Release Notes 6.0

LiveTime 6.0

LiveTime 6.0 includes more than 100 new features, most notably the addition of nine certified ITIL 3 processes and a federated CMDB. Also new in this release is the out-of-the-box support for 12 asset management connectors, optimized search engine with support for Office 2007, Visio and Powerpoint and the ability to export Groups into Microsoft Project. A German translation is also included together with English, Chinese, Spanish, Polish and Romanian.

Service Updates

As part of LiveTime’s continual service improvement program and commitment to quality, monthly product updates are made available to all customers. These releases guarantee that LiveTime customers have access to the most reliable and secure production version of its service management tool. The updates are optional.

LiveTime’s service and support team will notify any organizations that are possibly affected by software bugs addressed in the latest release, and provide assistance with the upgrade process.

Important notes for Active Directory Users

Usernames are derived from the UPN in Active Directory rather than the legacy and now deprecated NT logon name. This has been necessary in order to support Windows Server 2008 and future versions of Active Directory as recommended by Microsoft.

If you are currently using the old ‘NT’ style logons we recommend you change the equivalent UPN to match or just login to LiveTime using the new UPN name, as the old style is no longer supported. Further details can be found in the troubleshooting section of the AD-LDAP Guide from LiveTime.

Upgrading to LiveTime 6

For existing users of LiveTime v4.x or 5.x, a database upgrade will be required. Please follow these steps:
1. Stop LiveTime
2. Backup the current database, LiveTime.war and application banners (to reload after upgrade)
3. Install the new WAR file for 6.0
4. Start LiveTime
5. At Database Configuration page, enter the database details
6. Click Test to ensure the database connection is correct
7. Click Advanced
8. Click Upgrade, followed by the next Upgrade button
9. Once the migration is complete click Save
10. When the upgrade is complete, the login page is displayed.

Oracle RDBMS Users Please Note. When upgrading an Oracle database, a restart of LiveTime is necessary after the database has been migrated and login page displayed.

After the upgrade the Administrator must:

• Re-index the system, by going to the Setup > Privileges > System tab and clicking the ‘Re-index’ button
• Re-upload application banners. Go to Setup > Customize tab.

New Features and Enhancements

ITIL version 3.0

Implemented various features required to facilitate ITIL v3 compliance for:
• Request Fulfilment Management (Required Licenses)
• Service Portfolio Management
• Service Catalog Management
• Knowledge Management

Updated various features required to facilitate ITIL v3 Compliance for:

• Incident Management
• Problem Management
• Change Management
• Service Level Management
• Service Asset & Configuration Management (Formerly Configuration Management)

Service Asset & Configuration Management

• Added support for LANrev to AMIE
• Added support for ZENworks configuration manager 10 to AMIE
• AMIE now allows multiple data sources to allow for federated CMS implementations
• AMIE staging area implemented allowing imported items to be selected for CMDB inclusion
• Service Catalog and Service Portfolio Management are handled through the CMDB interface
• New cost calculator for service implementations with forecast usage and service levels
• Key availability metrics for CI’s are now accessible from the CI costs tab (MTTR, MTBF)
• Item Types now define ‘supported service levels’ for items of that type
• Total number of users impacted by the request is shown on the request and the CI
• User and Data masks are now available for CI’s and Custom data fields via regular expressions

Other New Features

• All request types now support a subject line, or short description
• New language translations for German, Polish added to the default installation
• Microsoft Project Export of Grouped requests
• Search engine optimized and support added for Office 2007 file formats as well as Visio and Powerpoint
• Time editors for technician working hours and sla opening hours now support templates
• Relaxed the deletion requirements for knowledge base articles marked as solutions
• Remodelling of the customer portal to support new service catalog functionality
• Various changes to views and filters on the item list to support ITIL v3 changes
• Customers can now be configured to receive SMS rather than email
• Workflow states that have special meaning are annotated and still can’t be deleted
• All workflow states can now be renamed.
• Implemented permissions system for modifying the Configuration Management Database content
• Implemented permissions system for modifying the Knowledge Base content
• Implemented data validation engine (via regular expressions) for custom fields
• Planned outages can now optionally list the change requests scheduled for implementation
• Alerts can now be defined as ‘public’ and these can be accessed from the login page
• RSS Feeds for customer alerts are now published and accessible from the alert window
• Users can now specify the host name of the machine running LiveTime to override hostname resolution
• Web Services interface overhauled with respect to managing requests via the API
• Various usability improvements to the Incident queue with respect to edit permissions
• Request summary page now contains an icon to inform the user a solution has been applied
• Most email templates now support parameters similar to the table format in 5.5
• The customer portal once again supports full text searching of requests
• The identifier field is now used consistently throughout the application
• Request editor, under the customer tab, now has information mouse-overs containing notes

Notable Customer Requests (of about 150):

(CR 1006748 / I 1006747)
Provide the ability to manually specify the password for customers

(CR 1006455)
KPI Reports can now be generated with respect to a given SLA

(CR 1006399 / I-1006334)
Request print view can now optionally hide hidden notes (for distribution to customers)

(CR 1006384 / I-1006363)
Priority, Urgency and Impact labels can now be localized

(CR 1006367 / I-1006355 / I 1006356)
If ‘View Shared Requests’ is enabled for customers, then the Customer Requests list contains options to allow technicians to see the requests shared with that customer

(CR 1006349 / I-1006339)
Request Print View now indicates if there are attachments on the request

(CR 1006318 / I-1006312 & CR 1006317 / I 1006314)
CTI phone number lookups will now return a list of customers that match if more than one is found. If no matches are found it will check departmental phone numbers

(CR 1006307 / I-1006300)
A new request can be created directly from the customer requests listing to facilitate technicians checking for an existing request and not having to search for the customer a second time.

(CR 1006101 / I-1005390)
Users of a given CI can optionally be notified of CI state changes at the point they are changed.

(CR 1005713 / I-1005155)
Surveys can now optionally be sent on resolution of EVERY request, regardless of if that customer has received the given survey previously, by setting an option on the survey configuration

(CR 1005694 / I-1005114)
The subject line parsing of emails now can cope with spaces between the # and the request number

(CR 1005671)
SLA Reminders Warnings and Notifications can be defined in any sequence at the users discretion to a maximum value of 200% of SLA time, to allow continued notification of breached requests

(CR 1005656)
Alerts now support bulk deletion using checkboxes

(CR 1005634)
Active Directory integrations will no longer show the domain popup on the login screen IF there is only ONE domain defined in the active directory configuration

(CR 1005615)
Reduced search facilities available to partner users to prevent access to customer data not relevant to that partner

(CR 1005605)
When a solution is applied to a request containing attachments, the attachments will now be included in the solution email

(CR 1005600)
New ‘View Shared Requests’ option in admin console that limit request visibility to those shared at the org unit level rather than across all users of a given item

(CR 1005596)
When entering a note, users can now specify when the work they are describing was undertaken.

(CR 1005580)
Allow bulk deletion of items (using the bulk item editor)

(CR 1005578)
Technician correspondence can now be optionally CC’d or BCC’d via a global admin setting

(CR 1005565)
List views that belong to deleted users can now be modified / deleted by supervisors

(CR 1005550)
Manufacturers can now be maintained via a list similar to the vendors list

(CR 1005534)
Quickcalls can now be duplicated to minimise data entry requirements when creating multiple similar requests

(CR 1005517)
Requests can now be archived and will be hidden for all purposes other than reporting

(CR 1005514)
More survey audience type options have been added

About LiveTime Software

Headquartered in Newport Beach, California, LiveTime Software, Inc. is a vendor of Web 2.0, Open Standards based ITIL service management (ITSM), help desk and support software for medium to large enterprises such as Verizon, Wellpoint, Pricewaterhouse Coopers and the United States Department of Defense. Founded in 1999, LiveTime Software is a privately held firm with offices in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. For more information visit www.livetime.com