If you’re considering moving from Ivanti® Service Desk to Ivanti Service Manager, we’ve produced a helpful Momentum series “Tech Brief” webinar that you can view on demand.

This blog post (and Parts 2 and 3 in the series) capture many of the questions from webinar attendees and the answers provided by Laura Hellman, product owner of Ivanti Service Manager, who is based in Ivanti’s Bracknell UK office.

Best-of-Breed ITSM Capabilities Is the Goal

If you’re a customer of Ivanti Service Desk, you may want to consider migrating to Ivanti Service Manager. Our goal is to bring best-of-breed ITSM capabilities to everyone—and to build a single ITSM solution—bringing the best bits of Service Desk into Service Manager, representing the best of both platforms.

However, Service Desk will continue to receive full support. There is no intention of making an end-of-life announcement for this product.

Why Is Now a Good Time to Consider Migrating?

Ivanti Service Manager exceeds today’s requirements for a modern IT service desk and provides the platform you need to fulfill advanced ITIL service management processes. Service Manager is built for the cloud and offers ongoing innovations in addition to current capabilities such as:

  • Content and Workflows ready to go
  • Native VOIP-based Voice Automation
  • Shared Services Board
  • Integrated Portfolio and Project Management module
  • Dashboards and Reports
  • Ongoing Integration with the Ivanti Portfolio
  • New Innovations such as the AI-powered Hub and Bot

When migrating from Service Desk to Service Manager you receive:

  • ‘Like for Like’ license swap of your current Service Desk licenses for licenses of the similar Service Manager solution
  • Services methodologies, tools, and approaches to reduce the time, costs, and risks that normally result in a migration

The Webinar Q & A

We’ve captured below many of the questions and answers from the webinar, but we encourage you to view the webinar when you can.

Q: Will RES for Ivanti, including external system connectivity, be available for enterprise customers free of charge?

A: The RES automation tool or Ivanti Automation is available to all Ivanti customers regardless of what their license model is and includes connectors to all other Ivanti products. Please note that Automation Standard is included with Ivanti Service Manager at no additional charge for use within the Ivanti portfolio.

Automation Enterprise has additional capabilities to connect to many other external systems and can be purchased for an additional cost. Contact your Ivanti representative for more information.

Q: Does on-premise Service Manager still integrate into Ivanti Endpoint Manager and Password Central?

A: Yes, on-premise Service Manager does have connectivity into Ivanti Endpoint Manager. However, it does not currently have integration with Password Central, but integrating with our password management solution is planned. It’s worth noting that the Voice Automation discussed today does provide for easy self-service password reset through a simple phone call.

Q: Does Service Manager have a REST API?

A: Currently ISM does have a SOAP API and can use RESTful web services provided by other solution. An inbound, RESTful API is planned for ISM in late 2018. Please refer to the documentation for more information on the SOAP API: https://help.ivanti.com/ht/help/en_US/ISM/2017.3/ISM_WebServices_2017-3.pdf

Q: As the recommendation is to not move transactional data, you say that the license is not for live usage. Does that mean no new incidents etc.? Can we still manage and close down the historic records?

A: Yes, in Service Desk you can continue to update records such as closing down the historical ones or adding new notes for an agreed period of time after you go live with Service Manager. After that time period has elapsed you will continue to be supported to be able to look up data but not update anything further.

Q: For this overlap period is there a time limitation as to how long we can keep the two tools running together side by side?

A: There is no defined time limitation. It is something for you to agree with your Ivanti representative if that’s something you’re interest in.

Q: If we are interested in getting our hands on Ivanti Service Manager, is there a beta site/license like there is with Service Desk?

A: If you’re interested to try out Service Manager you’re best off speaking with your Ivanti rep about getting a proof of concept for Service Manager, which could include a Cloud trial.

Q: Does Xtraction work with Ivanti Service Manager?

A: Yes, Xtraction does work with Service Manager, with capabilities similar to how it works with Service Desk. There is a two-user standard license included with Service Manager, just as there is with Service Desk.

Q: Does Service Manager allow the “cloning” of modules like Service Desk does?

A: Yes and no. Service Manager doesn’t have a concept of modules in the same way, but you can create new top-level objects. Service Desk deprecated the cloning facility several releases ago. However, it has been possible to create new modules in Object Designer ever since. Service Manager has a similar capability in the Design component where you can create new objects and have them behave similarly to existing ones.

Q: With the Cloud solution, where are the data centers, as that would impact our ability to host our data there?

A: Ivanti has data centers in North America, Europe and Australia. With Cloud deployment, note any given client’s data would only reside within the country that the customer designates as primary.  In other words, a client’s data does not cross borders and is not housed in multiple data centers.

Q: In Service Manager, is the Workspaces UI intended to be available for both end users and analysts or one or the other?

A: The Workspace UI as you know was initially designed to be Self Service specific in Service Desk. Service Manager’s Responsive UI is intended for all types of users, end users and analysts. All users will have a seamless experience across all types of platforms. Initially end users were able to leverage the responsive UI first with the current Service Manager release, however Ivanti is bringing this same experience to analysts in early 2019 .

Q: Will Ivanti Hub be available to on-premise Service Manager customers in the near future? If so, when?

A: The Hub is available today for the Ivanti Help Desk Essentials product, with plans to make it available for Service Manager in the cloud later this year. Currently, making the Hub available on-prem is not planned but we are investigating how we can make it available.