What's New in Numara FootPrints 9.5?

New Feature Highlights

• New, modernized interface designed with a focus on increasing user productivity
• 64-bit installs for Windows and Linux
• CMDB Usability Enhancements
• Change Management Enhancements
• Administration productivity and workflow improvements

Practical and Flexible IT Service Management for the Real World

Numara® Software, a leading, global provider of practical service management software, introduces the next major release of its award-winning, Numara® FootPrints®. Unparalleled value coupled with a highly flexible and unique web-based workflow platform, Numara FootPrints empowers organizations with the ability to manage the service desk with optimal efficiency and automate business processes for IT and beyond. Focused on enhancing the customer experience for support organizations worldwide, Numara FootPrints 9.5 offers a new user interface with a focus on productivity, extensive usability enhancements, and expanded support for best practices in the latest release of the award-winning, web-based service desk.

World-Class Customer Experience

Numara FootPrints 9.5 provides new and improved ways to help our customers manage service delivery more effectively including; a brand new, modern user interface with emphasis on increasing productivity, 64-bit support, and improved usability for administrators and customers.

New! Modern user interface: Increase your productivity by having more information easily accessible from the screen you spend most of your time on.

• New “home” screen. IT and support professionals need fast access to support information to be productive. The newly designed “home” screen, based on extensive customer research and designed with the latest user experience best practices in mind, puts the emphasis on the most important information for faster comprehension and quicker action. Key data like the latest description and last update time are highlighted, while Ajax technology allows real time access to full details faster – without leaving the home screen.
• New toolbar. Agents want quick access to their most frequently used options. The new FootPrints toolbar gives agents one- click access to create new Issues, run reports, and other key tasks without clutter. And it can be customized per workspace based on need. Note that the term “workspace” replaces the term “project” for better alignment with our customers’ usage of this important capability.
• New Quick Edit. Work through your assignments faster than ever with the new Quick Edit feature. Update the status, priority, description, and even custom fields in seconds all without leaving the Home screen,
• Single frame interface The new, modernized interface is implemented in a single frame following the latest web standards. Embed the application in other web sites or web applications, and provide a better experience for your users.
• New look and feel The new interface extends throughout the product giving users a consistent look and feel, including new icons, colors and toolbar.

Continued Improvements in Usability and Flexibility: Provide a superior experience to Agents, Customers and Administrators.

Agent and Customer user experience

• New, modern user interface with streamlined access to important information Agents and Customers alike will benefit from the new interface that focuses on highlighting what is most important to the user, making the interface more usable, and providing easier access to the most important information.
• Give customers access to the rich text editor and the Priority field “Power”. Customers will benefit from using the rich text editor by being able to enter more content- rich descriptions of their Requests and be able to escalate the Priority based on their role.
• Auto-check Assignee availability more efficiently. A new, improved auto-check availability feature means less time for Agents to wait to see who is available for assignment. And availability can now be checked for any future date with conflicts automatically noted.
• One-click access for current date and time. Fill out date-time fields more efficiently with one click to populate the current date and time.
• Report on email workflow. New option to include all email notification information in custom reports. See who was notified and when, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks.

Administrator user experience

• Master your form building with drag-and-drop field reorder and form preview. Efficiently customize your form by dragging and dropping fields and tabs in the proper order within the Field Maintenance dialog. Get a preview of your form right from this screen without having to leave it or commit your changes to the production environment. And now you can add help text for file attachments to your form.
• Design your workflow faster with copying of escalation rules. Create escalation and business rule templates and use the new copy feature to create similar rules without having to start from scratch each time.
• Improve your workflow with better data exchange between Masters and subtasks relationships. Subtasks can now inherit values from the Master upon creation for more efficient access to vital data. Also, propagate values from subtasks up to their corresponding Master for better reporting.
• Modify your User Role Status workflow in an efficient grid. Reduce time spent configuring your user roles by using a streamlined grid to determine what Statuses your Agents are allowed to go to and from, and when description is mandatory - all with less clicks. And there are new role options to remove “Close” from the home screen quick actions dialog and to set the ticket form style (long or tabs) per Agent Preference Template.
• Simplify your User Management with direct search. Search the System User Management screen by User Name or User ID, or filter by User and License type.
• Control access for creating Incidents in your project workspace. Control what users have access to copy and move Incidents into your project workspace from other project workspaces. The fewer Issues you have to reroute, the more time available to work on what is important.
• Enforce file attachment security and management Determine at what point in your workflow file attachments are required and prevent users from accessing file attachments using new file attachment rules based on field values.
• Improved security for contact data Determine who is allowed to administer your Address Book through user roles for more granular security control.

Best Practices for the Real World

Numara FootPrints 9.5 provides practical, rapid best practices enablement for the vital processes that support your customer demands. Whether you are in the beginning stages of formalizing your IT processes or you are fully embracing technology, security, and ITIL best practices to align IT with your business, Numara FootPrints 9.5 offers unmatched flexibility and painless implementation.

Technology and Security Best Practices Alignment: Stay up to date with Numara FootPrints‘s Best Practice Technology Support.

• New! 64-bit support: Take advantage of the latest 64-bit hardware on Windows and Linux. FootPrints can now be installed on operating systems running in long mode on an x86-64 processor. This new standard for x86 servers is becoming the preferred method for Windows and Linux servers. All corresponding technology that ships with FootPrints has also been updated to give the best user experience for every install.
• Securely connect to your mail server from FootPrints. Make sure the important data being passed from your mail server to your FootPrints server is secure by using the secure IMAP/SLL protocol (port 993),the new standard for mail server software.
• All important user information is available in the database. Following database access best practices standards, all important user information is now housed in the FootPrints database. Whether you are an experienced DBA, or you just need to connect to the FootPrints database to run reports, now you have access to the user information you need.

Integrated IT Asset Management: Integrate vital data from the Numara Asset Management Platform (AMP)

• Work hand-in-hand with your asset inventory. The service management team can greatly benefit from having access to a powerful and efficient asset inventory system. The integration between Numara FootPrints and the brand new Numara Asset Management Platform dynamically pulls vital information into your Incidents, problems, and requests for change. Having this data available within the service desk is key to fast problem resolution, and valuable when running weekly and monthly trend reports. For deeper incident and problem resolution, the Numara AMP console can be launched right from Numara FootPrints to perform remote control, software deployment, and other asset-related activities (Active X required).

Configuration Management Enhancements: Save time and effort with a more streamlined workflow.

• Make sure the right CIs get linked to your Incidents, Problems, and Change Requests Save time by having the appropriate CIs (Configuration Items) linked to your records automatically based on the submitter. Save effort with one- click access to your most commonly used CI lists and searches when linking a CI to a record.
• Make sure everyone is aware of important CI information linked to your Incidents, Problems, and Changes. Include important linked CI details when sending out email notifications to assignees, approvers, managers, and customers associated with a record.

Comprehensive Change Management: Enhance your Change Management workflow and information availability

• More workflow options mean better alignment with your Change Management process. Give more information to all interested parties by making approval comments mandatory upon approval, disapproval, or deferral of change request voting. Add “Expired” as an additional approval outcome option to route your change requests appropriately if not approved in a timely manner. Automatically update change request information as part of your approval workflow to minimize manual data entry.
• Disseminate important change request information to all interested parties. Mirror various change approval states in change request fields for easier visibility and inclusion in report and email notifications. Send email notifications to a broad range of audiences including assignees, approvers, managers, customers, and other interested parties. Get full change approval details in all custom reports.

Tighter Service Level Management: Improve and ensure optimal service desk quality with improved SLA management

• Enforce your Service Level date targets by implementing roles-based Service Level field permissions. Limit access to your Service Level fields to ensure proper Service Level enforcement and reporting. Use more granular role level security to determine who could read, write, and edit Service Level information.
• Determine the length of your business per service level agreement. Whether your Service Levels with customers are based on a 9 -to-5, 5 day schedule or an 8-to-8, 7 day schedule, determine what constitutes one day for response and resolution times per customer or unique service level agreement. Gain control of SLA enforcement and reporting for environments with varied SLA requirements.

Numara FootPrints Base Starter Pack

• Numara Software introduces the new Numara FootPrints Base Starter Pack, targeted to the small business market. Some limitations, including a cap of 15 named agents, Windows/SQL only, no concurrent licenses, and no ability to add CMDB or SQL Link, will be handled through the quote tool and entitlement system (Numara back office). These customers will be able to purchase Change Management and Mobile. The one limitation that must be handled through the FootPrints licensing is the limitation of number of projects to three (3) plus one (1) for customer survey. The limitations are removed for the customer with the $12,995 “Extended Starter Pack” (same as the current starter pack).