Contents
About this Release
Welcome to Serena Orchestrated Ops 4.5. Refer to the What's New? tab for a complete list of new features in this release.
Please note the following important information:
- On-premise customers: Before you install Serena Orchestrated Ops, you must install and configure SBM 10.1.2 or later as described in the SBM Installation and Configuration Guide.
- Serena Orchestrated Ops 4.5 is available in English only.
- This readme pertains to both the on-demand and on-premise versions of Serena Orchestrated Ops 4.5.
- Internet Explorer 7.0 is no longer supported with Serena Orchestrated Ops.
Packaging Changes
Serena Orchestrated Ops is now used to refer to the collection of solutions that manage your IT services. (Previously, Serena Service Manager was used.) The following solutions, which can be used independently or in combination, are included in Serena Orchestrated Ops:
- Serena Request Center
- Serena Demand Manager
- Serena Service Manager
New Installations of Serena Orchestrated Ops
If this is a new on-premise installation, download Serena Business Manager 10.1.2 or later from http://www.serena.com/support and then follow the instructions in the SBM Installation and Configuration Guide to install and configure Serena Business Manager. After you have verified that Serena Business Manager is installed successfully, download Serena Orchestrated Ops 4.5 from http://www.serena.com/support and follow the instructions in the Serena Orchestrated Ops Installation and Configuration Guide.
For on-demand customers, see the Serena Orchestrated Ops On-Demand Installation and Configuration Guide for information on setting up Serena Orchestrated Ops in your current environment.
Upgrades from Previous Versions
- Installation Upgrade
In the installation upgrade phase, you install and configure the latest versions of the framework files for Serena Request Center, Serena Demand Center, and features such as service level agreements (SLA). The solutions that you have implemented from previous releases are supported with the upgraded framework files.
- Solutions Upgrade
In the solutions upgrade phase, you import new solution files and merge changes into your current solutions. Before attempting this upgrade, review the list of changes to determine the benefit of upgrading your solutions.
For upgrade instructions, refer to the Serena Orchestrated Ops Upgrade Guide.
Serena Orchestrated Ops Installer Components
The Serena Orchestrated Ops installer delivers three components:
- Solution Files – Solution files are process app snapshots
and blueprints that contain the latest changes and updates for the
Serena Orchestrated Ops
process workflows and data models.
The following solutions are delivered by the Serena Orchestrated Ops installer:
- Serena Demand Center:
- SDM - Demand Plan
- SDM - Business Requests
- SDM - Demand Manager Orchestrations
- Serena Request Center:
- SRC - Starter Pack Forms - IT
- SRC - Knowledge Management
- SRC - Service Request
- Serena Service Manager:
- SSM - Change Management
- SSM - Configuration Management System
- SSM - Problem Management
- SSM - Incident Management
- SSM - Integrations
- Serena Demand Center:
- Framework Files – The SOO framework files augment your underlying SBM installation and enable certain features in the SOO process apps. The framework files include new templates, images, and code that are backward compatible with your existing installation.
- Service Level Agreement (SLA) Files – SLAs define the level of service that an organization commits to its customers. SLAs contain performance metrics that correspond to these commitments.
What's New?
The following features and changes are new in Serena Orchestrated Ops.
Serena Asset Manager Integration
Serena Asset Manager is a powerful new network device discovery tool that integrates with the Serena Service Manager solution. Serena Asset Manager scans your network, gathers important data about discovered devices, and seamlessly creates and updates configuration items (CIs) in your Configuration Management System (CMS) database. Serena Asset Manager provides greater control over your IT infrastructure and inventory; it enables continuous visibility into your hardware and software assets, who is using them, and where they exist in your network. Contact your sales representative for more information.
Serena Demand Manager
-
You can now track work items associated with items in plans. Benefits include:
- Resources can now associate work items with demand items in plans that are in flight. This enables resources to see plan information in their work items, and Demand Center users to see a list of work items associated with each demand item.
- As resources record time spent on work items, Demand Center users can see the actual cost of a demand item along with the estimated cost, if Time Capture options are enabled.
- Plans can now be linked to SBM projects. This simplifies the process of associating work items to demand items in plans that are in flight. Administrative users can also create new SBM projects from the plan. These projects are automatically associated to the plan from which they were created.
- Administrators can now share demand views and plans with SBM groups that have appropriate privileges in the Demand Plan process app.
- Several demand views are now preconfigured for
Demand Center:
- "Business Requests" in the Business category uses the "Requests Ready for Analysis" report from the Business Requests process app.
- "Product Themes"" in the Development category uses the "Product Themes Ready for Analysis" report from the Business Requests process app.
- "Significant Changes" in the Operations category uses the "Significant Changes Ready for Analysis" report from the Change Management process app.
- You can now see the progress on all plans in a portfolio, based on estimates provided for items in the plan and actual hours recorded by resources.
- You can now expand and collapse the list of demand views and plans in the navigation pane. You can also hide completed or canceled plans.
- Completed plans are no longer included in the plan bar at the bottom of the Demand tab.
- Scoring, Estimated Cost, and
Actual Cost columns have been added to the Plans tab for individual plans.
On the Demand tab, an Executing tab has been added to demand views. You can view estimates and actual costs for each demand item on this tab.
On the Resources tab, actual costs are included for each plan listed on the Overview page.
- Users can now see the name of the associated process app for reports included in a demand view.
- Two new process apps have been added:
- SDM
- Business Requests
Provided as a simple demand item application that you can use to quickly populate demand views in Serena Demand Center.
- SDM
-
Demand Manager
Orchestrations
Contains orchestrations that control creating and updating of demand plans in Demand Center and perform other automated processes.
- SDM
- Business Requests
- The Demand Plan process app now contains two types of plans: "Normal" and "Pre-approved." Normal plans require concept approval; pre-approved plans skip the concept approval process and are sent directly to the planning phase.
- Demand Plan users are no longer required to provide a plan start date of two weeks into the future. The start date can now be set up to 31 days in the future. In addition, an end date is now automatically set depending on the duration set for the plan.
Serena Request Center
- Service desk staff can use the new
Recategorize transition to move a request that
was mistakenly submitted into the wrong project to the correct project. This
can happen when there are large number of projects or projects that are similar
to each other.
Note: To implement this change as part of an upgrade from a previous version of SOO, you must follow the steps described in the Serena Orchestrated Ops On-Premise Upgrade Guide to upgrade the following process app:
- SRC - Service Request
Serena Service Manager
The following changes were made in applications in the Serena Service Manager solution.
- Change Management changes:
-
Impact Analysis is now included in Change Management. This is a
set of features used to assess the potential impact that a proposed request for
change (RFC) would have on related services, consumers, and assets. If the
potential impact does not meet "approval" criteria, the RFC is automatically
routed to the
CAB Review/Planning state so the impact
can be formally reviewed.
Note: To implement this change as part of an upgrade from a previous version of SOO, you must follow the steps described in the Serena Orchestrated Ops On-Premise Upgrade Guide to upgrade the following process app:
- SSM - Change Management
-
Impact Analysis is now included in Change Management. This is a
set of features used to assess the potential impact that a proposed request for
change (RFC) would have on related services, consumers, and assets. If the
potential impact does not meet "approval" criteria, the RFC is automatically
routed to the
CAB Review/Planning state so the impact
can be formally reviewed.
- Configuration Management System changes:
- The "Manufacturer" field in the Configuration Items table is no longer related to the Vendors auxiliary table. Instead of being a Single-Relational field, the "Manufacturer" field is now a Text field. After an upgrade from a previous version of SOO, when a form containing the "Manufacturer" Single-Relationship field loads, the value of the field is copied to the "Manufacturer" Text field, and the Single-Relationship field is no longer displayed.
- There is a new Integration Log section on the System tab of configuration items. This section can contain messages logged from Serena Asset Manager events that pertain to the item.
- There is a new Consumer selection in the Type field for a configuration item. This type allows the effect of a proposed change on end-users to be taken into account when impact analysis is performed in the Change Management application.
Note: To implement these changes as part of an upgrade from a previous version of SOO, you must follow the steps described in the Serena Orchestrated Ops On-Premise Upgrade Guide to upgrade the following process app:- SSM - Configuration Management System
- Incident Management changes:
- The Web Search tab, which was deprecated in the previous release, has been removed.
Note: To implement this change as part of an upgrade from a previous version of SOO, you must follow the steps described in the Serena Orchestrated Ops On-Premise Upgrade Guide to upgrade the following process app:- SSM - Incident Management
Solution Improvements
The following change applies to applications in all Serena Orchestrated Ops solutions.
- Custom help is now provided. Users can:
- Click the workflow icon on the System tab to view information about each transition, state, and decision, as well as a graphical view of the workflow.
- Click the Help link on a state form to view information about the current state, available transitions, and fields on the form.
- Hover over a transition button or a field to view information about the transition or field.
- Hover over the application tab to view information about the purpose of the application.
Integration Improvements
- The integration between Microsoft® System Center Configuration Manager 7 (Configuration Manager) and Serena Service Manager previously used a solution file that had to be downloaded separately from Serena Service Manager. The process app containing the orchestration workflow for this integration is now included in the Serena Service Manager solution (SSM - Integrations). This new process app contains the orchestration workflow for the new Serena Asset Manager integration as well.
Known Issues
Serena Demand Manager
- Plan capacity is not calculated if the start date for a resource's team assignment is the same as a plan's start date. To work around this problem, change all resource start dates so they are not the same as plan start dates.
General Issues
- There could be display problems with custom help on custom forms. For example, the help that is presented when a user hovers over a transition button could be misaligned, preventing them from clicking the button. To correct this problem, redeploy the process app containing the forms from SBM Composer.
- When you promote snapshots from SBM Application Repository with the Merge conflicts check box selected on the Entities screen in the Promote dialog box, the user who is doing the promotion should be automatically assigned to all of the roles in the application. However, if you upgrade to SBM 10.1.2.1 and then promote solution snapshots for the first time, this user is not assigned to the roles. To work around this problem, use SBM Application Administrator to manually assign the user to the roles.
- Notification templates are duplicated after you promote the SOO 4.5 process apps. To work around this problem, edit a notification in SBM Application Administrator, examine the templates, and delete any duplicates.