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Remedy@NC State News


A Newsletter about Remedy at NC State University May 2003

In This Issue:




Remedy Corporation purchased by BMC Software

In September of 2002, BMC Software announced its intention to acquire Remedy Corporation from Peregrine Corporation. This transaction was completed in November of 2002. As of today, we do not expect any major impact on NC State's deployment of Remedy products other than an increase in our licensing fees. You can read more about the acquisition by following the links below.

    BMC Software to Acquire Assets of Remedy
    BMC Software Completes Acquisition of Remedy¨ Assets

Improvements to the Solutions Database Interface

We have continued our efforts to improve the Solutions database, and its interface. We have reviewed all of the existing solutions, and removed several hundred solutions that were no longer relevant. We are systematically reviewing the keywords associated with each solution to increase the likelihood of finding an appropriate solution.

Acknowledging the need to be more responsive to our distance education students, we have modified the solutions interface so that it will now display "NC State Only" solutions to anyone via the web, if they possess a Unity login and password, and can use the WRAP system to authenticate. Previously, these solutions were only available to browsers with "on campus" IP addresses.

Remedy Training Opportunities

Information Technology Division (ITD) offers monthly training sessions on using the Remedy tracking software to all interested NC State employees within departments utilizing Remedy. These sessions are offered every month in the Avent Ferry Training Facility ( see this map for directions). Registration for these courses is done through the ITD Education Department. Please register at least 24 hours in advance -- courses with no students the day before are cancelled.

It is possible to schedule private training sessions for departments outside of the regular schedule. These sessions can be in our training facility or at another location. For more information, please contact the campus Remedy Administrators.

The TRASH Workgroup

During the past few months, there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of unsolicited email (SPAM) directed toward the Remedy system. Information Technology Division (ITD) is working towards installing a system, which will enable the Remedy system to recognize unwanted email and divert it before it arrives in your workgroups. Until this system is deployed, please move unwanted email calls into the TRASH workgroup.

There are no acknowledgements, notifications or surveys associated with the TRASH workgroup, so just move them and forget them. Also, by getting them out of your workgroups, they won't skew your call statistics.

Customized "From:" addresses

By default, email that is sent from within the Remedy system will have a From: address of:

   From: The Help Desk <help@ncsu.edu>

Some departments using Remedy have asked for a From: address that represents them better, and we have developed a method for providing this.

If you would prefer a customized "From:" address for email from your Remedy workgroup, please contact the campus Remedy Administrators.

New Dormant notification

Since its initial deployment, the Remedy system has provided a number of mechanisms to remind you of calls that may need attention. The "Dormant" notification has been available to notify selected members of a workgroup if a call has been dormant for a specified period of time. Remedy users have told us that they want a notification that will notify the call owner if a call has been dormant for a specified period of time. We have developed a method for providing this type of notification, and it is now available for any workgroup.

Please contact the campus Remedy Administrators if this type of notification would be useful to your organization. (03/12/03)

New options for inbound email

The Perl scripts that comprise the interface between the Remedy system and our campus email have been enhanced to allow for additional options. It is now possible to associate an incoming email with an existing Remedy call by adding the following header to the email message:

   X-Remedy-Callid:  nnnnnnnn

Assuming that call number nnnnnnnn already exists, it will be updated with the incoming email, just as though the email had contained the call number in the Subject: header, which is the traditional method of updating a call via email.

There are a variety of email headers and script parameters that can be used to enhance the utility of the email interface to Remedy. See Remedy solution 2858 for more information.

Please contact the campus Remedy Administrators if you would like to take advantage of any of these options.

Work In Progress

  • Version 5 coming soon
  • Support for attachments in Remedy

North Carolina State University :: Office Of Information Technology
Remedy Comments: Remedy@ncsu.edu