With the baseline release of Cireson Portal for Service Manager V11.4.2 out and available for download, this Community Open Floor conversation centered on it, preferred Cireson product development cycles, your plans for upgrades and topics you want to see at the upcoming INNOVATE 2022 virtual conference.
v11.4.2 What to Expect
To better support customers planning upgrades, Cireson has evolved product development cycles to include two different lanes:
- Latest: a faster cadence that translates into the baseline lane, latest helps customers see new features in a way that lessens impact on change management cycles. Latest can be helpful in planning updates.
- Baseline: a production-ready slower cadence and longer view, helping customers with fixed change management windows or longer processes adopt a measured upgrade approach.
Some companies are happy to embrace “latest” to see new features quickly. Others rely on “baseline” versions in production environments. One thing that Cireson plans to address in this year’s roadmap: customization preservation, particularly relating to web configuration and certificates, so that they aren’t lost during an upgrade. The goal: less maintenance post-upgrade.
Note: some companies are managing coordination between Azure Application Proxy, the Cireson portal and Microsoft Teams. We do have some ideas on how to mitigate potential issues, so we’d be happy to chat about it.
Cireson Portal for Service Manager V11.4.2 contains fixes and performance enhancements, but there is a feature to look for: Microsoft Teams “activity management.”
Speaking of Microsoft Teams Integration…
Whether Microsoft Teams integration is in development or production stages, it is being explored as a way to improve the speed and quality of communication between analysts and end users. The expected result is greater focus and engagement in Teams.
We brainstormed new ideas for Microsoft Teams functionality, including “search and filtering” functionality to specifically target “work items” and “knowledge articles.” Goal: if you’re already communicating in Teams, wouldn’t it be satisfying for both parties to be able to pull up and send an article that will solve the issue? It sure might help resolution times.
INNOVATE 2022
INNOVATE 2022 planning is underway, and we talked though your impressions of potential topics. Microsoft Teams integration and artificial intelligence are generating excitement, particularly the ability to resolve an issue to satisfaction without human interaction.
We had an interesting discussion about the balance of efficiency via technology and human connection/interaction. The type of problem under review may dictate which is a better approach. The art of breaking down a problem to make that determination, though, may be a skill that requires frequent sharpening.
Other Key Takeaways
Despite the cool efficiency AI could bring, human understanding is vital to make it work. AI requires quality data, and data requires an understanding of what you’re collecting. The best way to automate a process is to understand, manually, how each piece or function works.
Hybrid work is consistently in the news, but what does that mean in your environments? There are security considerations to be sure, and different thoughts on how infrastructure is structured and what data remains on prep vs. in the cloud are sure to continue.
APIs promise a lot of possibilities, and it’s exciting to consider the potentials. The sky’s the limit when it comes to APIs, and we look forward to more conversation and brainstorming around what you can do using it.
We’ll be exploring different perspectives formal of this and more at INNOVATE, scheduled for May 25. Register now. We also cover Cireson Portal, v11.4.2, and SCSM hacks, along with your insights and questions in biweekly Community Open Floor sessions, and we’d love for you to join us. Register now!
