SX v18

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RELEASE DETAILS

Product Name	DRYiCE SX™
Version Number	Release 18

Overview

This release includes new features and enhancements for improving user experience, configurability, and operational efficiency.

New Features and Enhancements

The key features of this release are native knowledge management (unique blend of crowdsourcing and traditional knowledge management), reconciliation engine, native reporting (SX Analytics), custom attributes and mail to ticket functionality.

The highlights include introduction of alternate groups in contextual search, improvements in approval, Global search on edit pages of various modules and watcher functionality.

The scope of this release extends to approval, change management, CMDB, Consumer Portal, foundation, HUB, Incident, Knowledge, Notification Engine, Problem, SLA, SPCM, TMS and Work Item Board.

All

S.NO	Features Added
1.	The introduction of global search capability on the Work Item Board will now allow the users with fulfillment, incident, problem, change user or manager roles to search for work item records on the basis of work item ID, Requestor email ID and Requestor employee ID on the Create/Edit Item pages. This will provide the flexibility to search for tickets based on a single criterion or a combination of criteria for granular search capability.
2.	The introduction of tags-based search capability on the UI for multilingual offerings will allow end users to search on the basis of their preferred language, thus enhancing their user experience.
3.	The addition of the 'Alternate Group' to supplement location and CI based Contextual group configuration will help in making the Assignment Rules more comprehensive. This will ensure that the tickets are not orphaned in the absence of CI or location as they will be assigned to the Alternate group where contextual assignment is not applicable.
4.	Restriction imposed while removing or adding attachment in terminal status of the ticket.
5.	Introduction of Custom Attributes which can be configured to capture additional information for different records such as incident, fulfillment, problem, change, configuration items and tasks. Audit logs are also enabled on these custom attributes.
6.	Functionality added to send SMS or ad hoc emails to multiple groups.
7.	Introduction of “On Call Scheduling” functionality where the schedule manager will be able to define the roster and scheduling details for the teams. This feature also allows the user to define out of office and shift swap options.

Analytics

S.NO	Features Added
1.	Introduction of native reporting within DRYiCE SX with option to apply filters on the reports. Users will now be able to access tabular reports for the following transaction modules: Incident Problem Change Service Requests Tasks CMDB
2.	Introduction of “Reporting manager” role who will be able to configure reports for various roles, users and groups.
3.	Introduction of foundation reports for groups, role memberships, location and user profiles.
4.	Introduction of SLA reporting.
5.	Introduction of Dashboards for various modules with key metrics such as incident ageing, and fulfillment ticket duration.

Approval

S.NO	Features Added
1.	With the Refer back button configured in the Approvals section of the change/edit form, approvers will not have to navigate to the My Approvals UI for the refer back action. Also, approval action buttons such as Approve, Refer Back and Reject will get highlighted while the approver is responding to the request which will help to draw their attention towards the actionable items.
2.	Configurable approval reminder frequency so that customers can configure approvals based on their processes and policies.
3.	Approval history to be captured under the Approvals section so that users can view the thread of approvals that were already completed on their requests.
4.	Introduction of ‘approver cannot be requester’ policy.
5.	Approval actions will now be configurable on the basis of company such that admin can define: the Auto-Reject and Refer-Back duration the action to be taken (e.g., automatically Reject or Refer-Back or no action after the duration)

Change Management

S.NO	Features Added
1.	The approval section of the change Work Item Board will provide the flexibility to add additional approvers by the logged in approver.
2.	Now change initiators will have to enter the company name, impacted CI and requester name while creating or editing change requests. This will ensure display of the support groups associated with these attributes, thereby ensuring change requests and tasks are assigned to relevant groups.
3.	Improvements in change plans: Increased character limit to 2000 for comprehensive description. Label for files updated to “File name” instead of file type. Plans are now viewable after draft status throughout the change lifecycle and download attachments included to view the attached plans. Plan type document shows the values that are not yet created. For already attached plans- these are shown in view mode only and date/ time stamps are displayed along with created by.
4.	Introduction of advanced risk assessment in change where multiple business and technical risks can be associated with the change. Score is calculated on the basis of probability, impact and confidence. Risk type, category, description and control measures can also be documented alongside each risk.
5.	Provision introduced to submit a latent change request in which backdated schedule is also allowed so that unauthorized change requests can be recorded for compliance.
6.	On cancellation of change, related tasks get auto-cancelled instead of change task assignee having to cancel all the tasks manually.
7.	Configurable lead time policy on the basis of customer company for forward scheduling of change.
8.	Assignment group is now non-mandatory while submitting the change request.

CMDB

S.NO	Features Added
1.	The CI classes ‘Application System’, ‘Cluster’, ‘Computer System’, ‘Disk’, ‘IP Address’ will now have the option to select ‘Others’ under category, resolution category, and resolution sub-category. This will help in reducing inaccuracies in categorizing CIs.
2.	CMDB class attributes are now non-editable and duplicate attributes are cleaned up.
3.	The introduction of the three-character search on the Service Asset and Configuration which will enable fulfillers to quickly find all the related CI and assets by just entering the first three letters of the company.
4.	A new input type column has been introduced for configuring attributes on CIs according to field types such as dropdown, textbox, datetime, multiselect. This will provide the flexibility to capture attributes correctly. For example, multi select fields can be used for capturing asset compliance based on multiple industry standards like ISO, PCI etc.
5.	The ability to add attachments to CI records will allow app admins, config admins and config managers to associate relevant documentations with CI.
6.	Ability to view, add and edit CI category and CI based resolution category from the Category Board.
7.	Audit log will now capture technical attribute change also to improve traceability of Configuration on CIs.
8.	Base class is no longer visible on CI as base class acts as a container to capture a template of attributes that are common across different classes. Hence, different classes are derived from the base class.
9.	Show external attribute section on CIs to enable information visibility in case of integration.
10.	Restrict adding/deleting attachment at end status to ensure the integrity of CI record.
11.	Approvals can now be configured on change on the basis of risk.
12.	Below improvements done on Asset/CI relationship section in Asset/CMDB Board: Related CIs renamed to Related work items which users can use to access CI records. Users can click on the icon to visualize CI relationships. If there are no relationships then this icon is not visible. CI search in Related work item now changed to typeahead for better searchability.
13.	Template code added to Service and Asset/CI Board for task template in fulfillment plan so that it can be referred to attach task SLA.
14.	Introduction of dependency visualizations for CMDB relationships with upstream and downstream CIs and related work items.
15.	Users will now be able to remove CI relationships in case they are no longer applicable. In addition, users will also be able to view related work items on CI records.

Consumer portal

S.NO	Features Added
1.	The length of service offering names on consumer pages has been restricted to prevent distortions in the UI and provide end users with a uniform experience.
2.	“Attach file” button is now hidden for requesters on my request page if the status of the ticket is Cancelled, Closed, Rejected, Fixed and Fulfilled. This is to ensure the data integrity of the records is in place and no updates are done on tickets on terminal statuses.
3.	Configurable questions are now visible on incident work item, standard change work item and incident work item Order now page.
4.	On the offering Details page and Order now page the SLA Details and Delivery Time are now removed to eliminate the ambiguity in reporting estimated time to resolve to the end user.
5.	Introduction of On Behalf of (OBO) functionality where, a support user who is part of a support company that is associated with a consumer company can raise the request on behalf of a consumer company requester after switching to OBO mode. The support user can also view the catalog of the selected consumer company user to submit the request on a service offering.
6.	The configuration of the Default User Preferences on the User creation page will now allow new users logging in for the first time to view the featured and most popular offerings instead of a blank home page. This will allow them to get a head start to explore the offerings, thus improving the user experience.
7.	Multi-select filter on my request page so that the user is able to apply multiple filters. Users also have an option to clear the filters for fields.

Foundation

S.NO	Features Added
1.	The search capability on Foundation has been enhanced with the introduction of additional email and username filters, making it easier to search for user records.
2.	The introduction of the Multilingual Support field on the company create/edit page with the options ‘Enabled’ and ‘Disabled’ will provide admins with the flexibility to control display of multilingual offerings as per their requirement.
3.	"Password" marked as "Non_Mandatory" in payload while uploading user data in Foundation
4.	The introduction of a company-based priority matrix table will provide customers the flexibility to configure the priority matrix consisting of various parameters such as urgency, impact. This will allow the API to fetch the information and calculate the correct priority based on the priority matrix set by the customer.
5.	Group names are now segregated on the basis of company so the duplicate group names can also be created on the instance but for distinct companies.
6.	Foundation UI to show in the navigation of the SX application instead of the user having to access a different application. Navigation now contains the links for different foundation table forms such as users, groups, companies etc. This has enhanced the UI consistency of foundation which is now similar with the rest of the SX application.

Hub

S.NO	Features Added
1.	The introduction of APIs to get the count of tickets for the criterions such as scenario, transaction start date, transaction end date, and status will provide the necessary visibility for faster debugging of issues.
2.	Outbound Attachment for PM Integration where attachment is also sent along with a problem ticket.
3.	User defined question/answer - incorporated in HUB database for e-bonded Change Request and incident.
4.	Now in case of incidents created via external systems such as Moogsoft, the payload of the outbound incident response generated by the HUB will also include the Item ID.
5.	Correct sequence of Status update in IM module, when multiple updates for the same ticket are picked up by the scheduler at the same point of time.

Incident Management

S.NO	Features Added
1.	The permission mapping for group re-assignations have been modified for service desk and incident fulfillers. This will allow service desk to pull incidents and reassign to any other group, but incident users will be able to re-assign the incidents to other groups only if they are assigned as per AMS.
2.	The permission mapping for incident (Priority upgrade/downgrade) has been modified so that users with both critical incident manager and service desk roles will be able to change the urgency as well as the impact of the ticket..
3.	The permission mapped to service desk users for incidents has been modified for enabling them to perform updates on incident tickets. However, they will not be able to accept or reject critical incidents which will be performed only by the critical incident manager role.
4.	The payload of incidents created through integrations will now contain the CI and the contextual AMS Rule ID for routing the work item to the support group associated in the CMDB for the respective CI. This will help in extending the contextual AMS capability to incidents created through integrations.
5.	The incident review functionality has been extended to non-critical incidents thus enabling incident users and incident managers to access and fill the incident reviews. This does not impact the existing critical incident review for critical incidents.
6.	The Email notification triggered to support users upon change in status of incident ticket from ‘On-Hold’ to ‘In Progress’ will now display the previous status for support users to know that it has transitioned from the ‘On Hold’ to ‘In Progress’ state. This will provide support users information on the previous ticket status thus allowing them to take an informed decision while fulfilling the ticket.
7.	The introduction of the Resolution Notes text box on the incident ticket will allow fulfillers to provide the details of the fix provided for the respective Incident. The same resolution notes will also be displayed in the Activity details section and sent via email to the requestor or assigned support group. This will help in documenting the exact solution provided for the incident for auditing purposes.
8.	The incident status is changed back to assigned from on hold, once the response is received from the customer on tickets that are pending for awaiting customer response. This will ensure that the actions on tickets are resumed quickly.
9.	Flexibility to create user defined questions on incident form to capture additional information.
10.	Response SLA is now not attached again on reopened incidents or incidents with priority change during the lifecycle of the incident.
11.	Field added on “incident” to capture the resolution time. This field will indicate the time from incident creation to the time it was fixed.
12.	Incidents created through e-bonding can now be created through ‘Generic CI’ if CI information does not exist in the source system or CMDB.
13.	Introduction of configurable sub-status for below status and additional sub-status added in drop down list: On Hold Fixed Cancelled
14.	Field to be added on incident to capture incident closure time to record the timestamp when the incident is closed or cancelled.

Knowledge Management

S.NO	Features Added
1.	Introduction of Native crowdsourced knowledge management capability for community assisted knowledge.

Notification Engine

S.NO	Features Added
1.	The introduction of multilingual fulfillment and consumer notifications in German language will help in notifying customers who have chosen German as their preferred language.
2.	My Request link is now provided on incident and SR email notifications so that users can access the appropriate record to find more information related to the ticket for which the notification is sent.
3.	Language attribute added to notification templates in list view so that notification manager can view and differentiate notifications for different languages (for multilingual capability).
4.	Notification admin will now be able to configure notifications for different languages based on the company. If the notification exists for a company and language, they would be able to edit the existing notification.
5.	Introduction of mail to ticket functionality so that users are able to create and update tickets through email and below enhancements introduced to refine the functionality further: Sender email address is shown in the incident. Comments in the activity log are updated with an email thread. Sender email ID is updated in the watcher list when tickets are created using a guest account. For error and exception activity log updated with proper details.
6.	Refresh option is now available on edit pages of the Work Item Board.

Problem Management

S.NO	Features Added
1.	A problem ticket with status ‘Under Investigation' will display the following two actions in the hamburger menu: Root cause Identified - clicking on this would change the status to ‘Root cause Identified’. Withdraw Investigation - clicking on this would change the status to ‘Closed’ with ‘Closure reason’ to be captured in Activity journal and respective notification as ‘Investigation. This will allow the problem manager to log the problem as a residual risk where investigation is withdrawn due to business reasons.
2.	Problem tickets with status ‘Root Cause Identified’ will now have a new ‘Corrective Action- Not Implemented’ action item in the hamburger item for changing the status of the ticket to ‘Closed’ and recording the reason for taking the action. This will help in providing an audit trail for the closure.
3.	Upon creating a problem from the Work Item Board or proposing a problem from incident/change and saving the ticket, the ticket status will be displayed as ‘Draft’. Only problem with display status as ‘Draft’ will be movable to ‘Under Review’ by clicking on the ‘Submit for Review’ option under the hamburger menu.
4.	Problem tickets with the 'Under Review' status will now display the following three actions under the hamburger menu. Qualify as Problem - clicking on this would change the status to ‘Under Investigation’ Disqualify as Problem - clicking on this would change the status to ‘Closed’ with ‘Closure reason’ to be captured in Activity journal and respective notification as ‘Disqualified’. Cancel - clicking on this would change the status to ‘Cancelled’ (after entering ‘cancellation comments’) This will benefit the problem manager to quickly change the status and account disqualified and cancelled problems.
5.	The role-based/field-status permission mapped to Service Desk Role (Problem/Change) have been modified so that the Service Desk User Role would only be able to perform the following operations: View WIB (Records of my company and associated companies) View Problem View Change Relate Work Item Post/View comment in Activity Journal All other operations would be made available only in 'View' mode.
6.	Problem managers can now mark a problem investigation team member as the PIT lead during problem investigation.
7.	Assignment group is now non-mandatory while submitting a problem ticket.
8.	New task types for corrective and preventive actions introduced in the problem module.

Reconciliation

S.NO	Features Added
1.	Introduction of native reconciliation capability to identify and match entities from different data sources and generate accurate dataset.
2.	Unification of Reconciliation UI with SX for consistent user experience.
3.	Enable hardware type attribute in Reconciliation.

SLA

S.NO	Features Added
1.	Once the SLA status has been changed to the active or inactive state it cannot be changed to the draft stage.
2.	The flexibility to specify the groups who will be notified in case of SLA escalations for fulfillment/ Incident/ Problem/ Change will help in communicating the breach to the groups responsible in a timely manner.
3.	The introduction of Business Criticality under SLA attributes will allow fulfillers to link it to the relevant CI while creating Incident/Problem/Change records from their respective Work Item Board. This will ensure that the correct SLA gets triggered based on business criticality.
4.	The introduction of related SLAs link on the work/holiday schedule page will allow fulfillers to quickly find the relevant SLA for unlinking it with the work/holiday schedule before removal. Earlier, it used to take time and effort to find the relevant SLA before deleting the work schedule.
5.	The introduction of three-character search on the AMS and SLA Board makes it possible to return all the associated companies without having to type in the name in full thus making search more intuitive for fulfillers.
6.	Support company introduced as attribute in SLA definition to be able to define support company specific SLA.
7.	Functionality to be able to define SLA pause conditions on the basis of hold reason to accurately capture SLA progress.
8.	SLA listing has been updated for service offerings such that when hide SLA is selected, the SLA section is not visible on the offering. Also, only the SLA specific to the offering are listed on the Service Board instead of Generic SLA.
9.	Add/Edit SLA on the Service Board opens the SLA details in the separate tab so that the user does not have to navigate again to service details.
10.	SLA manager will now be able to configure response SLA for fulfillment.

SPCM

S.NO	Features Added
1.	The header section of the edit button for 'Language Activation' under service details was blank. Table Header given for language activation edit column
2.	On the Service Board the offering name input length to be restricted to 120 characters on the UI (while creating new or editing old) offering for better UI alignment on catalog.
3.	The introduction of a dynamic datasource typeahead field on the provide information section for service request offerings will help in fetching the asset details such as asset type, asset model, location and asset class from the CMDB. Once the ticket is submitted, the asset information will also be displayed in the ticket.
4.	In the Service Board, the offerings will now be displayed in descending order of their creation and updated dates considered together. This will ensure that the newly created and copied offerings are shown before the ones that are modified.
5.	On successful copying. of an offering via the copy offering feature a message to confirm that the action has been performed successfully should appear. Currently when an offering has been copied, it simply redirects to the main offering edit page without any message, the user then closes the edit page to search for the copied offering to see if the operation was done successfully.
6.	Translation for display text is also visible in the information section for any offering which was not getting translated earlier for the user's preferred language.
7.	Attribute creation is not mandatory for translations in offerings where attributes do not exist for the base language. Earlier, this was mandatory which created ambiguity while creating offerings with language translations.
8.	The creation of core or optional components is now restricted for incident and standard change offerings as incident management and change management are core service management processes and driven by specific process policies.
9.	Functionality for catalog managers to be able to add templates in the form of attachments to capture supporting information/documentation related to the offerings. This template/document is downloadable for the users from the offer details page.
10.	Visibility of sections for incident work item type optimized so that only relevant information is visible on the incident form.
11.	Fields such as short description, display text, service disclaimer and approval disclaimer that require comprehensive information are now available on the form as rich text so that users can apply text formatting for better legibility.
12.	Date-Time and Calendar type fields now have an option to be restricted on the basis of date range.
13.	Urgency values are now visible on the incident form as per the prioritization policy defined for consumer companies.
14.	Default fulfillment group is now changed to typeahead and group names in the drop down are sorted so that the catalog manager can easily select the group.
15.	Catalog manager now has an option to copy translations also while copying the offering to save effort on creating translations again for copied offering.
16.	Translations are now mandatory only if the catalog manager creates any user defined questions on the offerings.
17.	Multi-select filters are now available for the catalog manager on the list view of the Service Board so they can easily search for service offerings. The filters applied by the catalog manager are saved so that once they edit any offering and go back to the list view, the filters are still applied.
18.	Catalog manager can configure the information from which user defined questions should be added in the incident summary using the “include in summary” flag.
19.	Information prompt will now be appropriately displayed with proper format if the details run into multiple lines.
20.	Introduction of “download attachment” that can be configured on offerings if they want end users to provide additional information on requests in the form templates.

Service Request

S.NO	Features Added
1.	Once the SR is on hold due to pending customer action, and the customer updates the notes, the SR status is now changed back to in progress. This will help the support team to quickly reinstate the fulfillment process.
2.	Fulfillers will now be able to reopen the requests on behalf of users so that fulfillment is done according to requester requirements.
3.	Introduction of configurable sub-status for below status and additional sub-status added in drop down list: On Hold Fixed Cancelled

TMS

S.NO	Features Added
1.	When the resolution code and method values are updated in the parent ticket, they will now be propagated from parent tickets to their children automatically. This will enable the fulfiller to take an informed action on the ticket based on the captured resolution notes from the parent ticket.
2.	Creation of sequential ad hoc tasks is now restricted in assigned status so that it does not impact the planning of fulfillment for the request.

Work Item Board

S.NO	Features Added
1.	While making any group changes in D2C forms, the reason for re-assigning the ticket to a different group needs to be mandatorily captured in the ‘Group Reassignment Reason’ field. This will help to trace back the reason for re-assignation while auditing.
2.	While putting any ticket on hold, 'hold type' is captured either in audit log or in activity journal. This will help support teams to identify the correct reason for putting the tickets on hold (like Awaiting Vendor action, Awaiting client response, part replacement etc.)
3.	The introduction of Global Search capability on the WIB page allows any user with Fulfillment/Incident/Problem/Change user/manager role(s) to search work items on Fulfillment/Incident/Problem/Change modules using Requestor’s Email Address OR Requestor’s Employee ID. This will help in locating the ticket quickly.
4.	The ability to remove attachments will allow fulfillers to remove documents that have been attached by mistake and need to be removed for compliance. This feature is not available for documents attached by other fulfillers.
5.	The multiselect filters on the WIB for Task/ Incident/ Fulfillment/ Problem/ Change will now have the following functionalities: Option to select all or unselect All options under the column filter The API call will be made to apply the selected filters only on click of 'OK' to prevent extra http requests. Filter would be closed on clicking the cross button. This will provide fulfillers the flexibility to search for tickets using any of the search parameters configured in the multi select filters.
6.	UX changes on work item create and edit page - Typeahead improvisation for information shown in drop downs of consumer- Requester/service name/Impacted CI
7.	Introduction of watcher functionality where users can add themselves or any other user as watcher so that they also receive timely updates on the tickets. This feature is available from both WIB edit mode and list view.
8.	The filters applied by the users are now retained on WIB so that if they close the ticket from edit mode, they navigate back to the records in the same order and filter.
9.	User contact card along with the information icon is now shown on the activity log also.
10.	Standardization of form breadcrumbs for effective navigation of different modules.
11.	Filters applied by the users are now retained on the Work Item Board on the list view of different modules such as tasks, incident, fulfillment, problem, and change.
12.	Components within list and edit view are now re-sizable for better visibility and user experience.
13.	Intermediary role introduced to view the records in read only mode for tasks, incidents, and fulfillment.

About SX

DRYiCE SX™ is an innovative cloud-native AI driven service management product that accelerates business transformation with a superior onboarding and fulfillment experience across all business functions.

Support

For product-related inquiries, please reach us at support.dryice.ai@hcl.com