Custom Portal Customizations / Tasks - Let's see your favorites!

Jonathan_Boles

Hello Cireson Community, I'm a relatively new SCSM Admin and I'm very much still learning all of the capabilities that the SCSM/Cireson combo has to offer. I was so excited when Cireson released this community platform where I would be able to share my ides as well as learn what others have done within their own envrionments and organizations.

So here's my ask

Would love to see exciting examples of what the community has come up with in the way of customizations and tasks to make the product more helpful for both your analysts and end users. Would love to see screenshots of your favorite customizations in action and if you're willing to share the code/how-to that would be even better!

Adam_Dzyacky

In the way of items only possible by virtue of the Cireson enhancements:

• Billable Time Report - Posted here on the forums. Leveraging Cireson's Time Tracker App, build a SCSM Report that shows time worked per analyst per work item type.
• Google It - Also posted here on the forums. I couldn't resist not having a dedicated Google It button on the portal. Cireson's KA offers something crazily similiar, but I wanted a different UI flow. This is based entirely on their example with a few additions here n there.

Other customizations fall within the bounds of pure SCSM/SCO/SMA. Granted...the SMA option is only possible with Cireson's SMA Connector

• Quick Resolve - SCO runbook attached to an IR/SR template that resolves/completes the work item when it's submitted. This is great for items that take less than seconds to resolve and generally more time to enter into SCSM.
• Reporting Requests concept - I started leveraging SMA/SCO to store SCSM DW queries so I could let people request CSV extracts from the DW. This is really used for members outside of the immediate department using SCSM that want SCSM data to report on. Whichever the case it's a simple Request Offering of "Pick your date range, pick your report type" and then it just runs the SQL query against the DW. Then emails the affected user the CSV output
• Direct Reports based Request Offerings - 100% done for user...well manager and above...friendliness. Build Request Offerings that allow the required/optional selection of a direct report. It's based exclusively off of Shaun Laughton's MP found on his blog here
• Remote Manage App Console Task - This is just a crazily simple thing to do in the console. Library -> Tasks and just create a shortcut to the Remote Manage App. Just shortcut to the awesomeness. But as I type this I want to now build the portal customization for it too. Hrm.

Steve_Wright

Thanks @Adam_Dzyacky for pitching in here! Great feedback.

joivan_hedrick

I use a few that I consider to be must-haves in the Portal. 

• Add Support Group enum to MA: If you've extended your manual activity class to include support groups, then you can use this to easily add the support group on any MA form. 
• Additional search functionality, ranging from Hardware Asset Search to Software search to User Search . 
• Hide Activity fields, which makes activities look a lot cleaner and less confusing for most analysts. 
• Add Activity to SR, which allows an analyst to add an activity in the Portal to an SR. 
• I'm also a fan of quick easy tasks, like quickly resolving an IR, or using additional Type Projections without having to build them yourself. 
  

Jonathan_Boles

Thanks @Adam_Dzyacky and @Joivan_Hedrick for the awesome ideas!! If anyone else has different ideas or additional awesome customizations, would love to see them!

Adam_Dzyacky

To further @joivan_hedrick on Add Support Group to MA, you'll probably want to build a corresponding DW MP so that the setting (i.e. the support group) that gets defined on the templates makes it over to the DW. I only mention this because inevitably you'll probably want to write reports around manual activities.

Robert_Brentley

For me a lot of the customisation comes from adjusting the form *.js files to make the incident and other work item forms 'flow' better.

Most of the Cireson Portal pages you can access can be customised either from JavaScript in the custom.js file or from the individual form files for example the incident.js file.

So I tend to move sections around or expose data that is hidden to provide more at a glance information.

For example, I usually move the Time Worked to the General tab just above the action log, no need to go tab hopping when typically you add an action log and billable time in the same motion.

Also exposing the Resolution Category & Description fields in read-only on the resolution tab as they are not present out of the box on the default form.

Lastly another great form to modify is the RelatedUserInfo.js file, which contains the user information as we can expose more AD attributes from Active Directory into SCSM and then further expose them here, for example employeeID or VOIP phone ext numbers for contact details.