Kelly,
Years ago, i.e. before any ITSM applications had been developed, Project
Remedies developed Service Manager, a Remedy-based application for defining
work templates. We later expanded it to also handle approval templates. These
templates include parent / child/ grandchild functionality, as many levels as
you’d like, and predecessor / successor functionality, as many relationships as
you’d like. Service Manager also includes an ad hoc task capability, because
of the 80/20 rule.
The ad hoc task capability is very cool. With it, any Remedy task can be
changed to a parent, with children defined one at a time. I remember a funny
story. I had just learned about that the ad hoc task capability can change any
ticket to a parent and add children tickets when I received a call from one of
our users. He wanted to talk about something else, and when we were done, I
asked him if he knew about this capability. He said that he did and they use
it all the time. They trained their help desk (it wasn’t a “service desk” yet)
personnel on how to use it, and gave them the authority that when they saw an
opportunity to define a new process, to use the ad hoc task functionality to
define it. When they had the process defined the way they liked it, to bring
it to their manager for review. It would then be defined as a template to be
used again and again. He and I laughed that this was another example of the
user understanding more about the application than the vendor.
Defining the predecessor / successor sequence is pretty simple, and all within
the application.
If you’d like to see how it’s done, please give me a call at 310-230-1722 and
we can set up a web demo.
Stan
w. 310-230-1722
c. 310-428-5748.
From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList)
[mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Kelly Deaver
Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2017 9:04 AM
To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG
Subject: Please Vote my Idea up! - UDM Process Templates don't load sequence or
Change task phase
**
Hi Listers,,
Please have a look at my idea in communities and vote it up if you agree -
https://communities.bmc.com/ideas/14820
In the workbooks Change_Process_Setup.xlsx and Task_Process_Setup.xlsx there is
no way to import sequence relationships. I've implemented Task Management at
numerous companies and they always want to sequence the tasks, not build a
flow. Flow building is reserved for SRM. I know that in reality a flow is
built behind the scenes but that should be done by workflow not the tedious job
of do it your self.
The closest thing I have today for Parent to Task is the
TMS_LoadAssocationTemplate tab. It allows me to related the tasks to the parent
task group or change but the sequence for everything is 1 and then workflow
automatically sets it to the next higher sequence based on the order it was
loaded, not on the order you are used to in the App Admin Console where you can
specify multiple tasks with the same order (simultaneous activation) besides
specifying the order so things get done in the right order. If you are loading
hundreds of parent/child relationships that leaves you with a large manual job
to go fix the sequences.
BMC's recommendation is to utilize standard type and define the flow in the
flows tab of UDM. That is time prohibitive if you have hundreds of tasks and
leads to a support nightmare for editing and using if the customer has always
used sequence.
Phase is another issue. We utilize phase management in Change. This information
seems to be stored in in TMS:SummaryData. Plus there is a hidden value that
must be set in the Change Template. The load doesn't even begin to address the
phase in which the task should be associated. It appears the load could
possibly be altered to load to information to TMS:AssociationTemplate and
TMS:SummaryDataTemplate if there was workflow on the load form to pull in all
the appropriate GUIDs. This should be a small fix to implement that would
produce big results for those creating hundreds of parent child associations.
Kelly Deaver
ke...@kellydeaver.com <mailto:kelly.ctr.dea...@faa.gov> (Business mail)
kdea...@kellydeaver.com <mailto:kdea...@kellydeaver.com> (arslist mail)
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