Cherwell Frequently Asked Questions

 

Don’t see an answer you’re looking for?  To find out more, email servicemanagement@missouri.edu.

 

Product Selection Questions

Why are we replacing Remedy?

UM System has been using Remedy since 2011.  Over that time period, we have been unsuccessful at making full use of the tool’s capabilities.  Since we implemented Remedy, the Service Management platform options have expanded considerably and there are several newer tools on the market that are fundamentally different from Remedy’s traditional software approach.

Why did we select Cherwell?

Cherwell Service Management is a software platform.  That means it is more a collection of tools that we can use to build our business process workflows than it is pre-defined workflows that we must adapt to.  We evaluated all the leading service management products on the market and Cherwell offered the best balance of enterprise scale, cost, flexibility, and vendor partnership.

What capabilities does Cherwell have?

Out of the box, Cherwell is built to provide incident tickets and service request management, a customer facing self-service portal, knowledge articles, service level agreements, and service catalog management.  These processes are a great starting point for any UM System business function that provides services to internal units or external customers.  In addition, there are IT specific processes such as a service and asset configuration database (CMDB), asset management, change management, problem management, release management, and event management.  Finally, there are additional modules available for HR management, facilities management, project and portfolio management, inventory management, and security and compliance management.  Our license entitles us to any and all of these capabilities for a single fee.

The best part about Cherwell is that we aren’t limited to the functionality they offer.  We can build our own at anytime to challenges unique to us.  If we can draw the process on a whiteboard, then we can make it happen on Cherwell.

 

Implementation Questions

Who is migrating from Remedy to Cherwell?

All the current users of Remedy will need to migrate over to Cherwell before June 2019.  This includes IT at all four campuses, UM System HR, and UM System Finance.

When will the different units migrate to Cherwell?

UM System HR will be migrating first in August 2018.  The IT units will be migrating in October 2018.  We are still planning UM System Finance’s migration.

What functionality will be included when we go live with Cherwell?

The IT units will all be going live with a customer self-service portal, a complete service catalog, some customer facing self-service requests, incident and service request ticketing, knowledge management, dashboards for ticket workers and their supervisors, and customer surveys.  HR will be going live with ticket management and we will deploy a self-service customer portal for them in Phase II.

Who has been involved in the design and configuration decision-making process?

Our goal with the Cherwell design has been to balance the needs of the customers, ticket workers, managers, executives, and the Cherwell support team.  We want everyone who interacts with this platform to get value from it with minimal overhead and friction.  Therefore, to make our design decisions we have engaged over 50 different staff members System wide who come from a variety of support backgrounds and business functions.  We have built a collaborative process whereby everyone has input and final decisions are made by a representative steering committee.

When will we be implementing asset management?

Asset management is part of Phase II.  We will begin the next Phase immediately after we go live with Phase I for IT in October.  We will start design and planning for asset management in November 2018 and we will be creating our detailed implementation plan at that time.  Our goal is to launch asset management in early 2019.

When will we be implementing change management?

Change management is part of Phase III.  We will be starting this last phase in Spring 2019 and will need to be completed by June 2019 so we can shut down Remedy on schedule.

 

Go Live Process

How will open tickets carry over from Remedy to Cherwell?

We will go live on a Monday morning and we will close Remedy four business days later on Thursday evening.  Leading up to the go live, we will ask everyone to close as many Remedy tickets as possible.  During the transition period, you will need to identify any Remedy tickets that should remain open after the Thursday deadline and manually re-create those in the Cherwell system.  After we lock access to Remedy, we will automatically close any remaining open tickets.

 

Training Questions

How will training for Cherwell be delivered?

We will be providing a training environment for you to play around with any time.  We are also going to hold mandatory in-person training sessions in September.  Finally, we will provide you a quick reference guide to have at your desk while you are getting used to using Cherwell.

 

Ticketing Questions

How hard will it be to create a ticket in Cherwell?

The design team has put a lot of energy into streamlining the ticketing process on Cherwell.  Today in Remedy it takes approximately 18 clicks to create a new ticket.  In Cherwell we have reduced that to 6.  Tickets will now only require a requester, a short description, and a service classification.

Will Remedy tickets be transferred to Cherwell?

No.  Migrating tickets between systems is a complicated task and we can make the Remedy ticket data available through Cognos.  We are in the process of writing Cognos reports that will allow you to easily locate and review old tickets.

Will Remedy templates be transferred to Cherwell?

No.  Cherwell is built around the Service Catalog and there are several automations inherent in the service classification process such as auto-assigning the ticket to a team, presenting additional fields for the technician to complete, and associating a process checklist with the ticket.  We believe these automations replace the value we were getting out of Remedy templates.  However, Cherwell does have a template feature that we can explore if necessary.

Will we still be able to page the on-call for a team from Cherwell?

Yes.  We are integrating Cherwell with the Division of IT On-Call application.  This integration will work the same way as it does in Remedy.  You will be able to select the on-call team member and check a box to issue a page to them.  This functionality will only be available to IT staff, customers will not be able to page on call staff directly.

What automated emails will be sent for tickets?

Both the customer and the technician will receive automated emails throughout the life of a ticket.   They are as follows:

  • Notify the customer that a ticket has been created for them
  • Notify a team/individual that a ticket has been assigned to them
  • Notify a team/individual that a ticket has been updated with a new journal note (includes email reply from customer)
  • Notify the customer that the ticket is resolved (includes survey link)

Can I send emails directly from Cherwell?

Yes.  In addition to the automated emails, you always have the option of sending a manual email to the customer, another technician, or a group of people.   You can initiate this email from the ticket and when you send, it will automatically be logged as part of the ticket journal.  In addition, all replies to your email will automatically be captured by the Cherwell system and will be added to the ticket journal so anyone can view the email conversation that has occurred.

If I email a customer from the Cherwell system, will I get a copy of it in my inbox?

Not automatically.  However, you can CC yourself on the message you send to the customer so that you will receive a copy of your own.  If the customer responds to the email, their reply will go to the Cherwell ticket as well as to you.  However, you should not respond to the Customer from your own inbox because your response will not be included in the ticket log.

How does ticket assignment work in Cherwell?

For each available classification in the Cherwell Service Catalog, we can specify a default team to assign the ticket to.  We are planning to auto-assign all of the classifications to help ensure that tickets are being directed to the right teams for resolution.  In addition to the default team, we have the ability to define a level 2 and a level 3 team for each service classification so we can automate escalations between teams.  Cherwell users, however, will always have the ability to override the default assignments and choose which team and/or technician to assign a ticket to.

Will we be sending customer surveys when tickets are closed?

Yes.  By default every ticket close notification will be sent with a follow-up survey link to the customer.  If there is a particular service classification where it does not make sense to send a survey, we do have the option to suppress it for tickets classified as that type.  Over time we can also customize survey questions by service classification to get more specific responses on a service by service basis.

Does Cherwell offer email to ticket functionality?

Yes.  Cherwell can monitor any of our Exchange mailboxes and automatically create tickets for each email it receives.  These tickets can be routed to different teams based on which mailbox the email is sent to or parsing of the email itself.

Can technicians track time on their tickets?

Cherwell does offer a way to track time on tickets, but the four campus IT groups have decided to hold off on implementing that feature until more discussions can be had around time tracking protocols and standardization.

 

Service Catalog Questions

What is the Cherwell Service Catalog?

The Service Catalog is core to the workings of the Cherwell platform.  Everything we do within the system, for example creating tickets, publishing knowledge articles, receiving customer requests, and logging changes, is tied to a Service Catalog classification.  By linking all of our operational activity to services, we will be able to provide comprehensive data about service health, performance, and operations, which in turn will help us identify opportunities for continuous improvement and plan for the future.

How is the Cherwell Service Catalog structured?

There are three levels within the catalog.  They are as follows:

  • Service – A collection of service offerings that complement one another to provide a broad set of business capabilities (i.e. Email & Collaboration, Servers & Storage, Benefits)
  • Category – The combination of expertise, support, process, and technology that delivers value to the end user by fulfilling their personal or business need (i.e. health insurance, web conferencing, virtual server)
  • Subcategory – A task the customer or technician can execute against a Category.  This can include requests, support (i.e. How To), consulting, providing information, and/or resolving a problem.

How was our Service Catalog defined?

The Service Management Team has been working with the managers and supervisors of all Division of IT teams to define our Categories and Subcategories.

What will happen if the service classification I need for a ticket isn’t available?

We have tried our best to create a comprehensive service catalog for you to make tickets against, but perfection is unattainable.  Therefore, we have created an Uncategorized option in the service catalog tree for you to use if you are unable to find the option you need.  Tickets marked Uncategorized will be monitored and followed up on so that we can continue to develop our Service Catalog.

Will the DoIT Service Catalog application be retired?

Yes.  We are moving management of the Service Catalog directly to the Cherwell platform and retiring the DoIT web site.  Therefore, we will no longer need the DoIT Service Catalog application once we go live.  The Service Management team is migrating content to Cherwell as part of the project.

 

Customer Portal Questions

What is the difference between the Cherwell customer self-service portal and the Division of IT website?

We are still working on our portal design, but it is our goal to replace the current http://doit.missouri.edu website with the Cherwell customer portal.  We will update this information as we get further into planning.

Will the Help Desk support chat option be available from the Cherwell portal?

Yes.  When we go-live the link to initiate a support chat will be available during Help Desk business hours.  Eventually we will integrate Cherwell with Bomgar to automatically initiate tickets from chats and log the conversation details.

Will MyServices still be available after Cherwell goes live?

No.  We have reviewed all the active request forms in MyServices and have identified those that will move to Cherwell.  We are building new Cherwell request forms for those we are keeping that will be ready for the go-live.  MyServices will be deactivated the day we go live with Cherwell and we will redirect customers to the new Cherwell self-service portal.

Will Cherwell have financial approval workflow like MyServices?

Not when we go live.  When a customer makes a request that has a charge associated with it, we will notify the fiscal officer for the MoCode they submit, but the request will not be held up for approval.  We will be implementing true approvals in Phase III (Spring 2019).

 

Dashboard Questions

What dashboards will be available at go-live?

We are launching with a Technician dashboard for day to day ticket workers and a Manager dashboard for team supervisors.  These dashboards will provide a one-stop shop for managing all your open tickets.

Can I build dashboards of my own?

Yes.  Cherwell allows you to build new dashboards for yourself if you are a technician.  Managers will have the ability to build new dashboards for their teams.

 

Knowledge Management Questions

Will we be transferring content from our current Knowledgebase to Cherwell?

Yes.  We have been cleaning up out of date and duplicate articles, but we will be transferring the articles we have identified to keep over to Cherwell prior to the go-live in October.

Will users still be able to go to help.missouri.edu?

Yes.  On go-live day, we will point that address at the new Cherwell customer self-service portal.

 

People Data Questions

What data will be available about UM System people in Cherwell?

We are integrating our PeopleSoft systems with Cherwell so that we have a complete directory of employees and students that we can track tickets and assets against.  We will have information about their role with the university as well as their contact information.

How often will people data be updated in Cherwell?

We will be sending changes from PeopleSoft to Cherwell nightly.

 

Client Questions

Do I need to install software to use Cherwell?

No.  Cherwell offers a rich web client that will meet most users needs.  For those who want to perform advanced functions, there may be cases where a software client will be required for their workstation.

Does Cherwell work on my mobile device?

Yes.  The main functions of Cherwell like creating and modifying a ticket will work on your mobile device.  There is no app to install, you simply access the regular Cherwell URL from your mobile web browser.

What browsers does Cherwell work with?

All modern browsers are supported.

Can I work multiple tickets in multiple windows simultaneously?

Yes.  Both the Cherwell web client and desktop client support having multiple windows/tabs.  You can be working in different parts of the platform in different windows/tabs without affecting your work in the others.

 

 

Don’t see an answer you’re looking for?  To find out more, email servicemanagement@missouri.edu.