Susan's post brings up an excellent point. It is now 2010, and the current most-recent-version of ARS is 7.5. Susan's system is 8 years old. In 2002, she would have been installing a 5.X system. The 5.X releases were stable, reliable, and flexible. (Others may recall 2002 as the year of the P-word.) I recall being highly impressed with 5.X's flexibility and the ease of developing new applications. I believe that BMC announced with the release of 6.X that macros would not be supported in future versions.
Those who moved on to more recent versions of ARS parted ways with macros along the way, often with users kicking and screaming; however, a number of organizations remain on 5.X and 6.X systems-and their users continue to use macros. The answer to Susan's question is that the 7.X experience is quite different from the 6.X or 5.X experience. The users will have to ditch their macros in any case and start over. 7.X introduced templates and decision trees to the ticket creation process. The Reporting Console will satisfy most of your users' reporting needs and Saved Searches will assist with the custom search and reporting issues without resorting to keystroke logging. Jennifer Meyer ________________________________ From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Shellman, David Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 2010 3:49 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: AR User Tool Deprecated? While I don't work for a government agency, I am sure they would frown on the use of mouse-and-keyboard recorders. Even with our company I'm sure our security architect would flag the existence of this type of product as a security issue. Dave ________________________________ From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of patrick zandi Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 2010 3:41 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: AR User Tool Deprecated? ** Government will not allow all these extra applications to be found, tested, 508 compliance, and installed on every box.... instead they will be saying.. One doesn't come with it? It won't do that? Didn't use to do that? It is the similar issue with Renaming all the BMC tools to something more beautiful, BMC EIE to BMC AIE -- now that software has to be tested, and retested, and a ton of paperwork has to be generated to get it approved, otherwise it goes through a 8 month technical insertion and testing plan and then you still have to attend a million meetings.. I am not complaining, just pointing this obvious issue.. in my 30 years of Gov work. On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 3:29 PM, Easter, David <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: ** In BMC's surveys of customers, it was found that the majority of macros are used to generate reports. Thus, a linking of saved searches to reports was created in AR System 7.5.00. Quick reports in a browser With the My Reports toolbar button, you can save reports from searches you perform on a form. Each report is saved per server, per form, and per user. For more information, see the "Using the My Reports toolbar button" section in the BMC Remedy Mid Tier Guide. If it is found that this isn't sufficient for the majority of cases, a richer macro-like capability could be considered for a future release. I have also heard of customers just utilizing the mouse-and-keyboard recorders now commonly available that work just fine within a browser. I personally use http://mouse-recorder.macro-expert.com/index.html, but there are lots of others out there. -David J. Easter Sr. Product Manager, Enterprise Service Management BMC Software, Inc. The opinions, statements, and/or suggested courses of action expressed in this E-mail do not necessarily reflect those of BMC Software, Inc. My voluntary participation in this forum is not intended to convey a role as a spokesperson, liaison or public relations representative for BMC Software, Inc. From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] On Behalf Of Susan Palmer Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 2010 12:18 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: AR User Tool Deprecated? ** One thing I haven't seen addressed very thoroughly in this thread, is macros. Our system is 8 years old and users have many macros to make their user experience more automated. We are upgrading to v7.5 and want to utilize mid-tier for everyone. I think users can adjust to most of the nuances, but the loss of macros will be painful for many. Has anyone found a good solution? Have I just missed the info on that solution? Thanks, Susan On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 8:47 AM, Meyer, Jennifer L <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: You've all been positing a lot of good arguments here. Let me put in my $.02... I've recently become a fan of Google's Chrome browser after yet another piece of malware/spyware waltzed past Internet Explorer and Norton Antivirus on my home pc. Our team is testing ITSM 7.6 on ARS 7.5 right now in preparation for an upgrade. Out of curiosity, I decided to compare the relative merits of the major browsers. I have discovered that Internet Explorer performs at about the same speed as the WUT, but Chrome, Safari, and Firefox move much faster. Also, IE requires a plug-in to get spell-check capabilities which come automatically with the other three browsers, and has to be built or bought for the WUT. Not that there aren't drawbacks to the other browsers: Chrome doesn't play well with Remedy's calendars, and some of the buttons refuse to work at all. (Chrome is not a supported browser.) Firefox does something annoying with scroll bars on unlimited character fields. Safari on a pc hangs up if you're trying to create an incident with decision trees enabled but not defined. (In its defense, Safari for pcs isn't supported, either.) Overall, I'm impressed with the performance of the mid-tier on ARS 7.5. In the past I've developed applications intended for use with the native client, but I think I'm going to change my focus toward the mid-tier in the future. Rather than losing the WUT, I am gaining three fallback browsers and smartphone support without the additional expense of a smartphone-only application. We may even decide to upgrade to ARS 7.6.3, depending on the timing of the release. There are a lot of things to like when you consider not supporting the WUT. Jennifer Meyer -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] On Behalf Of LJ LongWing Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2010 5:22 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: AR User Tool Deprecated? Angus...I'm a fan of the native client as well...but tell me this....would you use Amazon or Ebay if you needed to load a client to get to it? Maybe, maybe not...but I doubt that you WOULDN'T use it if you had to use the web browser, right? The default delivery method for this type of software these days is web...maintaining clients is a royal pain in the ARS (sorry...couldn't resist the pun)...web applications are robust and those apps that rely on client based interactions need to update their interfaces to allow for newer technologies. E-mail correspondence to and from this address may be subject to the North Carolina Public Records Law and may be disclosed to third parties by an authorized state official. _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org<http://www.arslist.org/> attend wwrug10 www.wwrug.com<http://www.wwrug.com/> ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" _attend WWRUG10 www.wwrug.com<http://www.wwrug.com/> ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"_ _attend WWRUG10 www.wwrug.com<http://www.wwrug.com/> ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"_ -- Patrick Zandi _attend WWRUG10 www.wwrug.com ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"_ _attend WWRUG10 www.wwrug.com ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"_ _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org attend wwrug10 www.wwrug.com ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"
