LiveTime » open standards

LiveTime HTML5 and the Future of IT Service Management (ITSM)

admin — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 07:05:13 +0000

LiveTime’s new ITSM SaaS platform to deliver new user experience based on Open Standards and HTML5.

Newport Beach, CA – April 26, 2010 - LiveTime Software, a leading provider of Web, SaaS and Cloud-enabled ITIL 3 Service Management (ITSM) and Help Desk software, today announced the LiveTime 7 platform will be based entirely on HTML5 and Open Standards.

Shipping Q4, LiveTime’s new ITSM platform will support all modern browsers from Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Internet Explorer 8 or above. All browsers that pass the industry standard Acid 3 test will be supported.

HTML5 brings a significant number of features to Web applications that were once only available in desktop applications. For example, HTML5 includes native support for drawing on the browser canvas itself, which allows users to design interactive workflows, draw charts natively on the page, to even support drag and drop based request and change management. This provides a unique user experience that encourages users to interact with the service desk and ultimately the service catalog within LiveTime.

Couple this unique user interactivity with the ability to deploy LiveTime on any server or cloud platform – such as Google Apps, Amazon EC2, etc, – and IT customers have the scalable ITIL Service Management platform they need for the future.

Available On Demand (SaaS) or On Premise (software, hardware, or virtual appliance), LiveTime is based on open standards that lower service delivery costs while improving customer satisfaction. Out of the box enterprise integration with Authentication, Asset and Inventory Management, and Event Management has enabled customers such as Lockheed Martin, Verizon, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, and Wellpoint to implement LiveTime within a matter of weeks, streamlining the typically lengthy on-boarding process.

LiveTime extends ITSM SaaS platform to Google App Engine and Amazon EC2 Cloud

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:00:09 +0000

LiveTime’s new ITSM SaaS platform extends cloud deployment options as well as distributed storage engines for managed service providers.

Newport Beach, CA – March 9, 2010 - LiveTime Software, a leading provider of Web based ITIL 3 Service Management (ITSM) and Help Desk software, today announced new SaaS based cloud deployment options, including Google App Engine, Amazon EC2 and Rackspace Cloud. This new level of cloud support will allow Managed Service Providers to extend their offerings to include the Enterprise Service Desk.

Further extending support for open standards LiveTime’s new platform extends its reach not only into new cloud platforms but also new storage engines. This includes support for all major databases as before as well as new distributed databases such as Google BigTable, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Apache HBase (Hadoop). This shift will allow Managed Service Providers to offer an Enterprise Service Desk, on their architecture of choice, along with other services being delivered to their customers.

Utilizing HTML5 standards, this new platform requires no browser plugins, no ActiveX components and no client downloads and supports every major browser from Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera through to Explorer 7 or later. This new architecture will also feature RESTful Web Services as the primary API for Web Service integrations.
LiveTime’s new ITSM SaaS platform will also support 11 core ITIL 3 processes out-of-the-box and includes a built-in search engine and Federated Configuration Management Database (CMDB).

Available On Demand (SaaS) or On Premise (software, hardware, or virtual appliance), LiveTime is based on open standards and lowers service delivery costs while improving customer satisfaction. Out of the box enterprise integration with Authentication, Asset and Inventory Management, and Event Management has enabled customers such as Lockheed Martin, Verizon, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, and Wellpoint to implement LiveTime within a matter of weeks, streamlining the typically lengthy on-boarding process.

LiveTime integrates Federated Configuration Management Database (CMDB) into ITIL Service Management software

admin — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:00:36 +0000

LiveTime’s Federated Configuration Management Database includes out-of-the-box integrations to 12 Asset Management systems including Novell ZENworks 10, Microsoft SCCM 2007, Loginventory 5 and LANrev 5.

Newport Beach, CA – October 26, 2009 - LiveTime Software, a leading provider of Web based ITIL Service Management and Help Desk software, today announced the addition of a Federated CMDB in LiveTime 6. LiveTime’s new Federated Configuration Management CMDB allows users to map distributed asset information from independent sources into a single Configuration Item (CI) to provide a more holistic view of the companies infrastructure. This information is important when managing Requests, Incidents, Problems and Changes within the business. Having up-to-date information leads to more efficient and rapid problem solving as well as more satisfied customers.

LiveTime’s Federated CMDB provides unparalleled ease of integration into any asset management system using LiveTime’s AMIE (Asset Management Integration Engine). Using XML descriptor files embedded within the LiveTime application, AMIE is able to connect to the foreign host and transfer any type of Asset Management data into LiveTime’s Configuration Management Database (CMDB). AMIE can also recognize schema changes on the foreign host, and dynamically adapt to these modifications in real time.

LiveTime includes 12 pre-integrated connectors out-of-the-box supporting Loginventory, LANDesk, Tivoli Discovery, Novell ZENworks Desktop, Asset and Configuration Management products, Spiceworks, Express Software Manager, LANrev, Microsoft SMS and SCCM 2007 as well as Centennial.

In addition, LiveTime’s Federated CMDB is fully certified under ITIL 3 guidelines via PinkVERIFY and provides a powerful staging area where you can manage individual snapshots from contributing data sources. Input validation can also be applied to both input masks and user masks with regular expressions, providing powerful control over the quality of incoming data.

The ability to federate datasources out-of-the-box is unequalled in the industry and further demonstrates LiveTime’s commitment to open standards and interoperability.

Portals

admin — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:32:53 +0000

Help Desk Email Automation Configuration Management FeaturesPortals

Customer Self Help

LiveTime allows your organization to provide the very best support service across all time zones. The customer portal ensures your clients have the ability to find answers when they need them, and keeps them fully updated about matters relating to their issues.

Management Access

LiveTime provides management access roles for those not involved in direct customer support, such as senior management, sales and marketing. Such high level access to the support infrastructure provides unique opportunities for managing customer satisfaction and driving increased customer loyalty.

Managers can view and edit all client details, and have read only access to all incidents raised by customers. This allows members of other teams to monitor the after-sales service provided, allowing them to follow-up on an individual or group basis, should a consistent problem become apparent.

Full access to the Knowledge Base allows all employees, no matter what their role, to centralized product and support information. Therefore, sales team members have the ability to assist with customer issues as part of their follow-up program, before they are raised with the Service Desk.

Forums provide an informal platform across an organization that can be used to discuss issues or plan future directions. For example, the support team, research and development team, business development and sales departments of a software company can use forums to discuss future product directions.

The Reports functionality allows managers to observe the customer usage patterns to gain a complete picture of each client. This information can be used for planning, when organizations are trying to avoid re-occurring issues.

Business Partners

LiveTime provides Business Partner access to ensure that your customers receive the most relevant and efficient support to keep them satisfied and confident in your after-sales service

Business Partner user access allows Partners to view all their clients and their related incidents in LiveTime.

Partner users can be included as a member of your support staff. This means, when escalation layers are configured in LiveTime, internal and external resources can be used. For example, internal support staff may provide level one support, but if the problem requires more specific product knowledge it can be escalated to the external business partner.

Service Level Agreement targets are maintained despite incidents being out-sourced as the highest level of support can be provided by the parent company. So should an incident escalate back to the internal support team because the SLA deadline has been breached, the parent company can follow-up with the business partner.

Throughout the lifecycle of an incident, LiveTime tracks the resources used to provide support, so organizations and business partners have a complete picture of how support requests are being managed.

Configuration

admin — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:59:36 +0000

Help Desk Email AutomationConfiguration ManagementFeatures Portals

LiveTime Help Desk uses a centralized Configuration Management System (CMS) to control infrastructure information. The CMS is the focal point of LiveTime’s integrated service and support processes including Incident Management, Service Level Management and Configuration Management.

LiveTime’s active CMS can be scheduled to automatically synchronize with third party asset discovery and management tools. This ensures service desk staff access the most up to date infrastructure information when working on support issues.

At its simplest level the CMS can be used to store corporate hardware and software asset details and the dependencies (relationships). This can be refined within LiveTime using the item-type templates. These allow users to define custom attributes or specific information that is to be recorded against a configuration item.

Snapshots and Rollbacks

The CMS allows Configuration Item (CI) baselines to be set by Users. This means a snapshot of a CI is frozen at a point in time, so if any future changes made to a CI are not successful, the CI can be easily reverted to its previous state.

LiveTime’s CMS implementation also enables users to define CI lifecycles (stages). It defines lifecycles and attributes to record and report on previous, current and planned states of a CI. This allows items to be moved, tracked and checked for things like cost, time, authorization and completion.

ITIL Compatible

LiveTime’s CMS is ITIL compatible and meets all the objectives of ITIL’s configuration management process for identifying and recording infrastructure information.

Service Catalogs

Once you’ve synchronized your asset management register(s) with LiveTime Help Desk, the next step is to define the service catalog using LiveTime’s advanced item configuration, relationship and lifecycle editors.

The service catalog defines the relationships between items managed by LiveTime. LiveTime Help Desk is deployed with default relationships that can be edited to suit your environment. Build item relationships using either a top-down or bottom-up approach.

Service Oriented: a top down relationship view, that starts with the service and breaks it down it components.
Component Oriented: a bottom up relationship view, that builds up to the service with individual components.

When the relationship orientation has been defined then CI relationships can be set using any of the following types:

Hierarchical – defines ownership, such as Parent/Child relationship. For example, an application is installed on an Operating System.
Connection – defines an association, such as something accesses something. For example, an application draws from a database installed on another machine.

The service catalog, through its use of the CMS lifecycle and relationship management ensures organizations look at the big picture when is comes to measuring the impact of IT service and support.

Service Level Management

admin — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:24:42 +0000

Complete Life Cycle Monitoring

“Service Level Management’s goal is to maintain and improve IT service quality. This occurs through a constant cycle of agreeing, monitoring and reporting IT service achievements.”

The out-of-the-box capabilities of LiveTime Service Manager allow organizations to effectively catalog and manage their service-level obligations. In particular, organizations can use LiveTime’s Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in conjunction with Operational Level Agreements (OLAs) and Underpinning Contracts (UCs) to define, manage and track service delivery levels.

LiveTime also provides SLA-compliance reporting, allowing Managers to define and track availability and performance objectives that reflect business objectives. SLAs are used across all ITIL processes and are assigned when service requests are created.

Service Level Agreements

SLAs are incorporated in the support process when a new Workflow is created. An SLA is assigned to a Workflow and specifies the expected resolution time for a service request.

Operational Level Agreements

An OLA is an internally negotiated document that identifies the service level expectations between the Service Desk and the Technical Support teams. To ensure a SLA resolution time is met, the sum of the resolution times for each of the OLAs or Underpinning Contracts assigned to a workflow lifecycle, must be less than or equal to the SLA resolution time.

Underpinning Contracts

Underpinning Contracts are used to manage support services provided to the Service Desk by external service providers. These Contracts ensure the external parties maintain their obligations to the Service Desk, which allows the Service Desk to meet the SLA expectations of its Customers.

When a service request moves into a State that is governed by an Underpinning Contract, for internal contract control the service request is assigned to a Service Level Manager. This allows the Manager to maintain control of the service request, and to easily follow-up with the external service provider, if required.

Fully Integrated SLM and Workflow

To successfully meet SLA expectations, LiveTime allows the Service Desk to associate each workflow state of a service request, with an OLA or UC. LiveTime validates that SLA times need to be greater than or equal to the sum of Underpinning Contract and Operation Level Agreement times.

CMDB Configuration Management

admin — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:22:30 +0000

Infrastructure Modeling

“Configuration Management provides a logical model of the infrastructure or a service by identifying, controlling, maintaining and verifying the Configuration Items in existence.”

LiveTime Service Manager has a centralized Configuration Management Database (CMDB) to manage and control infrastructure information. At the simplest level the CMDB can be used to store hardware, software and document asset details. At its most complex, the CMDB can be configured as an enterprise-wide IT business service catalog defining business services and the supporting infrastructure.

Powerful Templates

The CMDB includes configuration item (CI) Type templates that can be customized to include user-defined attributes.

The CI lifecycle editor allows the transitional states of different CIs to be pre-configured, which determines the states of change for each CI. CI baselines can be set so it can be returned to a previous state, if required.

Federated CMDB

LiveTime’s federated CMDB can be scheduled to automatically synchronize with multiple third party asset discovery and management tools simultaneously. This allows organizations to build a complete picture of their infrastructure in line with the support organization’s requirements, as item information can be sourced from different repositories and stored within LiveTime.

Providing such access to the most up-to-date infrastructure information only enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of service desk staff when working on support issues.

The LiveTime Asset Management Integration Engine (AMIE) enables enterprises to quickly and easily synchronize with third party asset management systems. Using XML descriptor files embedded within the LiveTime application, AMIE is able to connect to the foreign host and transfer any type of Asset Management data into LiveTime’s Configuration Management Database (CMDB).

AMIE can also recognize schema changes on the foreign host, and dynamically adapt to these modifications in real time. The system comes pre-configured with adaptors for all the major asset management vendors such as Novell ZENworks, Microsoft SMS, LANDesk, LogInventory and many others (see integrations page for a complete list). Other adapters can be added as required using simple XML descriptor files. You can also edit the existing implementations and control the information that is imported into LiveTime when needed.

Staging and Snapshots

LiveTime provides a powerful staging area where you can manage individual snapshots from contributing data sources. Multiple sources can be merged into a single Configuration Item (CI) and attributes independently mapped to provide a holistic view of your infrastructure.

The ability to view the attributes and values of every CI, contributing data sources and relationships provides service desk technicians with unparalleled diagnostic information to solve requests, problems or make changes.

The ability to federate datasources out-of-the-box with no consulting is unequalled in the industry and further demonstrates LiveTime’s commitment to open standards and interoperability.

LiveTime earns ITIL 3 certification for 9 processes with PinkVERIFY

admin — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:00:19 +0000

LiveTime demonstrates proficiency in ITIL 3 and seamless integration of nine processes with LiveTime Service Manager 6.

Newport Beach, CA – September 9, 2009 - LiveTime Software, a leading provider of ITIL based Web 2.0 Service Management and Help Desk Software, today announced it has achieved PinkVERIFY certification of 9 ITIL V3 Processes. This critical milestone demonstrates LiveTime’s commitment to open standards and best practices to help businesses deliver more effective, efficient, and auditable customer service and support.

Out of the box enterprise integration with Authentication, Asset and Inventory Management, and Event Management has enabled customers such as Lockheed Martin, Verizon, Pricewaterhouse Coopers and Wellpoint to implement LiveTime within a matter of weeks! Available On Demand (SaaS) or On Premise (software, hardware or virtual appliance), LiveTime is based on open standards and supports any operating system, any browser, and any database.

“This certification allows both new and existing LiveTime customers to gain all the benefits of an updated ITIL compatible process implementation,” said Jason Andrews, VP of Application Engineering, LiveTime Software. “Greater efficiency, assured regulatory compliance and the alignment of IT services with business objectives will enhance the service our customers deliver.”

Focusing specifically on usability and tight integration across all processes, LiveTime Service Manager 6 enables organizations to roll out Service Catalog and Service Portfolio Management as easily as Incident, Problem, and Change Management. LiveTime Service Manager 6 has been certified for Request Fulfillment, Incident, Problem, Change, Service Level, Knowledge, Service Catalog, Service Portfolio, and Service Asset and Configuration Management.

Pink Elephant’s PinkVERIFY assessment is recognized as the IT service management industry’s original program for certifying software that supports the definitions and workflow requirements defined by ITIL. For over ten years, PinkVERIFY has offered customers, who value the adoption and implementation of ITIL best practices, the assurance that they are selecting optimal, value-based IT service management solutions. With the release of ITIL V3, Pink Elephant has developed a new PinkVERIFY certification regime to reflect support of 14 processes within the Service Lifecycle.

About Pink Elephant

Pink Elephant is proud to be celebrating 20 years of ITIL experience – more than any other service provider. Operating through many offices across the globe, the company is the world’s #1 provider of ITIL and ITSM conferences, education and consulting services. For more information, please visit www.pinkelephant.com

Demonstration

admin — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:20:06 +0000

Please register below to arrange an online demonstration of LiveTime to see how LiveTime will suit your needs.

Please ensure your spam filter allows email from demo.livetime.com if you don’t receive a response right away. Also note, we filter out registrations from anonymous users.

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Localization

admin — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 02:08:10 +0000

Native Support

LiveTime natively supports many languages out-of-the-box and is constantly adding new translations in every release. LiveTime currently ships with 11 languages, including English, Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Norwegian, Romanian and Polish. The inherent flexibility of LiveTime’s internationalized framework means that it is very easy to customize the application and add new translations as required. While most applications require you to define a default language, LiveTime is able to automatically deliver the appropriate interface to each user based upon the locale of the computer accessing the application. This allows one central LiveTime instance to service your organization globally in the user’s native language.

Spellchecking

LiveTime has introduced a new Spell Checker as part of its new rich text editor. Rather than embedding dictionaries directly into the application LiveTime leverages its new Cloud Services to provide spelling suggestions in real time. This also enables LiveTime to add new dictionaries as needed.

Simply choose the default language from the drop down menu and get appropriate suggestions for any misspelled words.

Framework

The LiveTime internationalization framework is very intuitive and flexible, allowing users to localize it for a particular language and character encoding scheme. Textual elements, such as status messages and the GUI component labels, are not hardcoded in the program. Instead they are stored outside the source code and retrieved dynamically. Culturally-dependent data, such as dates and currencies, appear in formats that conform to the end user’s region and language.

Since all user interface content is externalized into a single properties file encoded into an appropriate character set, translations only require a simple text editor. By conforming to the correct naming conventions of the properties file you can add as many translations as you desire. For instance if you create a translation for French you would create a text file called LiveTime_fr.properties. It’s that simple.

Messages

Messages are simply translated based on defined classes within the application. For example the following classes are defined below in English:

ClassName.greetings=Hello
ClassName.farewell=Goodbye
ClassName.inquiry=How are you?

As you can see, keys such as ClassName.greetings represent internal string markers, with the actual text values on the right. If we wanted a French version, it would be represented as:

ClassName.greetings=Bonjour
ClassName.farewell=Au revoir
ClassName.inquiry=Comment allez-vous?

Compound messages are also permitted to allow for more dynamic translations at runtime. This approach allows any organization to add translations very quickly. Typically, each new translation takes approximately one week. Simply drop the new language inside the application and restart to make the translation available to all users.

Email & SMS

LiveTime has always allowed customers and users to navigate the service desk in their language of choice. The latest version extends this to include the communication with customers, by both email and sms. These messages which are sent to customers can now be localized and the communication will be sent in the language of choice to the recipient.