CA Service Management

Integrated solution for incident, request and problem and change management tickets

Simple but resourceful knowledge component

Effective survey feature for interface with end users

Integration to Service Catalog as well as a native self-service interface

Reporting is a challenge for all ticketing systems and we've had to use an external dashboard tool (and previously Crystal/Boxi) for this purpose.

Gui for end users is clunky, forcing to have to use a catalog tool for this purpose.

Notification engine is not very customizable, causing an over or under notification to customers and specifically IT users.

This application is very easy to use. It is the best when it comes to training since the application is easy to understand and employees are able to easily catch up on work process.

It is a great reporting tool because users can look up work they've done over a period of time.

The auto populate feature is very helpful since at the service desk users do have several tickets to create for a single requester.

The right-click feature is disabled in this application and users are unable to copy and paste with mouse or touchpad.

The application also freezes quite a bit and a user will have to quite often close and reopen browser to get it functioning properly.

Agility is the biggest strength of CA Service Desk Manager as it can be easily customized based on the process.

CA Process Automation along with CA service desk manger can be a lethal combination for automation of any process across the Board.

Easy to upgrade and Installation is very useful along with good documentation and support.

Mobile App cab be improved.

Constantly innovate based on the competition from other ITSM Vendors.

Reporting can be improved.

You can log in anywhere.

It is a good way to document all work that is being done by each tech.

It is a great way to see a staff member's history or if he may have a repeating problem.

When you are opening and closing too many tickets back to back, the system lags and save turns into accept which does not save anything, and basically all you have done on this ticket has been lost.

The database is very clean and easily to manipulate with regards to querying available data and needing to find the right table.

The UI interface allows for new form/template creation out of the box. In particular it is a very 'what you see is what you get' interface.

The API has been around for a considerable period of time that third party services already integrate with CA Service Desk Manager for automated ticket creation, etc.

The product requires major investment in customizations as the out-of-the-box experience is very limiting feature wise.

The product utilizes a proprietary language, this requires a specialist in CA products rather than a general programmer.

Vendor support is very limited in that the response times are exceedingly increasing to the point of waiting 24-hours for initial response.

A large community where, if help is needed, is usually very helpful and quick to respond.

Various sites with good information on various issues. If you have a problem, there's a good chance some else already had it and documented it.

Fairly easy installation of the product if recommendations are followed and prep-work is done.

Certain functions can be easily forgotten and easily overlooked and sometimes hard to find. The many different levels involved with security (Access Types, Roles, Data Partitions, Functional Access, etc.) can be confused with one another and results in doing changes in one of the levels that may not be the best choice. For example: Functional Access changes done within Roles can also be achieved by the Data Partitions.

Simple tasks, such as sending a notification for a certain action, is difficult and confusing to accomplish. You need to create conditions that you apply to Macros (that you create) which you then apply to Events (that you create). They do have a default list out-of-box but even they are named in such a way that you're not sure if the one you are looking at is the correct one for your need until you look at the condition/macro/event to be certail.

Properties (attached to Request/Incident/Problem Areas) provide very basic functionality to request additional information of the user. Would like to see more options available in this area as well as the ability to trigger actions based on End User answers to the properties.

Administration can quickly become confusing as researching areas allows clicking certain pieces of information that open window after window for each piece of info quickly resulting in several windows being open. Closing any of the windows prior to the last open one results in all the windows closing that were open from it.

CA Service Desk Manager is scalable, it can handle any sized organization. The product can be load balanced and clustered.

CA Service Desk Manager has a patching utility and support site where to download the patches. This is very useful as not all products have software patching available.

CA Service Desk Manager offers a PDA site and the newer versions offer a mobile app. This is great.

CA Service Desk Manager does not have a right click for copy and paste in version 12.6 on the major forms and fields, that is a major bummer.

CA Service Desk Manager is buggy, if bugs are not addressed immediately you could lose your customers faith in the product. Since CA Service Desk Manager tends to be buggy, you need a good admin to get them addressed.

CA Service Desk Manager's patches tend to break other functionality.

CA Service Desk Manager education does not address their proprietary code enough. This is for customizations.

CA Service Desk Manager is sensitive to it's environment and may require a full system reboot monthly.

Excellent workflow management

Resource task management

Knowledge management

Linking into other ITSM Tools for automatic event/alert generation could be a good feature to use. Not sure if this has been addressed in later versions of the product.

Effective integration into communication tools such as pagers, text messages would be a great plus. Again this may have been addressed in later versions.

Streamlines support

Unified, collaborative self-service and mobility

Broad CA Service Management solution

Would like to see functionality of seeing tickets in a map view for a specific location .Eg. In a Retail space, Would like to see tickets related to each store, when mouse is hovered over a particular store on a Map

Tracking - For large projects across multiple departments, we are able to keep track of progression in one central location

Accountability - If someone alters a document or information, everyone is able to review the original documentation

Communication - While it is great to add notes and comments, there should be better interaction with CA Service Desk and Outlook email

Conceptually ties EITM together well, although lacks tactical ease of that concept

Ticket categorization and routing

CMDB categorization

Knowledge alignment with incident/problem areas

GUI- slow, clunky

Integrations within the CA umbrella and with other vended solutions

Reporting/BI

The security partitions capabilities and multi tenant capabilities seems good, although we had minimal use for them.

CA Service Desk Manager is good for commissioning or decommissioning servers, as the change orders can be customized so that each step is applicable to that server build.

CA Service Desk Manager is great for any environment with a help desk, as the alerting of priority tickets in any one group's queue is well executed.

CA Service Desk Manager is good for making changes within your IT department as you can create change orders with a tiered approval system.

CA Service Desk Manager could improve on their application code, as your "scoreboard" grows in size either in the number of nodes you have or number of ticket / changes in those nodes, the slower it takes to log in. This can be a major issue when you support critical applications and have urgent priority tickets.