remedy local admin survival guide

7/28/2019 Remedy Local Admin Survival Guide

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STATEMENT OF WORK

REMEDY LOCAL ADMINISTRATORS

SURVIVAL GUIDE


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Remedy Local Administrators Survival Guide

Table of Contents

Section I: Understanding Remedy ITSM Configuration.............................3What is Remedy ITSM .......................................................................................................... 3

Service Desk..................................................................................................................... 3Configuration Management and the CMDB.......................................................................3Change Management........................................................................................................ 3Service Level Management...............................................................................................4Knowledge Management................................................................................................... 4

Configuration Data................................................................................................................4The Local Administration Console.........................................................................................5

Section II: Administering Remedy ITSM Configuration.............................6Interface and Environment Orientations...............................................................................6

Production environment.................................................................................................... 6Test Environment.............................................................................................................. 6Development Environment............................................................................................... 6Logging in to Remedy ITSM...............................................................................................7

Organizational Structure....................................................................................................... 7

Company........................................................................................................................... 7Understanding Organizations and Departments...............................................................7Understanding Support Organizations and Support Groups..............................................8Creating Organizations and Departments......................................................................... 8

Creating Support Organizations and Support Groups.......................................................9Operation Categories.......................................................................................................... 10

Adding new Operational Categories................................................................................10People................................................................................................................................. 11

Customer Data................................................................................................................ 11Support Provider Data.....................................................................................................11


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Section I: Understanding Remedy ITSM Configuration

What is Remedy ITSM

ITSM stands for Information Technology Service Management. This is a concept taken from ITIL or ITInfrastructure Library and is simply defined as a best practice for managing service. BMC has written a

suite of application in the Remedy family that provides a series of predefined ITIL functions or

processes. Here is a description of the applications in the suite:

Service Desk

Service Desk contains Incident Management and Problem Management. These two tools

look and behave similar but serve different functions.

Incident management is best defined as the process by which normal service operation

are restored as quickly as possible and to minimize the impact on business operations,

thus ensuring that the best possible levels of service quality and availability aremaintained.

Problem Management is best defined asthe effort to resolve the root cause of incidentsand thus to minimize the adverse impact of incidents and problems on business that arecaused by errors within the IT infrastructure.

Configuration Management and the CMDB

Configuration Management is a process that tracks all of the individual Configuration

Items (CI) in a system. This process is typically accomplished by merging data from aseries of discovery tools and existing data sources into a single data source called a

Configuration Management Database or CMDB.

Using a CMDB you can build data relations and dependencies between Services,

systems, hardware, network, people and other infrastructure components.

Change Management

The goal of Change Management is to ensure that standardized methods and procedures

are used for efficient handling of all changes to infrastructure, in order to minimize the

impact of change-related incidents and to improve day-to-day operations.


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Service Level Management

Service Level Management provides for continual identification, monitoring and reviewof the levels of IT services specified in the service level agreements (SLAs). Service

Level Management ensures that arrangements are in place with internal IT SupportProviders and external suppliersin the form of Operational Level Agreements (OLAs)

and Underpinning Contracts (UCs). The process involves assessing the impact of change

upon service quality and SLAs. The service level management process is in close relation

with the operational processes to control their activities. The central role of Service LevelManagement makes it the natural place formetrics to be established and monitored

against abenchmark.

Remedy Service Level Management is very tightly integrated with Incident, Problem,

and Change Management to help you define, manage, and report on Service LevelAgreements (agreements with the customer) and Operational Level Agreements (Internalservice goals).

Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management is a tool from BMC that integrates nicely with the ITSM suite.

It allows support providers to push solutions to the knowledgebase from Incident,

Problem, or Change Management. Sharing knowledge across campus will be a verypowerful tool.

Configuration Data

Configuration Data is a pivotal component in the design of Remedy Service desk and all Remedy

ITSM applications. Using administrative tools it is possible to create an isolated section ortenancy in the system for your organization. The Remedy support team has already done this

for you.

Each tenancy is referred to as a company. Each company contains support organizations andsupport groups. Each support group has members or support providers. As the functional lead

for your company you will be responsible for administering this data.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_level_agreementhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppliershttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppliershttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contractshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metricshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benchmarkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppliershttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contractshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metricshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benchmarkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_level_agreement


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Figure 1.1

The Local Administration

Console

The Local Administration Console isa custom application Cornell designed

to allow units throughout the

university to administer their ownconfiguration data. Your Remedy

account will be granted special

permissions to allow you to accessthis console.


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Section II: Administering Remedy ITSM Configuration

Interface and Environment Orientations

Production environment

The Remedy production environment is used only for servicing ITSM needs in a steady state. It

is not used to test changes and configurations. The production system processes hundreds ofthousands of Incidents and other critical data every year. It is used by hundreds of support

providers throughout the enterprise to track and share their work.

You and your support providers can access the production server using a web browser with this

URL:

http://www.remedy.cornell.edu/MidTier

Test Environment

The Remedy test environment is made accessible to all campus partners for testing purposes. It is

easily accessed like the production environment but does not have live or critical data. The test

environment is configured in hardware and software to be identical in most ways to theproduction environment.

Changes made to production configuration data are not automatically moved to test. If you wish

to have a current test environment it is necessary to make the changes in both places. Roughly

twice a year the support team will schedule a refresh of test to ensure it stays usably in syncwith production.

You and your support providers can access the test server using a web browser with this URL:

http://test.remedy.cornell.edu/MidTier

Development Environment

Only Remedy support staff uses the Remedy development environment. Its function is to allow

Remedy support staff to develop changes to the system. It is not currently available to the

community for use.
http://www.remedy.cornell.edu/MidTierhttp://test.remedy.cornell.edu/MidTierhttp://www.remedy.cornell.edu/MidTierhttp://test.remedy.cornell.edu/MidTier


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Figure 2.1

Logging in to Remedy ITSM

When you first login to the system you will be presented with your home page. This page

provides you with a series of links that take you to different components of the ITSM suite.

Though there are many components you can access from your home page this document will

only utilize two of the applications; Local Administration Console, and Incident Management

Console.

Organizational Structure

Company

The company field is a container that defines a new tenancy in the Remedy ITSM suite of

applications. There are many settings, filters, and configuration data that are company specific.

Within companies, we define two logical divisions (sets of containers) that are used for twodifferent purposes, Organizations and Support

Organizations. Within each of these are

Departments and Support Groups.

Understanding Organizations and

Departments

Remedy Organizations and departments are

data used to label customers. If you are

designing your data for a college, the typicalorganizations would be Administration and

Academics.

Within the organization Administration you

would find departments like Information

Technology, Human Resources, Facilities, and

other units with administrative functions.Within the Academic organization you

would find academic departments.


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Figure 2.2

You will use this data to label your customers people records (we will talk about this more later).

The better you design your Organization and Department data the more you will get out of the

tools down the road. For example its possible to see all incidents for network disruption for thedepartment of Chemistry if all of your faculty and staff in that department are correctly labeled.

For examples see figure 2.1

Understanding Support Organizations and Support Groups

Typically we hoist our department level

entities such as Information Technology

when creating Support Organizations (seefigure 2.2). This allows us to create an

unlimited number of support groups withinthat support organization.

Support Groups play a major role in the

definition of your company. Where theCompany field and Support Organization

fields are organizational containers,SupportGroups are the only place where Incidents

can be assigned. You cannot assign anincident to a Support Organization or

Company.

For examples see figure 2.2

Creating Organizations and Departments

Note: Remember to try to create your organizations

and support organizations in parallel!

To create a new organization or department:1. Open the Local Administration Console and to

the right of Organization click Create. A windowwill appear with the title Organization.

2. To create a new organization, type the name in

the second box labeled Organization.3. To create a new department, type the name in the third box labeled Department.

4. Take a moment to review the spelling and presentation of the values you have manually

Fi

ure 2.3


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entered. Once these values are applied to people records, making changes becomes difficult.

5. Click the Add button to create the Organization/Department you have entered.

6. If you wish to create more repeat these steps. If not click the Close button.

Creating Support Organizations and Support Groups

1. Open the Local Administration Console and to the right of Support Group click Create. A

window will appear with the title Support Group.

2. To create a new support organization, type the name in the second box labeled Support

Organization.3. To create a new support group, type the name in the third box labeled Support Group.

4. Finally select the most appropriate tier of support for this support group from the Support

Group Role drop down menu.5. Take a moment to review the spelling and presentation of the values you have manually

entered. Once these values are applied to people records, making changes becomes difficult.6. Click the Add button to create the Organization/Department you have entered.7. If you wish to create more repeat these steps. If not click the Close button

Fig

ure 2.4


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Fig

ure 2.5

Operation Categories

Operational categories are used to enrich your incident data to help build better reports and allow

for more detailed searches. Functionally, the OpCats appear as a three-tiered menu that ishierarchal driven with each menus contents depending on the menu before it.

Example:

Disruption/Outage

Computer Software

Operating systemSecurity

Communications

Computer HardwareComputer

Input Device

You and your organization define these values to help meet your reporting needs. If you dont

have reporting needs or you are just now developing them its best to take a wait and see

approach to creating OpCats.

Note: If you delete an OpCat it will no longer be available for reporting. If you have questions

about changing or deleting OpCat values please contact the Remedy Application Support

Manager for advice and guidance.

Adding new Operational Categories

1) From your home page open the LocalAdministration Console.

2) Click the create link found to the right of

the Operation Categories label. Awindow labeled Operation Catalog will

appear.

3) Tier 1, 2 or 3? Decide what tier OpCat

you are creating. If you are creating a tier3 OpCat you can select the appropriate

tier 1 and 2 values from the drop down

menus.4) Typically you would leave the status to enabled but you may want to change it to proposed

until you are ready to start using the new OpCat.

5) Add a brief description.6) Click the Add button.

7) If you wish to create more repeat these steps. If not click the Close button.


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Fig

ure 2.6

People

Customer Data

Managing people in Remedy is split into two major categories, support providers, and customers.

Most of the work of defining customers is accomplished in Remedy through a daily import from

Cornells directory servers. All new people with an entry in the directory are imported into theRemedy people table every night. The import is one time per record so any changes in the people

table will remain changed and will not be overwritten by the directory entry.

Customer data does not contain the company they are in. If you wish for your customers to

appear in your company then you will have to edit each people table record one at a time. For

this reason its not advised to take this approach to managing customers.

Support Provider Data

Adding a new employees access rights

Notes:

The employee record needs to be present in the LDAP directory before the Remedy

people table import occurs, the previous evening.

The process to add support providers to your support groups takes roughly five minutes

once you are familiar with it.

There are more advanced Tech Support Provider settings that are not covered in thissection. These instructions cover the common practices for setting up a standard TSP

account.

1) From the Incident Management Console click My Profile in the menu on the left.

2) Change the forms mode to search:

a. If using the fat client click the binoculars on the menu barb. If youre using the Midtier click the New Search button on the grey toolbar at

the top of the form.

3) Search for the employee using one of the followingmethods:

a. Complete the First and Last name fields or

use partials. Remember that Remedy is casesensitive and that the first letter of the first

and last name should be capitalized when

searchingb. On the Login/Access details tab you can search by NetID using the Login ID

field.

4) Edit the company and organization

a. On the General tab change the company to your company name.


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Figure 2.7

Figure 2.8

Figure 2.9

Figure 2.10

b. Select the Organization and Department the user should reside in if it pertains

to your configuration.

5) Add permissionsa. On the Login/Access Details tab Click the

Update Permission Groups button.

b. Add the following permissions:i. Foundation - Contact people User

ii. Incident Incident User floating

iii. Problem Problem User floatingiv. Task Task User

c. The results should match the screen shot in

figure 2.7.

6) Add company access

a. On the Login/Access Details tab Click the

Update Access Restrictions button.b. Add your company.

c. The results should be similar to the screenshot in figure 2.8.

d. If you see any other company in this box

remove it.

7) On the Login/Access Details tab set the License type to Floating. Leave the Full Text

License Type set to None.

8) Above the tabs change the Support Staff field value from no to Yes.

9) Add Support Groups

a. On the support groups tab click the Update Support Groups and Roles button.


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Fig

ure 2.11

Fig

ure 2.12

b. Select the Organization followed by the support group you wish to add. The

first group you add will become the support providers default group.c. Select the Relationship Role of Member.

d. Click add.

e. Repeat the process until all desired groups are added.f. When you are done adding groups click close button at the bottom of the

Update Support Groups and Roles window.

10) Save the people record

a. You have completed the user setup for a standard TSP account. Click the Savebutton on the grey toolbar at the top of the form before closing it or reverting

to search mode.

11) Additional Informationa. There are additional tools for adding users including a permissions table and a

check list found at the end of this section.

Removing an Employees access rights

1) From the Incident Management Console click My Profile in the menu on the left.2) Change the forms mode to search:

a. If using the fat client click the binoculars on the menu bar

b. If youre using the Midtier click the New Search button on the grey toolbar at the

top of the form.3) Search for the

a. Complete the First and Last name fields or usepartials. Remember that Remedy is case sensitiveand that the first letter of the first and last name

should be capitalized when searching

b. On the Login/Access details tab you can searchby NetID using the Login ID field.

4) Edit the Company and Organization fields

a. On the General tab change the company to Cornell University. You have to type


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Figure 2.13

this value. It cannot be selected from the menu. Make sure to clear Values from

the Department and Organization fields.

5) Remove Support Provider statusa. On the Login/Access Details tab copy the Login ID value (NetID).

b. Above the tabs locate

the Support Staff fieldand change this value to

NO. This will clear the Login ID field.

c. Paste or type the users NetID back into the Login ID field.d. Click the Save button on the grey toolbar at the top of the form before closing it

or reverting to search mode.

The End

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