Dimensions CM is Software Change and Configuration Management for Agile development, developed by Serena Software and now sold by OpenText.
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TeamSupport
Score8.4 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
TeamSupport is customer support software built for B2B software and technology companies. The solution offers ticket management, a customer and contact database, reporting and analytics, multi-channel support, built-in collaboration tools, and many native integrations.
Serena CM is well suited to highly controlled, audited, and process driven environments. It will allow strict segregation of duties, and change traceability. If implemented correctly it will help you quickly build trusts with your auditors. It is also well suited to environments that require constant branching and merging. Due to the complexity of the product and learning curve for your development and operations team it may be overkill in a small shop with loose rules
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
TeamSupport is a great ticketing/help desk platform for small companies. It gets the job done and allows for multiple teams to manage workloads. It is not best for bigger organizations as there are lots of lacking features (mobile app, integrations, robust Jira/Confluence like system). The support for TeamSupport is great too. They usually get in touch with customers quickly when the system is down and they resolve issues quickly as well.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Code Promotion: Dimensions CM allows supervisors to control changes to code, in that they delegate requests to developers, and act as a gatekeeper prior to promoting to the next environment. This functionality is configurable so you can set up a workflow that best fits the structure and requirements of your own company.
Code Repository for changes and versioning: Code can be checked out by item or by synchronizing folders. Code revisions can be compared against other revisions or work files. Item histories show which developers made which modifications, and which supervisor and operations personnel were involved in assigning the request and promoting the code to each environment. Additionally a pedigree will show a stream diagram which graphically displays branches and merges.
Deployment: Serena Change Management offers help automating deployment including integrations with SVN and Jenkins. Its newer versions also have a powerful graphical deployment automation tool (Serena Deployment Automation- SDA). It comes with a certain amount of licenses built-in. If you have a many nodes to deploy to there will be separate licensing costs for that.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
There were other customer support software companies that I looked into at first, however TeamSupport provided exceptional customer service themselves. I paid close attention to how they handled me as a customer to see if they were a company that would understand my desire to give exceptional customer service to my clients and if they had the tools to make the experience easy. Every interaction with them was very positive.
Since we needed TeamSupport's software embedded into our software application to give our users easy access to the support tools, the staff at TeamSupport needed to answer many questions and work with our developers to make this possible. They were always willing to take the extra step to ensure a smooth set up.
As we continue with TeamSupport, I am especially impressed with the sincerity of the CEO, Robert C. Johnson, and his commitment to us so that together we can deliver exceptional customer support.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
The only major negative that I have encountered with Serena CM product is that the very power and flexibility of the tool means there is a risk that you will make a mess of things. In other words it gives you plenty of rope to tangle yourself with. I recommend careful, well thought out deployments implementing the built in roles and workflows that can be turned on and configured, using a consistent methodology.
My experience with the Serena help desk support has not been impressive. Though reasonably polite and diligent, the technicians were well trained, and often gave bad advise and terrible scripts. On several occasions I had to rewrite scripts they have me; if I had run them as provided they would have caused even more difficulties than the problem I was trying to solve. I speak of the support in the past tense because I conditioned myself not to call them, it was usually just easier to solve nay problems my self. They do have a good account management team though, and for any major issues you can go thru them.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We would like to see a structure to the ticket numbering system. In a previous system we had a numbering system like this mmddyy-xxxxxx This was very easy to see when a ticket was created based on just it's number. Currently with TeamSupport they assign a random number to tickets that is not very informative without a created date field.
Reports are nice but lack some rollup capabilities that are needed. Any given report can only work against two data tables at max. This is a limitation that we had to create custom contact fields to get around. They store phone, address and base contact info in separate tables. This makes it impossible with a standard system to create a report of all tickets along with the ticket and contact information in one report. The previous system we were on, allowed you to tie as many related data tables together that was needed to create one high level report.
Need Ability to notify external users of ticket activity in regions. So what I mean is we have FAE's in the field that want to know what their customers are asking for their region. They don't want or need a TeamSupport account but want simple e-mails of activity. This has been a lost feature for us going to a new system. I have to create a manual report each week and forward to the people that want this kind of information.
Ticket Automation rules will only run against a ticket one time. I understand why they did this to prevent uncontrolled loops but it would be nice to be able to set a limit that was greater than one. This limitation often causes us to have to write multiple rules to handle certain ticket cases.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
We are very likely to renew. We have been using TeamSupport for years and have tested a few other ticketing software solutions. We utilize several project management solutions to date and are always looking for better more efficient ways. Team Support is great at working with us and allows us to report issues well.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
I think some things could be a little more user-friendly: specifically the dashboard. Although it's fantastic and makes life so much nicer, I'd like to have more control on it's customization. I'd like to be able to default what's collapsed and what's expanded...instead of everything expanding by default each time I load it. But the portal offers great tools and guides on workarounds.
TeamSupport's ease of use and the way it benefited our company overall. From cost improvements, ROI, and overall management of team members it gets high marks. We are better able to support our customer base by providing improved support in a more timely fashion. The End User view of IT Support overall has improved just through using this platform in our company.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Data import was the most difficult hurdle for us to get over. The mass import was handled through an Excel spreadsheet. TeamSupport doesn't use Microsoft Office products for the most part so they were relying on Google Docs which has limitations over Excel. Special characters and html in import cells can be a issue with importing. When creating a data export from your current system, special care needs to be taken so that the data is able to be processed into TeamSupport without issues.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Serena CM is superior to Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) in overall functionality, but does not have very good native integration with Microsoft. Therefore in a Microsoft centric shop with no audit needs ,TFS would be better. Otherwise I would choose Serena CM
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
TeamSupport is a much more modern, intuitive and user-friendly version of NetSuite with many additional bells and whistles. NetSuite has a business only facade with a rather clunky interface and system. TeamSupport compares favorably and meets business needs while being a much more advanced and modern solution.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
TS keeps adding new features without making sure the program is reliable as-is. The program is frequently offline which makes for significant frustration on my part
Serena has facilitated our annual completion of various audit and technology control certifications. These certifications make a huge difference to our company's reputation and bottom line.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
