STATEMENT OF WORK
REMEDY LOCAL ADMINISTRATORS
SURVIVAL GUIDE
Remedy Local Administrators Survival Guide
Table of Contents
Section I: Understanding Remedy ITSM Configuration ....................................................................... 3
What is Remedy ITSM............................................................................................................................................................................ 3
Service Desk...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Configuration Management and the CMDB ...................................................................................................................................... 3
Change Management ................................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Service Level Management........................................................................................................................................................................ 4
Knowledge Management ........................................................................................................................................................................... 4
Configuration Data .................................................................................................................................................................................. 4
The Local Administration Console ................................................................................................................................................... 5
Section II: Administering Remedy ITSM Configuration ....................................................................... 6
Interface and Environment Orientations ...................................................................................................................................... 6
Production environment ............................................................................................................................................................................ 6
Test Environment .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 6
Development Environment ....................................................................................................................................................................... 6
Logging in to Remedy ITSM ...................................................................................................................................................................... 7
Organizational Structure ...................................................................................................................................................................... 7
Company ............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 7
Understanding Organizations and Departments ........................................................................................................................... 7
Understanding Support Organizations and Support Groups .................................................................................................... 8
Creating Organizations and Departments ........................................................................................................................................ 8
Creating Support Organizations and Support Groups ................................................................................................................. 9
Operation Categories ........................................................................................................................................................................... 10
Adding new Operational Categories .................................................................................................................................................. 10
People ......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 11
Customer Data ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 11
Support Provider Data ............................................................................................................................................................................. 11
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 IT
Infrastructure 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 are
maintained.
Problem Management is best defined as the effort to resolve the root cause of incidents
and thus to minimize the adverse impact of incidents and problems on business that are
caused 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 a
series 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 review
of the levels of IT services specified in the service level agreements (SLAs). Service
Level Management ensures that arrangements are in place with internal IT Support
Providers and external suppliers in 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 Level
Management makes it the natural place for metrics to be established and monitored
against a benchmark.
Remedy Service Level Management is very tightly integrated with Incident, Problem,
and Change Management to help you define, manage, and report on Service Level
Agreements (agreements with the customer) and Operational Level Agreements (Internal
service 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 very
powerful 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 or
“tenancy “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 and
support groups. Each support group has members or “support providers”. As the functional lead
for your company you will be responsible for administering this data.
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The Local Administration
Console
The Local Administration Console is
a custom application Cornell
designed to allow units throughout
the university to administer their own
configuration data. Your Remedy
account will be granted special
permissions to allow you to access
this console.
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Figure 1.1
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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 of
thousands 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 the
production 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 sync
with 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.
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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 two
different 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 typical
organizations 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 2.1
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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 it’s possible to see all incidents for network disruption for the
department 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 (see
figure 2.2). This allows us to create an
unlimited number of support groups within
that support organization.
Support Groups play a major role in the
definition of your company. Where the
Company field and Support Organization
fields are organizational containers, Support
Groups are the only place where Incidents
can be assigned. You cannot assign an
incident to a Support Organization or
Company.
For examples see figure 2.2
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 window
will appear with the title “Organization”.
Figure 2.3
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.
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4. 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.
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.
Figure 2.4
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
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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 is
hierarchal driven with each menus contents depending on the menu before it.
Example:
Disruption/Outage
Computer Software
Operating system
Security
Communications
Computer Hardware
Computer
Input Device
You and your organization define these values to help meet your reporting needs. If you don’t
have reporting needs or you are just now developing them it’s 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 Local
Administration Console.
2) Click the create link found to the right of
the Operation Categories label. A
window labeled Operation Catalog will
appear.
3) Tier 1, 2 or 3? Decide what tier OpCat
you are creating. If you are creating a tier
Figure 2.5
3 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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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
Cornell’s directory servers. All new people with an entry in the directory are imported into the
Remedy 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 it’s not advised to take this approach to managing customers.
Support Provider Data
Adding a new employee’s 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 this
section. 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 bar
b. If you’re 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 following
methods:
a. Complete the First and Last name fields or
use partials. Remember that Remedy is case
sensitive and that the first letter of the first
and last name should be capitalized when
Figure 2.6
searching
b. 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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b. Select the Organization and Department the user should reside in if it pertains
to your configuration.
5) Add permissions
a. 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 – floating
iv. Task – Task User
c. The results should match the screen shot in
Figure 2.7
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 screen
shot in figure 2.8.
d. If you see any other company in this box
remove it.
Figure 2.8
7) On the Login/Access Details tab set the License type to Floating. Leave the Full Text
License Type set to None.
Figure 2.9
8) Above the tabs change the Support Staff field value from no to Yes.
Figure 2.10
9) Add Support Groups
a. On the support groups tab click the Update Support Groups and Roles button.
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Figure 2.11
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 Save
button on the grey toolbar at the top of the form before closing it or reverting
to search mode.
11) Additional Information
a. There are additional tools for adding users including a permissions table and a
check list found at the end of this section.
Removing an Employee’s 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 you’re 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 use
partials. Remember that Remedy is case
sensitive and that the first letter of the first and
last name should be capitalized when searching
b. On the Login/Access details tab you can search
Figure 2.12
by NetID using the Login ID field.
4) Edit the Company and Organization fields
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a. On the General tab change the company to Cornell University. You have to type
this value. It cannot be selected from the menu. Make sure to clear Values from
the Department and Organization fields.
5) Remove Support Provider status
a. On the Login/Access Details tab copy the Login ID value (NetID).
Figure 2.13
b. Above the tabs locate the Support Staff field and 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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