ItmSUITE® - Complementary modules

Complementary modules

This section illustrates the complementary modules of itmSUITE®.

FM - Financial Management

This complementary module is compatible with the SM (Service Desk and Service Management) and PM (Project and Portfolio Management) core modules.

It makes it possible to manage budgets, final balance sheets and forecasts for human resources, expenses and ad hoc general expenses (for example costs relating to the purchase of hardware, software, equipment etc).

At a high level, the main functions that this module offers are as follows:

• management of timesheets and expenses;
• management of purchase contracts;
• management of sales contracts;
• management of project budget, final balance sheets and forecasts (in conjunction with the PM module);
• management of project budget, final balance sheets and forecasts (in conjunction with the SM module);
• management of budget, final balance sheets and forecasts for individual processes (eg. change, problem, requests etc) (in conjunction with the SM module);
• pro-forma invoicing for projects and/or services (in conjunction with PM or SM modules).

The module offers a basic reporting function that with the REP (Reporting Management) module becomes unlimited.

Related Modules

• SM - Service Desk and Service Management
• PM - Project and Portfolio Management
• REP - Reporting Management

OCE - Service Level Management

This complementary module is compatible with the SM (Service Desk and Service Management) and PM (Project and Portfolio Management) core modules.

It makes it possible to define and control KPIs and targets that can easily be used for the service level management with customer and suppliers or internally.

At a high level, the main functions that this module offers are as follows:

• the definition of KPIs and targets via a graphic interface;
• near real time calculation of the indicators;
• visualisation of the indicators on lists or records of information (eg. incident, change, projects);
• use of the calculated indicators to trigger action, in other words the rules of business that can be freely configured in the SM (Service Desk and Service Management) module or PM (Project and Portfolio Management) module (for example by sending messages, opening tickets, changing information etc);
• use of the calculated indicators to create reports;

The module offers a basic reporting function that with REP (Reporting Management) module becomes unlimited.

Related Modules

• SM - Service Desk and Service Management
• PM - Project and Portfolio Management
• ASM - Asset and Service Management
• REP - Reporting Management

ASM - Asset and Service Management

This complementary module requires the presence of the SM - Service Desk and Service Management core module.

Its activation makes the CMS (Configuration Management System) database module available and through this, the possibility to insert and modify assets (eg. hardware, software, equipment etc).

The typology of the assets and the attributes (information) which can be managed are freely definable.

The assets can be connected to the SM module (Service Desk and Service Management) management information. In this way, for example, it is possible to connect a specific configuration item to an incident or a change or a personal endowment to a resource.

The module offers the basic reporting function which can become unlimited by adding the REP module (Reporting Management).

Related Modules

• SM - Service Desk and Service Management
• REP - Reporting Management

RE - Reconciliation Engine

This complementary module requires the presence of the CMS - Configuration Management System core module.

It makes it possible to acquire information on the configuration items or the relationships between those that come from external systems to the itmSUITE, for example CMDB or external asset management systems or even REP systems or simple spreadsheets, and to manage their intelligent upload into the CMS database via freely configurable rules.

Especially,it allows to verify the presence of this information (via freely definable reconciliation keys) and the different ways of behaviour (creating a new configuration item, replacing a data with up to date information, etc).

New interfaces (plugin) can be created, upon request, for any external system.

It also goes with the DE - Discovery Engine core module for which it offers a plugin that makes it possible to intelligently upload the information on the configuration items identified by DE - Discovery Engine in the CMS of itmSUITE®.

Related Modules

• CMS - Configuration Management System
• DE - Discovery Engine

SP - Sharepoint Publisher

This complementary module enables interaction between the CMS (Configuration Management System) core module and portals based on Microsoft Sharepoint.

The CMS side offers all the functions needed to totally or partially export the CMS content, including the configuration items and the graphic representation of these (maps). The Sharepoint side offers a collection of components (Web Parts) that make it possible to browse the information contained on the Sharepoint pages while maintaining all the original links between the different information.

In this way, it is possible to publish 'snapshots' of the Configuration Management System at certain moments on advanced communication tools (Sharepoint) which mean structured information from the CMS can be combined with non-structured information. This component is especially useful and efficient to implement a Service Catalogue according to best practices and standards of IT Service Management.

Related Modules

• CMS - Configuration Management System

REP - Reporting Management

This complementary module is based on the open source product BIRT which has a reporting designer with a drag&drop interface. It also has an engine for the execution and presentation of reports that is perfectly integrated with the other itmSUITE® modules. These modules already have some native reports but the REP (Reporting Management) module makes it possible to integrate new ones created by the designer. REP module is therefore an indispensable tool for users who don't have reports and/or don't intend to create ones by an itmSUITE® indipendent platform.

Related Modules

• SM - Service Desk and Service Management
• PM - Project and Portfolio Management
• CMS - Configuration Management System
• DE - Discovery Engine
• FM - Financial Management
• OCE - Service Level Management
• ASM - Asset and Service Management

EEM - External Event Management

It is difficult to work in a context where, inside or outside the organization that manages projects or services, there is the need to communicate with other external systems (eg. typical systems monitoring infrastructure or the trouble ticketing systems customers and/or suppliers).

For this reason, the architecture of itmSUITE® is specifically designed to manage the integration of the system.

Especially, there is an internal bus for integration between all the modules (MB - message Bus) which is included with the purchase of any core module and the EEM - External Event Management module. The latter is set up for dialogue with external systems, and this can take place via mail or web services.

The EEM parser interprets the messages that arrive and activates the processes that have to deal with them thanks to the business rule management components (known as Action Engine) of the various itmSUITE® modules. The integration by itmSUITE® towards external systems is generally through the latter, Action Engine, where are configured triggers and steps to be performed on external systems that expose services for this purpose.

Typical examples of integration are as follows:

• Opening or update of Incident and/or Change based on notifications coming from the monitoring system (eg. poor service or a server back in service);
• Opening or update of Incident, Change or Problem based on notifications coming from the systems that manage external tickets.

The integration with LDAP and Active Directory is managed by the itmSUITE® core modules and doesn't require the installation of the EEM component.

Related Modules

• SM - Service Desk and Service Management
• PM - Project and Portfolio Management
• CMS - Configuration Management System