Clarity SM Reviews

We use this solution to improve user experience. With the new xFlow and Service Point features, we are able to bring users even further to our side. This is a huge gain when we look at a heterogeneous environment in terms of culture and variety of systems in operation. Demonstrating ease of use and interaction for end users along the same line of usability for support analysts was a key factor in the success of the deployment.

Visible integration between ITIL Processes makes service management easier by providing a broad view of the health of the organization's technology infrastructure, cost savings, and future investments.

Another relevant point is the ease of customizations and integrations that are inevitable in midsize and large companies.

XFlow (Temperature) and Service Point together provided an extremely user-friendly and collaborative experience to the point of making it easy for all users of the product, whether end-users or analysts.

In these resources, knowledge management gains strength and favors the dynamics of use and service, ensuring agility in operations.

The part of notification methods and satisfaction surveys remain almost unchanged. Perhaps greater attention to these two simple and native features could give the set a greater force. It is as if such modules have not evolved with the rest.

Diversifying notification methods with pop-ups or ready-made WhatsApp or Skype integration packages would be welcome.

Making the Satisfaction Survey more interactive would also be interesting.

This has the best possible stability.

The scalability is the best possible.

This solution has satisfactory service and support, even after the Broadcom acquisition.

We did use another solution previously but there was a need for evolution.

This initial setup of this solution was complex, considering external access for Mobile use.

The implementation was performed by the vendor and our internal staff, both with equivalent knowledge and expertise.

Our ROI is satisfactory.

My advice is to try to test the product a lot, including its procedural dependencies.

Advice from some end-users would be very interesting, as it would evaluate the ease of integrations and customizations.

We did not evaluate other options as we were already satisfied with the product and would incur a high cost.

Try to focus on Knowledge Management and CMDB. Use CA Productivity Accelerator to learn and automate CMDB integration as much as possible.

We use this solution for request and incident management, as well as configuration.

Initially, CA Service Desk Manager was used by two divisions within the organization. In the past two years was rolled out to two more divisions.

The most valuable features of this solution are reporting, configuration monitoring, and the Request and Incidents workflow.

The monitoring tool is in need of improvement.

• We have our AT side, which we use for our service desk. 
• We use it for our software development lifecycle. 
• We use it for our CIS Admin change, so any kind of changes that are happening. 
• We also have a CRM system that was built a hundred years ago. 
• It is used to manage our resorts, and our resort operations, and then also our call centers.

The database. The front-end is a little dated. They are working on it, but it is a little dated. So, the database and the power that is driven behind the database.

It has made us a lot more organized, and a lot more aware of what needs to happen. Just now, some of our teams are really adopting the managed change, such as using the product instead of emails back and forth. 

The UI needs to be upgraded.

It is pretty stable. I have had a few problems with stability, but I do not think it is actually the fault of the product as much as it was the vendor that installed it for us.

I can do whatever I want on it. I have it customized.

Technical support is sketchy at best. I have an open ticket right now that has been open for a few weeks. They are a challenge to work with. It took three weeks to get it escalated up to where it probably needed to be in the first place. I do not call support unless something is really broken and I don't know how to fix it.

I was involved in the upgrades. From the old database to the new database, I did that upgrade, and actually a fresh install, which was very straightforward. That was version 11 though. The newer versions have become a little bit more complicated to do a fresh install on, rather than doing an upgrade. They are a little bit easier to upgrade versus doing a fresh install.

A vendor team.

Give it a shot, but go through a partner.

It does what it is supposed to do. I can make it do more than it is supposed to do. I can customize it as I want. Most of the time the customizations will upgrade, but if they do not, I can reach out to people and find a different solution. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Whether or not they are going to help me.

• The remote connection part (Support Automation): CA Service Desk has a Support Automation feature which primarily does remote connection. This is an important customer support tool used in connecting to a user’s/customer’s device or machine to help them resolve whatever problems they have. The remote connection also has a chat functionality that you can also use.
• Robust knowledge search via its knowledge base: For knowledge search, CA Service Desk has a robust knowledge base tool where documentation, articles and notes around known incidents and problems are documented for users/administrators or analysts to use. They basically act as a self-service tool where users can go to, search for documents and resolve problems themselves instead of having to always call the IT people. This way the IT people have time to do other productive tasks.
• The simplicity of the tool

All business processes have been built around the service. SLAs are measured promptly and tickets are owned/resolved faster, thereby improving user/customer satisfaction.

The Reporting part (Reports Tab) needs to be more robust and made less complex. CA Service Desk makes use of a BusinessObjects XI tool for reports, which is owned by SAP. This is actually a third-party tool and a bit complex in terms of reliability on the network, mostly. If these reports were in-built, without having to integrate or connect to any third-party tool, then this would be better.

I have been using the product for seven years.

I encountered stability issues in rare cases but stability was good.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Good

Support from CA Technical Support has been brilliant, as far as your SLA is renewed promptly.

It was the same CA solution. The customer started with CA Service Desk 11.2 and they have upgraded to 12.6, 12.9 and 14.1.

I am part of a team that does pre-sales, support, deployments/implementations of CA solutions.

Pricing and licensing is usually a problem. CA solutions are very expensive; hence, only big organizations can afford them.

The customer looked at ManageEngine, HPE Service Manager and others.

CA Service Desk is built around the ITIL methodology and would help to improve all organizational processes starting from incidents/problems/request, knowledge management, CMDB, etc.

SDM provides out-of-the-box integration with other CA Service Management modules. For example, it integrated with CA CMDB, CA Business Intelligence (for reporting and dashboard), CA Service Catalog and CA Unified Self Service.

• We are better able to manage and keep track of SLAs with end users.
• Analysts work more efficiently based on the ticket priority.
• We can better manage IT assets and contract license through CMDB.
• Reporting and dashboard: it is easy to produce a report with drag and drop functions.

Customization and configuration of CA Unified Self-Service needs improvement. CA needs to provide similar tools like Web Screen Painter (a customization tool for Service Desk) for CA Unified Self Service.

I have used this for 10 years; since CA Service Desk r11.

We have not had stability issues.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I’ll give technical support an 8.

We didn’t have anything before this.

Initial setup is straightforward.

They offer a concurrent analyst license that covers all the CA Service Desk modules: Incident, Request, Change, Service Level Management, CMDB, and Reporting.

There is NO license for the end user. In my opinion, it is a good licensing structure because some of other service desk products in the market sell separate licenses for each module.

We did’t look at alternatives.

• The product aligns to the ITIL process.
• All modules are integrated: Incident, Request, Problem, Change Order, and CMDB.
• The Service Catalog makes it easy for the end user to log a ticket.
• It is role based: easily manage the analyst based on their role; e.g., level 1 analyst, level 2 analyst.
• Unified administrator task.

Ticket management and the knowledge base are the most valuable features of this solution.

Our managers are able to properly monitor their team activities with CA Service Desk. With knowledge base, the end users are able to fix simple issues.

It could improve in maintainability and customization of features with a better and simpler GUI.

I have used this solution for a year and a half.

There were no stability issues.

There were no scalability issues.

We were using an intranet website, initially. It was very rudimentary and we couldn’t customize it without relying on outsourcing. We switched over to CA Service Desk Manager.

Do not over-customize it, given the fact that it could directly impact the tool's stability and data reliability.

Provides effective management of service calls and work assignments. It includes good APIs to extend functionality.

In addition to IT, we also use this product on our business side to manage lobby flow for clients and workflow for our client service staff. The product has allowed us to efficiently manage workflow, measure performance, and analyze customer service measures.

The UI is old and passé. It needs to be intuitive, efficient, and allow users to tailor it to their way of working.

I have used CA Service Desk for fifteen years.

The product is very stable.

The product does scale effectively up to a point. Beyond that, it gets a little complicated to extend it.

I would give technical support a rating of 6/10.

We used Remedy and switched to CA Service Desk for cost and ease of implementation.

The basic setup is easy and straightforward. The product is tailored around ITIL. Business processes need to account for that in order to make the most use of the product.

We think CA pricing is straightforward. They do have a tendency to re-bundle (and sometime rebrand) products and you have to be on top of that. If you build a relationship, working through these things is much easier.

This was an easy choice fifteen years ago.

Look into the SaaS offering from CA and compare. While CA Service Desk has rich functionality and is stable, its skin is old and cumbersome.

The most valuable features of this product are security, scalability and the possibilities for customization.

We can’t compete with the price against small local vendors. Demanding customers are our market.

We have mainly made money by selling our consultant services around it.

Some the features that can be improved are:

• Usability: xFlow is a great step forward, but further steps are needed. Public bids in Finland often require HTML5 UI. xFlow fulfills that requirement.

• Public bids in Finland often do not permit browser plugins: Java or Adobe Flash Player. In such cases, we just have to offer other solutions since Visualizer requires Flash. Thus, there is a need to get rid of Flash.

• Internalization: Check out language plugin in ServiceNow. CA is quite far behind in this area.

I have used this solution since the year 2009.

Some bugs have been found during the years, but they have been resolved.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

It’s okay. We have had issues while getting fixes for a few older releases.

We had tried a local competing solution in the years 2014-2015. Their UI is much more suitable for sales presentations. However, they have too many issues with stability and their technical support is at a very poor level.

ITSM deployment projects are always quite difficult.

CA is competitive, i.e., if there are a lot of end users compared to number of analysts. However, that is not always the case.

We considered both global and local vendors.

A customer comment after our sales presentation (CA Service Desk Manager + CA Control Minder): "We have finally found a vendor who is serious about security."