Configuring Common Functions

This article describes the common configurations in your CA Cloud Service Management slice.

Create Organization

Create the organization hierarchy as required. Navigate to MANAGE, ADMINISTRATION, Tools, Organizations to create, and configure a sibling, child, or parent organization. You can use the General tab to specify basic information such as the organization name and address. Use the other tabs to add users, attachments, and groups. You can also import the organization data through the Bulk Process Data feature.

Create Users

Create the users under the organization as required. Navigate to MANAGE, ADMINISTRATION, Tools, Organizations and Users to create users under the organization. To create a user, click Create User. To assign administrative privileges, add the License Type as Fixed.

Add Logo

Customize the application interface with the logo of your organization. Navigate to MANAGE, ADMINISTRATION, Tools, Organizations and General. Change the logo.

Bulk Import

The bulk import feature is used to manage organization, users, support groups, roles, and categorization. You can also manage Configuration Items (CI), CI-related contacts, and language catalog records. For more information about bulk import, see Bulk Process Data.

Entities with Bulk Process Support

You can use the spreadsheets to import the batches of the following entities into the application:

Organizations
Users
Support groups
Roles
Configuration items
CCTI
CI-related contacts
Language catalog
Asset
Models
IP Ranges

Active Directory Synchronization

Configure and use the ADSync Utility plug-in to synchronize your slice database with your active directory. See Active Directory Synchronization for more information.

Roles

A role is a logical grouping of support groups, contacts, or both. A role facilitates easier assignment of permissions across the application.

Populate Roles

The application comes with in-built roles such as a KB Admin, a CI Admin, and a KB Analyst. To add users and support groups to the roles, Navigate to MANAGE, ADMINISTRATION, Tools, Roles. You can also create new roles as required. For more information, see Create and Manage Roles.

Entities Requiring Permissions

You can assign the permissions of the following entities to contacts, support groups, or roles:

Communication templates
Workflow actions
Ticket templates
Task groups
Task flows
Defined searches
Reports
Charts
Dashboards
Navigation menus
Action lists
Knowledge base articles

Groups

A support group is a logical grouping of contacts. The group is based on the organization, role, specialization, or support type.

Slice Configuration

Configure the basic settings related to your slice of CA Cloud Service Management. Slice configuration includes:

Configure the Session Timeout Duration

You can configure the duration for a session timeout in CA Cloud Service Management. Navigate to MANAGE, ADMINISTRATION, Tools, Slice Configuration, General Information.

Enter the duration, in minutes, in the Session Timeout field. The default duration is 60 minutes.

Configure Inbound or Outbound Emails

You can configure the inbound emails to create or modify tickets from the received emails. You can configure outbound emails to send email notifications in response to application events. Navigate to MANAGE, ADMINISTRATION, Tools, Slice Configuration to configure inbound or outbound emails. See Configure Inbound and Outbound Email Messages.

Enable Job Triggers

The application has a set of system-defined triggers. The triggers schedule the periodic jobs that are related to routine service desk activities. For example, closing tickets and scheduling feedback surveys. Navigate to MANAGE, ADMINISTRATION, Tools, Slice Configuration to enable and schedule the job trigger. See Create and Manage Job Triggers.

Configure Single Sign-on

Enable your users to log in to CA Cloud Service Management seamlessly from your domain. After Single Sign-on is configured, users do not need to enter their user name and password to log in. See Implement Single Sign-On for more information.

Configure Password Strength

You can define the password strength for a user. The four password levels that you can configure are:

LEVEL 0 - The password must be at least two characters long.
LEVEL 1 - The password must be at least eight characters long.
LEVEL 2 - The password must be at least eight characters long and must contain a mix of upper and lower case characters.
LEVEL 3 - The password must be at least eight characters long and must contain a mix of upper case, lower case, and numeric characters.
LEVEL 4 - The password must be at least eight characters long and must contain a mix of upper case, lower case, numeric, and special characters.

Outbound Web Services

Outbound web service enables CA Cloud Service Management to interact with external systems using SOAP or RESTful web service calls. For more information about outbound web services, see Configure Outbound Web Services.

Configuration Parameters

Configuration Parameters are parameters that control how a function or feature is rendered in the application. You can enable or disable a parameter to enable or disable a functionality, such as Service Level Monitoring. Consider the following important parameters:

ENABLE_SLA_MONITORING_ON_TICKETS
ENABLE_CUSTOM_FIELD (for each ticket type individually)
ENABLE_APPROVAL_ROUTING (for each ticket type individually)
ENABLE_ORGANIZATION_BASED_ACCESS_CONTROL
ENABLE_AUTO_ROUTING_OF_TASK_TEMPLATES
ENABLE_AUTO_PRIORITIZE_ON_TICKETS

See Configuration Parameters.

Create Holiday Lists

Create the holiday lists to associate holidays with support groups, auto routes, configuration items, and schedules. Navigate to MANAGE, ADMINISTRATION, Tools, Holidays to create the holiday groups, each with a list of holidays. See Create and Manage Holiday Groups.

Create Support Groups

You can create support groups to define a logical grouping of contacts. The grouping is based on the role, specialization, or the type of support extended. To create the support groups and add users to the groups, navigate to MANAGE, ADMINISTRATION, Tools, Groups. You can use the support groups for the ticket assignment, notification, and permissions.

Create CCTI

To relate tickets, configuration items, KB articles, and approval groups, use the Create the Class, Category, Type, and Item categorization. CCTI helps to resolve the service desk tickets quickly. Navigate to MANAGE, ADMINISTRATION, Tools, Categorization to create categorization records. See Manage Categorizations.

Update Language Catalog

Update the language catalog if you want to provide the translations for the custom fields in the supported languages. Navigate to MANAGE, ADMINISTRATION, Tools, Language Catalog and add the translation for the required custom fields. See Build the Language Catalog.

Configuration Item Management

Create Configuration Item attribute templates to be applied to the Configuration Items (CIs). Navigate to MANAGE, ADMINISTRATION, Tools, Custom Asset/ CI Attribute Templates to create and manage CI attribute templates.
See Create and Manage CI Attribute Templates.
If you want the CIs of a particular class to be treated as a service, set the configure slice parameter SLA_BUSINESS_SERVICES_IDENTIFIER_CLASSES for the required CCTI class. See Configuration Parameters.
Configure the CIs and CI services. To add more attributes to appear when a CCTI is selected, configure the CI attribute templates. Create the service hours for CIs and Service CIs. To describe Infrastructure and display corresponding relationship graphs, relate CIs to contacts and relate CIs to CIs. See Create and Manage Configuration Items.

Knowledge Management

Create Knowledge Base (KB) article categories. To create KB article categories navigate to MANAGE, ADMINISTRATION, Tools, Knowledge Article Categories. See Create and Manage KB Article Categories.
Create KB articles under the required categories and relate CCTI to the KB articles. Grant the article permissions to the roles/groups/contacts. See Create and Manage Knowledgebase Articles.