A week with BMC AR System Remedy 7.5.00

There are many changes in the new version, and most noticable and heavily impacted change that all the developers feel is the new Developer Studio (a.k.a. Admin Tool). The new IDE has replaced the old Admin tool which has new and improved look. The way we develop applications over remedy for years will change with this new tool, though the logic and behaviour stayed the same, the way we operate or create new fields to new workflow has to be changed.

It took some time for me to understand the controls and various functionalities, but exposure to VB and other tools made it easy for me to get used used with the new interface. The use perspective bar is important and one should try to utilize it to the utmost(we can live with out it too, but it makes things easy with differenet views)

I like the new features like editing multiple field properties and Undo most of all.

Here are the few things that are new or improved in Remedy 7.5.00 version

I have made a list of new/updated features on 7.5 that I like most, here is the list:

1. Usability Features

• Adobe Flash Integration – Only useful if you use BMC Flashboards
• My Reports – I think people will love BMC for this feature, most useful
• Field Effects – This is some what visual delight to users seeing transitional effects in Remedy, pretty soon we will have emoticons also.
• Panels (a.k.a. Tabs, a.k.a. page holders) – The thing with Tabs is I never liked them because of several reasons, but this new version gave me some reasons to not hate them anymore. The features like display types, colors, images, text and url display are a few of them.
• Drop-down character field changes – users are allowed to enter partial values for character fields.
• Tooltips on Hoover and AL actions – This is also great addition to usability of remedy

The Web interface or usabilities are better than even. Applications perform and look better on web than User tool. I think the reason for that is age old User tool.

2. Administration- Developer Studio changes

• Un-Do last changes untill save
• Multiple Field Property Changes
• Work-Flow Objects view
• IDE view and look
• Prespectives
• Outline, Properties and Reltionship tabs

3. AR Server and Enterprise Level Changes

• New Java API – havent used it yet
• AL firing condition – Table Refresh
• New Auditing mechanics for fields
• Run Prodcess command length increment – This is very useful for frequent run process command users.
• New Improved AR Import tool
• 64 bit server support
• Filter and Escalation work-flow debugger
• Performing seraches on Internal and External Databases simultaneously – This feature became possible after the Join with View forms.

4. Misc Changes

• New Logging mechanism
• New Licensing System
• Time out clocks on browsers
• Failback Mid-tier support
• New Keywords
• New Execute on conditions
• and many more……..

I haven’t got access to new version for the first 2 months, when i got my hands on it, even a patch was released

Environment Details:

Used VMWare for all the scenarios, with host server running on Windows 2003.

VM1 :

OS – Windows 2003 x64

DB – MS SQL Server 2005

Webserver – IIS

VM2:

OS – RHEL 5.1

DB – Oracle 10g

Webserver – Tomcat/Apache

Still there are many things and areas that need explorartion, will update very soon with more info on ITSM 7.5/7.6 and ITIL related news.

Till then, Njoy

Namaste

Venkat Maddala

BMC Remedy Consultant

Cell# 01-318-759-7284

Mail: venkat@RemediesforRemedy.com

Blog: http://RemediesforRemedy.com