Parature was a self-service customer support platform providing a self-service knowledge base to connect with customers across multiple channels, including email, the web, chat or social media. The company was acquired by Microsoft in January 2014 and reached EOL in 2017. Former users are encouraged to migrate to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
N/A
SysAid
Score 8.0 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
SysAid is presented as comprehensive ITSM platform with generative AI baked into every element of service management. With a fully conversational experience wrapped into the UI, SysAid aims to empower organizations to unleash their full potential for productivity.
N/A
Pricing
Microsoft Parature (Discontinued)
SysAid
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft Parature (Discontinued)
SysAid
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Required
Additional Details
—
SysAid Copilot is available as an add-on for any plan. It bakes generative AI into every aspect of service management.
The single element of Parature I've not seen in any other system of this kind is the Download Module. You can post files in the open, or protect them by any number of entitlement methods. The solution is also appealing to those who don't want to manage the back-end/IT needs as it is a hosted solution and has proven to be very reliable.
SysAid has been great in our management of handling tickets within our Helpdesk but has also allowed us to include other departments. Having work flows has helped us with onboarding and setting up approval process for phones and computers, along with auto prompting end user with additional required info for requests and incidents minimizing the back and forth communication for basic info.
Clean/Friendly UI. It was extremely easy to navigate around Parature's menus at a high level, and you could take advantage of the more robust features as you became more comfortable and familiar with how Parature operates!
Strong Knowledge Base. Writing KB articles or ticket summaries and making use of the search function within Parature allows for expedient recovery of past ticket information. Being able to search for a fix action, or at least a troubleshooting article that can guide you towards a resolution is extremely valuable.
Enhanced Notation Capability. Being able to send/post internal or external updates to a ticket is great! You can leave the wordy technical details for other employees while making sure to communicate the high-points and fix action to the end-user.
Email integration. End-users can interact with the ticketing system exclusively through email, and admins can message exclusively within a ticket. All communications are linked directly to user accounts including SysAid admin accounts.
Ticket management is very customizable. You can add categories, statuses, action and communication automation, ticket sorting, and much more.
knowledge base links directly to tickets, so repeat issues are easy to solve.
Reporting is barebones at best. If you need special reports, we had to go through Parature to have them built.
The use of frames on a website is very 1990s. It actually impacts usability of the product, especially when combined with how Parature handled sessions. An engineer could only work one ticket at a time which, honestly, isn't very realistic for a busy support team that is working on several issues at a time.
Support was often unresponsive when contacted for unplanned problems.
The knowledge base was not very friendly for clients and it provided no real encouragement for it to be used.
It took several clicks to do something as simple as edit and assign a ticket or to close a ticket.
There are still issues with how well the cloud version of SysAid performs. It can be slow at times. It can be offline every so often (very rarely).
There is a lot to learn with this solution so reaching out to their Support is crucial.
Cost. This is not the cheapest solution and cost is not an issue for us, but it might be for some companies. I think it is very reasonably priced and you get what you pay for.
Having personally used SysAid for the past 10 years or so, when it was still in its infancy, the trajectory of its improvement and the pricing, there is no doubt that it will be soon an overall market leader, because whilst there other services with options that SysAid doesn't have or haven't mastered, they come at [an] eye-watering price, and in my comparison, for up to 300% more.
It was bulky, cumbersome, and didn't allow us to handle the volume of cases we received on a daily basis. Many of our issues were highly technical in nature and we would often need to work on 2 or 3 at once. The poor design choices prevented this, which was unfortunate.
SysAid is easy to use and configure. There are some technical components to the configuration, but their implementation of the SysAid system allows for easy self-service. There was only one time that SysAid could not provide a solution to my direct need. We quickly found a workaround. The issue was integration with Microsoft Office 365 when it was first released. The connection between SysAid and Outlook was problematic. It was not long before SysAid had resolved the issue and provided that integration.
They recently had one very extended outage. It was a data center issue - but they were not diversified enough so in the end the system was down for almost 8 hours. There are also periods of time where for no reason the system simply doesn't respond. This small outages are usually short (just a few minutes), and have in fact been occurring less often, so it appears some corrective actions have been taken.
No, In my company it is integrated with the Control-M and when ever we receive any incident of the control M console, we receive a ticket at the same time on SysAid
I have had nothing but positive experiences working with the SysAid support team. There are multiple pathways to request and receive support, which are all connected with each other. I get an efficient and effective response most of the time and when there is not immediately a good answer, they create a support request to follow up for resolution.
My team was greatly assisted and trained well. Despite the time zone difference the trainer made every effort to be available during times that were suitable for us and the assistance and help offered was extremely appreciated by my team. A wonderful experience by the team.
In the initial stage we implement separate SysAid servers for head and branch offices. When we managed to link up our offices via point to point VPN, we manage to console them into one server. All the assets and devices on branch office were divert back to the server in head office
SysAid, compared to other helpdesk software, was reasonably cost-effective; they provided seamless integrations and were willing to redesign the software to meet our needs. One of their current features that is winning with my organization is the SysAid bot. This is a great idea, and we hope that in the future, we will be able to customize this to our organization's needs.
When we purchase it, the plans were different and mainly we acquired lifetime licenses. in the past year, we migrated to the cloud version. In both cases, the pricing structure was accurate, although they could provide some extra flexibility to pay for exactly what we need in the business.
Le doy esta calificación porque los módulos que contiene se pueden usar para casi cualquier departamento, tanto gestión de tickets como inventarios de equipos, hemos utilizado una versión gratuita en Ingeniería para gestionar sus tiempos en las tareas asignadas, es lo único que utilizan pero podrían usar fácilmente el módulo de inventario para su herramienta y el módulo de proyectos también
Professional services is just that professional, i have had the opportunity to use this service on several occasions, a technical issue comes up, i made an appointment for one hour and i am contacted at the required time, the representative that hold of my system and goes through the problem while i look on so its also a learning process
How easy it is to configure the app to our existing ITIL process. The ability to pick what services we would like to have as well as the ability to integrate using API as well as the marketplace.
Intuitive interface. Integration to Outlook. Easy reporting.
It has a very user-friendly interface and effective management capabilities.
