Clarity SM Reviews

We are primarily using this solution for incident requests. We track our CI CMDB change requests. We are using Service Desk Manager in a wide scope that is not in a single location but across Europe.

The most valuable features are the requests and incident tracking.

When I am reviewing an incident, sometimes there is too much information on the same screen and it is difficult to discern what is of value. The agents generate information that is not important for me and it means that I have to scroll down to the bottom of the issue in order to find what I am looking for. In this regard, the interface is not always clear.

I would like to see charts and more graphical information available in the reporting. As it is now, we have incident data that is put into Power BI so that we can visualize it. We do this because it is easier to read graphical information. It would be nice if this solution had a simple wizard that could generate visualizations based on the data. As it is now, there are lots of reports, but from my perspective, the reporting is a little bit too complex.

I have been working with CA Service Desk Manager for three or four years.

I am not aware of any issues in terms of stability, so I would say that there are no large or obvious bugs.

From my perspective, it is no problem to add on to this solution. I would say that it is very scalable. We have about 1,600 people who actively use it.

I have not had contact with technical support.

We are also using ServiceNow and our developers are using JIRA.

In my opinion, JIRA Service Desk is more oriented to developing software and it covers the topics surrounding that job.

Our setup was performed quite some time ago by a third-party.

My advice to anybody who is implementing this solution is to be patient. It is going to take effort and time to properly deploy.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for incident and change management.

The newest customer portal is an improvement on the old one. However, we don't have the possibility to use it as we're on an older version.

The new portal for analysts is supposed to be very good as well.

The in-service catalog is quite useful.

The lack of parameters is limited. It's not possible to customize the solution.

We have issues with adding attachments and screenshots. Copy and paste is not possible on the solution.

Although there are some good features on the latest version, my company decided in the past month to switch solutions and we're moving over to Jira.

The cost of this solution is too high, which is why we're leaving.

I've been working with the solution for ten years, or maybe longer.

The solution is highly stable. We're using the high availability product for our application server and the program server is enough for our organization. We are using the application in over 70 countries because we have many branches abroad. It works well for us.

We have more than 10,000 users using the system across 70 countries. It's quite scalable.

We have a partner in Poland, so we've never contacted technical support directly. If we have issues, we contact the partner, not CA.

We have experience with Jira and have decided to move over to Jira in the coming months.

About 15 years ago, I also worked with an HP product called HP Service Desk. At the time, CA was more flexible and we could create customizations ourselves. On HP this was not possible without external support.

The initial installation was not complicated. It was pretty easy because I had previous experience. Occasionally, however, we did have problems with the environment and the application server would be on standby for a long time. I didn't find this too be too much of an issue though.

The pricing is quite expensive. It's so cost-prohibitive we've decided to move away from it.

We're using an older version of the solution. It's my understanding that in the 17.2 version there is a completely different customer portal.

I would recommend the solution, even though we are leaving it behind. I know another big company in Poland, which is an insurance company. They use this product and they've upgraded to the latest version. They have good knowledge and good experience with this product and they are using also the CMDB and the knowledge database, which is more of the product than we use. They are quite satisfied with the results they get from it.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

Our primary use case for Clarity is to manage portfolios and projects, and to manage the software. 

The most valuable feature are the time sheets, it's a very powerful tool.

The report solutions are a little short and that could be improved. It's possible that part of the issue is the customization because we had the tool customized for our clients. Clarity is also quite an expensive solution and it would be helpful if the cost was reduced. 

I've been using this solution for eight years. 

The initial setup was complex, it's possible that the integrations between this tool and other tools like Quality Center, ALM may have made the setup more difficult. 

I would rate this solution a seven out of 10. 

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.

The main purpose is for service desk use. It is a repository of information.

It helps when you have an incident or performing a problem change management process. You can view what all the relationships are between the CI that you are changing or using. It helps the engineers to better understand what they are facing.

It has all our configurations. All our infrastructure configurations are on a single pane of glass to view, allowing for one single point of information.

• We would like more information about all the configurations that we have on our infrastructure side.
• The interface for the users is a bit old-fashioned and not user-friendly.
• We would like the CMDB to be populated automatically. At the moment, everything is manually created.

It's very stable. I don't have any problems regarding to it. 

There are no issues with the scalability. It is fully supported.

All support for CA products is quite good. It is not the best support, but all our problems have been solved.

I was not involved. It was already implemented when I joined the company. It was migrated from another company, and I understand the migration process was not difficult nor complex. 

It is quite a good product, and it's stable. They have a lot of features that you can customize to your organization. 

Everything should be automated, because if you are trusting on users to create their information, it will be not the truth on the moment. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Stability of the vendor
• Support
• How the vendor is positioned in the market.

Our primary use case is managing incidents and requests from customers.

It performs very well.

For us it's indispensable to have all the cases in one place. It's the main tool for managing cases, day to day.

We can search open cases and closed cases to find what we have done in other incidents. We use the cases as a knowledge base to find what we did last time this incident occurred.

Also, prioritization is valuable and managing work queues.

Dashboards. Custom dashboards are really important because without that it takes too long to view some information. In the new version, xFlow is better.

It's pretty stable. The last versions are very stable.

Our installation is very small but the customer's experience is good.

Tech support is "so-so." Sometimes it takes too long for support people to understand what is happening. They always ask the same things, and start over with installations and with configurations and all that kind of stuff. And then, after all that, they start to ask what is happening. It takes way too long to start solving the problem.

Easy. In the latest versions it is straightforward.

When our company is investing in a new vendor, what is important to us is 

• support
• world-class software.

Overall, I would give it an eight out of 10 because it's a good product. I think it can improve some things but it's stable and it's useful.

Install it. I think it is easy to use. It's a good tool.

I help my clients make best use of the tool in their service management environment.

It performs pretty well.

It helps organizations manage their services in a way that treats them as services, and not as, "Oh, this is what I do," in isolation.

Being able to specify event rules and SLAs that can help to automate some of the processes that people are doing manually is valuable.

I could pick a dozen and say, "That's useful, and that's useful, and that's useful." The fact that it aligns very well with ITIL. I think that's probably one of my favorite things about it, because it's following up a general best practice for service management. That's important.

I think some of the work they're doing with the xFlow interface and the more collaborative tools. I think that's helping because this new generation of people like the social-media style of collaboration.

I would also like to see a simpler reporting tool. They went from one fairly robust, very complex, reporting tool - it was great - and then they went to another one that was also fairly complex and robust. That's a great tool for people who are report writers, but for the average person who just wants to get a quick little report, it's like handing somebody a chainsaw because they have to break some toothpicks in half.

It's been there for a long time. It's very stable. No issues whatsoever.

I've seen it scale to very large organizations and do it well. They've made improvements to help with that scalability.

I think they're a great team. I actually did some work for them for a few months, a couple of years back. Knowledgeable, friendly, helpful, and very professional.

I've been involved in initial setup many times. It can be complex, depending on the requirements of the customer, primarily, whenever the customer wants to deviate from the out-of-the-box, in a large way; if they want to over-customize because they think it should look that way. It's better to accept the way it looks rather than try to force it, because then when you come around to upgrading later, those customizations may or may not be appropriate.

When selecting a vendor the most important criteria would be 

• stability
• reputation within the industry in general

• their following of general best practices, like ITIL.

I would rate it bordering on nine out of 10. It is an older based tool, it's been around for more than 25 years. They've made improvement, but it still carries with it some of its old roots.

Make sure that you are recognizing what your real needs are and not just going go with whatever hype is being presented to you.