HP Service Manager 7 Review

"Infuriating and frustrating to use" best describes HP Service Manager 7. I work on a helpdesk and have used this tool for over 6 months now and I must say this one takes the cake. It's worst piece of shit I've ever used. Worst than Peregrine, Clarify, Support Magic and Remedy. Here's why:

Performance, don't have any...

It's slow and hangs constantly. Worst part is, when it hangs you loose all your data and have to start over. Switching screens take a good two minutes, loading around 40 records. I can order something of Amazon.com in the time it takes Service Manager 7 to load 40 records. In this day and age this crap just shouldn't happen.

Hope you like seeing a lot of these. You will!

From what I read HP Service Manager 7 uses a non relational database. Which means it's saving repetitive data in one or two giant tables. How they can get away with this cheap database design is beyond me. It makes the application slow and crashes it when pulling the simplest amount of data because it has to search thousands upon thousands of useless pieces of data.

Usability, forget about it!

Pulling up customer history is impossible. Using this at a helpdesk we get a lot of requests asking for update on existing tickets. You would think that a tool key points should be it's ability to view history. They have a little button to view customer call history however it shows all requests or incidents but without titles. So looking for something specific becomes a lesson in futility. You have to view and open each request or incident to know which one is which.
 

Displaying nothing of importance comes standard

For some odd reason the default view in HP Service Manager 7 seems to sort its tickets in an odd fashion. Spot the simple mistake in the number sort for the ticket numbers? Take a good look.

You can see how this can be frustrating. Also notice the other fields, nothing such as the name or description of the issues. Something that should be important to the majority of the people that use this application. As such I had to go and create 3 individual views in and then have to go and monitor 3 individual screens due to the separation of Request, Incidents and Interactions. This To Do list should have all 3 and it does however provides no other other information except ticket number, status, priority, assignment group and owner.

Sales conspiracy?

We switched to this tool from Peregrine. The version I have is client Version: 7.11.124.  Since the switch I search and search on Google for anything relating to this software but came up empty handed. Every site seems to only spew out the same sales pitch as if they were working for Hewlett Packard. Page after page of search results and no one has an honest opinion about HP Service Manager 7.

In conclusion I wish I could find the person within our company that signed off on this tool and beat his head in with a hammer repeatedly.


Pros:

-Ability to email ticket details and updates.
-Crystal Reports capabilities

Cons:

-No undo function on in the description field.
-Inability to view history within a non-infuriating way (record by record, hope you like opening every one, because your going to have to with this piece of trash).
-Non-intuitive / user friendly designed. Layout is over populated with fields.
-Application crashes when moving about different queues.
-Loss of screen space. Designed on a small resolution.
-Tiny box allowing a easy view of 3 lines of text. It's ridiculous.
-Unreliable.


I give HP Service Manager a lousy 2.1 and thus a failing grade.

Peregrine Service Center 5.1 Review

"An episode in cruelty" best describes Peregrine Service Center 5.1. Full of required fields, a tendency to crash loosing all data and a lack of common windows options that you would expect from any other application.

First and unforgivable fault - No undo function.

What type of application doesn't have an undo function? Well this one doesn't. Hell even notepad has an undo function. Guess what, if you over-typed something with this app it's gone forever. It forces any sane user to use an alternate tool to keep information safe. Example; notepad. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of a ticket logging tool! If your tool is not user friendly enough to allow a simple undo function or even a ctrl+Z function then you should drop the ball and get out of the game.
I'm reminds me of the Electrasol commercial "you wouldn't wash your dishes before washing your dishes.". With Peregrine Service Center 5.1 you will!

Second fault - Rushed design

In a list ticket view it doesn't let you save any type of order or query. It also only grabs a page of records at a time causing you list to expand having to constantly click on the scroll bar to move down. If I was designing this app I would find this unacceptable. In turn this app has problems pulling up a simple query of issue types. It causes the application to crash causing the user loose all data that was imputed. Also It was designed in a smaller resolution and as such on today's screens the static text boxes do not expand. giving hell of a lot of white space that could be used but isn't. It's very fustrating. About as frustrating as Google's blogger post writer cutting in the middle of the page but that's another story.

Third fault - Inability to copy ticket number to the clipboard.

This one's necessity in my opinion. You need that ticket number to email around for various reason. It's incredibly frustrating having to copy from memory an eight digit number over and over again like a darn robot when the developer should have made it available.




Pros:

-Application opens in a reasonable amount of time.
-Ability to email ticket details and updates.

Cons:

-No undo function of any sort, only an undo button but that returns it to the original state of the ticket. Even then this is only available on selected screens.
-Inability to copy ticket number.
-Non-intuitive / user friendly designed. Layout is rushed.
-Application crashes on tiny queries with only 8 records.
-Loss of screen space. Designed on a small resolution.
-Unreliable.


I give Peregrine Service Center 5.1 a failing grade.