We’re coming off of a year of exciting product, service and support developments at Cireson, which is setting the stage for greater focus and cohesion around customer experience in 2022. Here’s a snapshot of the enhancements and plans discussed during our Q4 2021 Customer Experience Update Webinar.
New Staff Discipline: Customer Experience Management
Cireson’s always been customer-focused, but we’re putting more muscle behind this mission with a new position focused on customer experience. Customer Experience Manager Steve Wright is dedicated to expanding your knowledge and helping you get greater value from Cireson offerings. He is accessible to customers globally and will connect you to answers, solutions and the right people. Watch for outreach regarding ongoing communication and opportunities for interaction via:
- Cireson Learning: free training courses for Microsoft Service Manager and Cireson Apps
- SCSM Master Class: a deeper dive into Service Manager, covering databases, customization, APIs, custom pages, etc.
- Cireson Community, specifically Community Open Floor group and meetups: opportunities to connect with the Cireson team and subject matter experts, get feedback and learn from peers, with support team-led conversations, demos and practical use cases
Steve will be part of project kickoff and completion, support and maintenance renewals and check-in calls.
Product Development: We Welcome Your Input
2021 Product Feature Recap
A multitude of new features and enhancements were added to the Cireson Portal for SCSM in 2021, including:
- Cloud Connector
- Asset management
- More data to report on from Analytics
- Global search
- Configuration Item creation
- Cache Builder management
- Advanced Request Offerings mapping
- Color coding for Calendar Widget
- Microsoft Teams integration, enabling surfacing Manual and Review Activities in chat
Prepare for 2022
As we look forward to 2022, we want you to be in the best possible shape. There are three major events happening next year, and you can prepare by taking these steps:
- Move to Microsoft Edge browser now. Microsoft has announced that Internet Explorer support will end on June 15, 2022. In line with this news, Cireson will focus Service Manager portal development on Microsoft Edge.
- Upgrade SCSM to 2016 and beyond. Microsoft Extended support for System Center 2012 & 2012 R2 (and in turn Service Manager 2012 & 2012 R2 stack) ends on July 12, 2022. We’d be happy to help with upgrades. If you’re currently using SCSM 2016 and above, you are supported.
- Stay tuned for System Center 2022. System Center 2022, the next release of Service Manager, is launching in the coming months. Cireson will bring you news, guidance and resources as they unfold.
Cireson Development for 2022: Plans for Roadmap
Persist your environment settings throughout upgrades
Soon you’ll be able to preserve all IIS configuration settings and spend less time fine-tuning in the portal after an upgrade, making it faster to upgrade and deploy new versions.
Analytics: High Performance and Data Availability
Early this year, we released analytics updates that brought class extensions and action logs in to work items. This gave you new and creative ways to report on all data, while granting you the opportunity to lower Service Manager data retention settings. This way you keep less data in the operational database, producing a leaner, faster Service Manager environment.
But we also know you may keep your data retention settings high, because:
- You want to search and find an Incident’s Resolution from a couple years ago
- You need to find some Comments on the Action Log of a Change Request from last year
- You have auditing requirements that force you to keep a lot of data so someone can review Closed Work
What’s true in all of these cases, however, is that once data is groomed out of Service Manager, you have to turn to reports or querying the Service Manager Dataware or Cireson Analytics.
This is why we are working on a way to view those very same groomed work items (with all of their relationships, file attachments, action logs, etc.) in the portal, without writing a single SQL query or report to retrieve them—and most importantly, without sacrificing Service Manager performance. Soon, you’ll be able to configure all time new lows for your data retention settings and return everything right in the portal.
On Deck for Q1 2022
Custom Grids: Stay tuned for more support of custom actions within custom grids in Q1 2022, including the ability to assign, add comments, acknowledge and work with parent-child relationships from grid views.
Global Search Exits Beta Status: we’re still not done, but your input and feedback from the Cireson Community has helped global search evolve for prime time.
Microsoft Power Platform integrations: we’re evaluating opportunities, including Microsoft Dataverse integrations that would bring work into the M365 cloud, enable reporting in the cloud and integration opportunities with PowerAutomate in your 365 tenant. We’re also interested in your thoughts on what your ideal PowerAutomate connector within Service Manager would look like. We want to hear your opinion, so get in touch with us!
Beyond Q1 2022
The watchlist notifications: the ability to trigger PowerShell activity outside the context of a work item, like a scheduled job.
Have any thoughts, comments or suggestions? Product Manager Adam Dzacky is all ears and wants to talk. You can message him in the Cireson Community or via email at adam.dzacky@cireson.com.
Professional Services: Lean on our Expertise to Support System Center Operations
It’s not just internal structure that’s shifting to better support customers, our buildable service offering is expanding, says Cireson’s Director of Professional Services Marcus Bauer. Now, in addition to the standard S&M program, you can choose between The Cireson Plus program and our newest offering, Managed Service Provider (MSP).
MSP adds operational assistance to everything you receive with Cireson Plus. It allows Cireson subject matter experts to operate your platform, perfect for companies that lack skill sets of dedicated talent.
In addition to Cireson Community engagement, practical workshops and discussion characteristic of Open Floor meetups, Global Service Delivery Manager and Senior Consultant Geoff Ross will be regularly sharing Tales from the Trenches, full of advice, insights and use cases.
Tales from the Trenches
Geoff has learned over time that with the right skills, time and patience, there’s nothing you can’t do with Service Manager and the Cireson Apps. “Anything is possible,” he says. “The only limits are your imagination.”
Given that, it’s not surprising Geoff most enjoys helping customers break beyond the limitations of out-of-box features and customize to meet unique requirements. Catch one such example in his demo of a custom request offering for a bespoke request process. Geoff created a more user-friendly experience, implementing custom relations in a no code manner using Cireson Add-Ins.
Launched earlier this year, Add-Ins are free pre-built custom relation packages that you can download, store in your portal and toggle on and off as you need. There are currently nine Add-Ins available for download, with more no code solutions on the way, including support for activity history, custom dashboard widgets and filtering.
Have any ideas or suggestions of Add-Ins you’d like to see? Jump over to the Community and let us know.
This recap touched on highlights of Cireson’s 2021 Q4 Quarterly Customer Experience Webinar. We will be holding regular quarterly webinars in 2022, so you’ll hear more about these developments. Until then, keep in touch with us in the Community and don’t hesitate to reach out directly anytime!
