description’ fields on the walk-up support location page.
• When a user clicks on the ‘Check-In’ button on a walk-up support page, a popup will be displayed on the screen with the ‘Name’ and ‘Reason to Visit’ fields. Upon filling in the details on the fields, users will be provided with a message informing them about their sequence and expected waiting time in the queue.
• After the submission of a walk-up ticket end users will be provided with the expected waiting time for the ticket calculated by multiplying the average processing time of a ticket with the count of tickets that are ahead of a requestor’s ticket in the queue. The expected waiting time will allow end users to estimate the probable time to resolve their ticket. 
• Upon clicking on the ‘Check-in’ button located at the bottom of a walk-up support page a mandatory field called ‘Reason for Visit’ will also become visible to end users. Upon clicking on the field, end users will be able to see a drop down field populated with a list of support capabilities available at the location. In order to submit a ticket, end users will have to select a support capability from the list based on their reason for visiting the support location.
• A new functionality has been introduced on the quick search bar to allow fulfiller users to view and search walk-up existing tickets using the ‘Ticket ID’. The mandatory ‘Reason for Visit’ field will allow the ticket to be categorised and evaluated based on the capabilities available at the location.
• A walk-up dashboard has been provided on the fulfiller portal to provide high level reporting on support cases, average wait times, assignments by location. The widgets configured on the walk-up dashboard are as follows: 

1. Open walk-up support cases – Count of all open walk-up tickets.
2. Closed walk-up support cases today – Count of all walk-up tickets closed on that date.
3. Available walk-up support cases –  List of all open cases  that are in new status  along with their details .  
4. Average wait-time (in minutes) – Average wait time for the user for the specified location for a specified time period.
5. Walk-up support cases closed in last 30 days – Count of all Walk-up tickets closed in the last 30 days.
6. Open Walk-up support cases by location - Location wise count of open walk-up tickets.
7. Total cases by Walk-up support location – Location wise count of total walk-up tickets.
8. Closed Walk-up cases by location – Location wise list of closed Walk-up tickets.

The dashboard allows fulfiller users to get a quick understanding on the operations at the walk-up location and report performance data to higher management.

Dashboard & Reports

• A new widget named ‘CIs Not Updated’ has been introduced on the CMDB dashboard to display count of CIs that meet the following conditions:
  CIs with status as ‘Deployed’ but last modified date and time before 30 days.
  Not even one change request  has been linked with the CI in last 30 days.
  Not even one change record has been linked to the CI for which CMDB update was required and the CMDB update was moved to completed status in last 30 days.

• A new 'SLA Breached Incidents' graph has been introduced on incident dashboard to depict incidents that have breached their service levels. It allows fulfillers to assess risks and take corrective actions quickly.

• A new 'CMDB Completeness' widget has been introduced on CMDB dashboard to display CI classes with their CI count and completeness percentage.The information on CIs with missing mandatory or recommended attributes will allow users to take corrective actions to improve CMDB health.

• The CMDB dashboard has been enhanced with the addition of following widgets:

1. ‘End of life in 30 days’ to show count of assets and CIs approaching end of life in 30 days.
2. ‘Reserved more than 30 days’ to show count of assets and CIs that are in Reserved’ status for more than 30 days.
3. ‘Warranty expiring in 30 days’ to show count of all assets and CIs whose warranty is expiring in the next 30 days.
4. ‘Open CMDB tasks’ to show count of CMDB tasks that are in the open state.
5. ‘Status life cycle’ to show count of CIs in each status, stacked with sub-status.
6. ‘CIs with open incidents’ to show count of CIs with open incidents.
7. ‘CIs with open problems’ to show count of CIs with open problems.

The dashboard will allow process managers to identify and act upon issues before they become serious risks to the organization’s operating environment.

• New widgets have been introduced in the ‘CMDB Correctness’ tab on CMDB dashboard to show count of CIs with status as ‘Deployed’:

1. ‘Orphan CIs’ widget to show count of CIs not linked to any other CI in system.
2. ‘Stale CIs’ widget to show count of CIs that have not been modified in last 60 days.
3. ‘Duplicate CIs’ widget to show CIs that have been duplicated due to common aliases.

This will establish the accuracy and timeliness of the data captured in the CMDB.      

Self Service Portal

• The ‘Approver Team’ and ‘Deadline’ fields for SR and change requests have been resized and moved to a separate column on the approval form.
• There is a separate section now, for delegating approvals on ‘My Profile’ page providing better user experience.
• The service and incident request forms on the self service portal have been redesigned to provide a common user interface.
• Now, changes made to a delegation record in customer profile from self-service portal, browser client or admin tool, will be updated to user profile ensuring that all future delegations are made according to the latest changes.
• Several changes have been made on the ‘User information’ form to allow users to find and edit information on the page with ease. These changes are as follows:  

1. The editable  banner on the top of the form that was used by the logged in end user to customize the profile page has been removed.
2. The user’s image will now be located on the right hand side of the form.
3. A ‘Set image’ button below the user’s image will allow them to select and upload an image to their profile.    
4. An ‘Edit’ button below user’s image will allow them to update the existing image.
5. User’s name will now be shown below their image

• The menu pages in the self service portal have been redesigned to improve search capability and user experience across the different pages of the self-service portal.   

1. The records in the widget will now be sorted in a descending order based on the ID.
2. The design and look of icons have been made consistent across ‘My Incident’, ‘My Request’, ‘My To Dos’ and ‘My Approvals’ page.
3. Consistent font size and style in ‘My Incident’, ‘My Request’, ‘My to do’ widgets.

• A new widget introduced on ‘My Approvals’ menu of the self service portal will allow change managers to approve all pending approvals without having to switch portals.

• The ‘Sentiment expression’ feature available in the out-of-the-box Cherwell platform has now been enabled on the description field in the incident form for fulfiller users. Now different types of emojis will appear next to the description field on the incident form in the fulfiller portal. Emojis will appear based on the sentiment of the requester while raising the incident on the form. The following types of emojis have been configured:

1. A happy emoji to denote a positive sentiment
2. A neutral emoji to denote a neutral sentiment
3. A sad emoji to denote a negative sentiment

​​​​​​​In order to represent requester’s sentiments correctly the content in the description field of an Incident will be mapped to the machine learning library in the out-of-the-box Cherwell platform to generate a numeric score. The score will be used to trigger an emoji as given below

1. If score is less than 0 a sad emoji will appear on the form
2. If score is equal to 0 a neutral emoji will appear on the form
3. if score is more than 0 a happy emoji will appear on the form

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​This will allow fulfillers to detect the emotional tone and accordingly respond to customer’s feedback.

CMDB

• A new related list tab has been introduced in the CMDB server class to capture the attributes and logs specific to the class. It shows the change logs, containing information on the changes made to the server classes along with the date and time of those changes and the name of the person who has made the changes.
• A new field named 'Warranty Expiration' has been introduced on the CI and asset class form to capture date and time of expiry of the warranty for the specified class and the owner of the class who will need to apply for renewal of the warranty. The warranty expiration field will be an editable date and time field, and it will be optional.
• Now two email notifications will be sent to users belonging to the asset management group, one prior to expiry of the warranty and one more on the day of expiry. today. This will allow the users to renew the warranty of the asset before it gets expired.
• A notification email will now be sent to a user of an asset on the completion of 30 days of the issuance of the asset creating an audit trail for issued assets.
• Now, an email notification will be sent to primary users of an asset or CI if its status changes to the following: Cancelled, Disposed to Vendor  Credit, Retire, Decommissioned, Instock inventory, Issued, Reserved, Receive, Created, Ordered

This will keep them updated on any change in the status of the asset or CI requiring their immediate attention.

• Now, an email notification will be sent to warehouse managers if the status of an asset or CI class changes to ‘Ordered’ or ‘Order Shipped’ keeping them upto date on any change in status.
• The following new classes and attributes have been created in CMDB: Syste, Telephony Equipment, Other CI. This will make the data in the CMDB more comprehensive.  
• The 'Type' field in the CMDB overview form has been made mandatory to ensure that the CIs or Assets are correctly categorized before their details are saved in the CMDB.
• The alias name for a CI class will become non editable on moving the class to deployed state ensuring consistency in the CMDB.
• Now, users will be able to search assets or CIs by typing their corresponding alias names in the quick search field.
• The data in the fields for ‘Manufacturer’, ‘Model category’ and ‘Model’ in the CMDB have been made interdependent. Now, the model category field will be populated based on the value selected in manufacturer field and model field will be populated on the basis of values selected in manufacturer and model category fields. This will ensure that the data is captured correctly in all the fields.
• ​​​​​​​Now, CI forms will have separate ‘Related list’ tabs for incidents, service requests and problems to list CIs or assets under each process. Related list tabs have been introduced on CI form to link CIs and assets to their related incident, service request, problem.
• Now an email notification will be triggered to primary users, asset management group, service and technical owners of an asset or CI, 30 days before expiry and on the expiry date of the asset or CI. The information on the approaching end of life date will allow the relevant stakeholders to renew the asset’s availability in time.     

Incident Management

• The incident dashboard has been enhanced with the introduction of ‘Performance Analysis’ tab to display performance related reports and graphs like ‘SLA breached Incident Tickets', ‘Open Incidents in Lifecycle’, ‘Open Incidents by Service’, ‘Open Incidents by Category’, and ‘Process Reports’ to display process reports and graphs like ‘Top 5 Incident’s CI’. These reports will allow incident managers to analyze the efficiency of incident resolution processes and take steps to make them better.

• A new graph called ‘Percentage of Reopen Tickets' has been introduced on the incident dashboard to display total count of incident tickets and reopened incident tickets segregated by their priority. Upon clicking on the graph, users will be directed to the list of total or reopened tickets according to the selection. This will allow incident managers to ascertain the efficiency of the incident resolution process and take steps for remediating high urgent, high impact incidents.

• The graphs in the incident module have been enhanced with different color schemes and pie chart format to enable quicker and intuitive dissemination of information:

1. ​​​​​​​‘Percentage Priority Change’ and ‘Percentage First Call Resolution’ (FCR) graphs are now available in the format of a pie chart.

2. Updated color code in ‘GBP Customer Satisfaction’ bar graph represents a customer with status as ‘Satisfied’ in blue color, ‘Very satisfied’ in green color, ‘Neutral’ in yellow, ‘Dissatisfied’ in red color and ‘Very dissatisfied’ in dark red color.
3. Updated color code to green for records where FCR achieved and red for records where FCR is not met.
   The improved visual representation of the data on the graph provides information in an easy to understand format.

• ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​A new ‘Percentage of Major Incident’ graph has been introduced on the major incident dashboard to display percentage wise distribution of major and minor incidents. This will highlight any increase or decrease in high impact, high urgency incidents that need urgent attention from fulfiller users.

• The ‘Percentage of Major Incidents’ graph has been enhanced with the addition of ‘Service’, ‘Category’, ‘Status’ fields and changing the graph format to a pie chart. These changes will allow process managers to summarize the information provided in the graph quickly.

• Now a manager of a team aligned to an incident ticket will be able to assign the ticket to any member in his team without having to take ownership of the ticket. This will improve the efficiency of the process leading to faster turnaround time.

• An email notification will now be triggered to the requester of an incident ticket on the successful submission of an incident survey that was triggered   30 days after the closure of the ticket The email will notify the requester that the survey has been successfully submitted. This will update the requester that their response to the survey has been recorded for further processing.

Service Request Management

• An approval widget has been introduced on the ‘Global IT’ dashboard to allow service managers to view all tickets that are pending for approval from a single console and take the appropriate action, if required.

Change Management

• A change initiator of a ‘Standard’, ‘Normal’ or ‘Emergency’ change will now be able to only edit the following fields: Short Description & Description, Implémentation Plan & Validation Plan, Test Plan & Backout Plan, Justification & Risk Impact Analysis. This will ensure that the change initiator does not change or edit a field that may lead to alteration in the original change workflow.

• A ‘Take Ownership’ link has been introduced for a 'Normal’ and 'Emergency’ change request on the change form to allow change managers to click on the link and take ownership of the change request. This capability will allow change managers to take ownership of a change record if the assigned change manager is not available

• A change summary form will now be generated after the closure of a change request with the following details: Change ID, Change Type, Status​​​​​​​, Service, Category,​​​​​​​Change Initiator, Primary CI, Reason for Change, Overall Risk, Description, ​​​​​​​Implementation start date, Implementation end date, Downtime start date, Downtime end date, Justification and Risk Impact Analysis, Implementation Plan, Backout Plan, Validation Plan, Test Plan. This will allow change managers to view all the details related to a change request at one place.

Problem Management

• The ‘Last Modified Details’ field has been removed from the status banner and moved to the ‘View Detailed d\Date/Time Info’ link on the change details form. This will make the task of finding the date and time of modification easier.

• Now, when problem managers click on the ‘Perform RCA’ button on a problem record, a prompt will become visible allowing them to choose ‘5W1H’ from the listed RCA techniques. Once it is selected, a form for ‘5W1H’ RCA technique will be displayed in the RCA related list tab. This will allow problem managers to identify the root cause of the problem in a structured manner.

• Now, notifications will be sent to problem managers and PIT members if status of an RCA changes to ‘Submitted’, ‘Accepted’, ‘Rejected’ or ‘Referred back’. This will allow problem managers and PIT members to respond quickly to any change in the status of a ticket improving the overall efficiency of the problem resolution process.

• The ‘RCA Review Date’ and ‘RCA Review Comments’ fields have been added on the RCA form to allow problem managers to record the date, time and technique used in an RCA review. The recorded data will help to track the efficiency of the chosen RCA technique.    

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