Jingle bells, jingle bells.. WAIT, say what? Christmas Lights?What do Christmas Lights have to do with Ivanti HEAT Neurons?? EVERYTHING!!!
If your dashboards aren’t lighting up like a Christmas tree, and yes I mean green for good and red for bad, for your KPIs and Metrics, including hours of operation calculations, averages, percentages, trends, and complex groupings, then we need to talk.
In today’s shift-left world, the end user, be it an analyst, manager, or executive, have countless KPIs and Metrics at their finger tips.
KPIs and Metrics alike need to stand out from all the noise and more importantly when there is a trend or change in the KPI or metric that requires attention.
This is where your dashboard needs to light up like a Christmas tree so that at one glance your end-user can make informed decisions and act accordingly. Of course you can also incorporate workflows, but before you get there, you need to define your KPIs, your Metrics, and your “normal”.
What you need are some gauges, line graphs showing SLA compliance over time, pivot tables (yes those too can change color) showing percentages and hours of operation calculations by internal and customer facing service requests, and my favorite, time frame groupings, and sure traditional Christmas balls, I mean pie charts.
Are you getting the most out of your Ivanti Dashboards? You are not! Not until you talk to us!
PS: If you’re still using old-school reports then you’re on Santa’s Naughty List!!!
Jingle bells, jingle bells.. WAIT, say what? Christmas Lights? What do Christmas Lights have to do with Ivanti HEAT Neurons?? EVERYTHING!!!
https://itchronicles.com/business-metrics/itsm-esm-christmas-lights/
If your dashboards aren't lighting up like a Christmas tree, and yes I mean green for good and red for bad, for your KPIs and Metrics, including Hours of Operation Calculations, Averages, Percentages, Trends, and complex groupings, then you need to listen to this podcast!
blog.a19consulting.com
https://bit.ly/IvantiHEATITSMStatisticsMonitor
They said it can’t be done with Dashboards. But they are WRONG…. So Wrong!
Yes, you can add Hours of Operation Calculations to dashboards!
Yes, you can add averages to dashboards!
Yes, you can add aged groups to dashboards!
Yes, you can add percentages to dashboards!
Yes, you can display data frommultiple business objects on one dashboard!
That’s right. DASHBOARDS. Not Reports, not Xtraction, not Power BI, not some other non-native Ivanti Add-On.
SLA Compliance DashboardResolution Timeframes Dashboard PartSLA Compliance Pivot with Percentage Dashboard Part
Why dashboards and not reports?
Reports are ugly outdatedthird-party with many limitations and no development effort committed to by Ivanti. In fact in 2017 Rapid Reports was introduced for native reporting to replace Reports. Dashboards are sexyand here to stay!
Reports are not native, meaning you can not drill-down to the record in Ivanti Service Manager (HEAT). With Dashboards you can!
Reports are OK for distribution. If you’re stuck in the 90s!! In today’s shift-left world, the focus is on enabling the Analyst, Manager, Executive with meaningful, timely (LIVE), interactive information in an easy to use simple intuitive interface. With Dashboards you get LIVE interactive meaningful well presented statistics!
With dashboards you can add Hours of Operation Calculations, averages, aged groups, and data from multiple business objects (Incident AND Service Request for example) and much much more.
Are you getting the most out of your Ivanti Reporting? You are not! Not until you talk to us!
Rapid Reports was a great enhancements to allow end users to quickly create list and form reports based on Saved Searches.
Another need that many customers have is “Rapid Like Dashboards”, more specifically, end users (Executive/Managers/Analysts) require on-demand dashboards to quickly produce a chart, graphic, pivot table, etc.
This functionality would be a huge quick win leveraging existing dashboard functionality.
The design would be a “Rapid Dashboard” button on list views, similar to rapid reports, with a popup of dashboard templates, for example: Chart by Month Chart by Owner Team Top 10 Chart
where the underlying “Templates” are configured similar to dashboard parts.
ie. Chart by Month > Group by CreatedDateTime, by month etc.
The Rapid Dashboard Template would be configured similar to a dashboard part except “Saved Search” would not be available and based on the currently active Saved Search.
Over the last 25 years I have seen a lot of changes for Ivanti HEAT ITSM. One change is Reporting.
Back in the HEAT for Windows and early HEAT ITSM days, Crystal Reports was king. In 2014, HEAT switched to Microsoft SSRS Reports with its ITSM platform. That was 7 years ago and SSRS hasn’t changed much. Back in 2014, SSRS was a great tool, but the downside has been and continues to be that it is third-party (Microsoft) product with the designer tooldesktop-based requiring hours and days of software development(translation: you need a SRRS Developer).
But before I digress further (Edit: see my PS Note!!)
The Biggest Reporting Mistake that Ivanti HEAT Consultants, business partners, and Customers make is…
Using Reports! Dashboard Reporting is far superior and optimal for every-day on-demand analytics & reporting. Especially in today’s fast-paced high-tech environments. Traditional old school (SSRS) Reports are a thing of the past. Who really shows up to a meeting nowadays with a hardcopy report, or a softcopy for that matter! If you know a HEAT customer that does, then please contact me!!
The world has changed, and so has Reporting!
Software is intuitive and users want less and less clicks. The industry is shifting left and so is Reporting. A shift-left towards Interactive On-Demand Dashboard Reporting that you can bring up in a Team, Managerial, or Executive Meeting to slice-and-dice the data, and drill right down to the ticket level, not days after submitting a development change request butlive in the meeting!
Traditional (SSRS) Reports An eyesore!!!
Why Dashboards? Dashboards can be configured easily and quickly, for various user-roles (Executive, Manager, Analyst, etc.), based on Saved Searches, with Filters, Drill-Downs, and best of all with an Agile Approach and Shift-Left Methodology in mind. Enabling the customer (analyst, manager) to report against the KPIs that are top-of-mind now and best of all without the need for a developer, additional software, or long development cycles.
Dashboards are quick and simple configurations that take from just a few minutes to a couple hours for a complex dashboard part. Best of all dashboards are native to Ivanti!
But wait there is more…
Rapid Reports entered the stage in 2017 and is a hybrid of reports and dashboards in that Rapid Reports are native to Ivanti, no additional software is required, are somewhat easy to configure, based on Saved Searches, and ideal for traditional detailed reporting needs & ticket details (List & Form View).
What about Xtraction?
If anyone recommends Xtraction to you. RUN!!! Analytic Metrics are far better and mature compared to the buggy and costly Xtractionadd-on, a LANDesk product, that just like (SSRS) Reporting will cost you time, money, and effort, and leave you disappointed.
In Summary, as much as I like billable consulting time, I would NEVER recommend report development over dashboards.
Not convinced? Here is a comparison. Before you waste another cent on HEAT Reporting that is guaranteed to disappoint, be sure to contact me!
Ivanti HEAT Reporting 101
PS: Some history for Crystal Reports (CRW) was originally developed for the Accounting Software package Accpac. Sound familiar? Accpac was acquired from Computer Associates in 2004 by Sage and as of 2012 Accpac is better known as Sage 300 ERP. In any event, the reporting tool became so popular that it was launched as a separate product. Personally I miss the CRW with HEAT.
PPS: Rapid Reports was introduced to Ivanti Service Manager in 2017, adding native reporting capabilities, just around that time the discussion of phasing out SSRS Reports started. No verdict on roadmap yet but that’s okay, there are much better solutions than (SSRS) Reports!
Also with the Cherwell acquisition there is a high likelihood that Cherwell’s Report Writer will be considered as a future replacement.
With Ivanti’s new momentum and roadmap commitment to making searches more “google-like” for 2022, and Cherwell’s Acquisition in early 2021 we are bound to see some exciting dashboard reporting improvements! And hopefully finally SSRS Reports will be replaced!!
Here is an error that came up launching a dashboard that sounds like a localization issue, but it’s not.
Clicking ‘OK’ lets you access the dashboard.
The issue is typically a permissions issue. Check that the role experiencing this symptom has top level tab access to the business objects used by the dashboard. If that doesn’t solve it then check the permissions of the saved searches used. A really quick way, and perhaps the best way to troubleshoot if you can’t shake this error, clone the dashboard in your DEV (STG/UAT) environment and remove dashboard parts one by one to identify the culprit.
Determining your actively logged in users is a little tricky in ISM.
Security History (Frs_ops_logon_history)
Security sessions are derived from the security history business object (Frs_ops_logon_history) and used the status value and logout time to determine “security session” by event type and login type.
This makes identifying the number of active sessions challenging as aggregate functions do not allow use of the distinct function. This limits the use of dashboard parts, as you will get false counts per user.
a19 Consulting – Best Practice System
An advanced workaround would be to create a summarized table similar to the a19 Consulting Best Practice System‘s implementation. More on that on a future blog post.
ISM Administration Tip
PS: Remember one of the culprits for users staying logged in is the dashboard setting for auto-refresh. Setting your security session timeout alone does not solve the issue, you must ensure that the Auto refresh (in minutes) on your dashboards is disabled or set higher than the session timeout number.
ITSM/ITAM/ESM Blog 
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