ZENworks Service Desk 8.1

1.0 Readme Updates

The following table contains information on the documentation content changes that were made in this Readme after the initial release of ZENworks Service Desk 8.1

Date

Readme Item Added or Updated

October 21, 2019

January 14, 2020

2.0 What’s New in ZENworks Service Desk 8.1 and 8.1.x

This section lists the new features in ZENworks Service Desk 8.1 and 8.1.x releases:

2.1 ZENworks Service Desk 8.1

The new features in ZENworks Service Desk 8.1 include:

  • The traditional customer portal capabilities have been moved to the new, modernized customer portal, this includes:

    • A new customer portal home page dashboard that makes it easy for end users to view things that are most important.

    • Ability to easily open common calls through the use of Quick Calls.

    • Modernized access to the Knowledge Base with improved search capabilities.

    • Improved Survey experience.

    • Ability to view end-user assigned Items and Services in the new customer portal.

    • Outage notification in the Home page.

    • New status that makes it easy for users to see when requests are awaiting inputs or approval.

    • Option to view only the open or active requests.

    • Enhanced list view with advanced filtering, sorting and on-scroll display.

  • Extended and simplified information gathering process in a user-friendly way by providing Dynamic Form creation and filling for Quick Calls.

  • Customer driven Technician portal enhancements:

    • Enhanced request visibility to Technician with control to restrict the visibility within the Team.

    • Ability to create Service Requests on a Hardware Item

    • Enhanced LDAP import capability with a provision to import users of any role from "Domain Users" group.

    • New canned workflow for Line Manager Approval for Store Items

    • Soft restriction on closing Group Requests.

    • Re-sizable text area in the Technician portal.

    • Auto login to new customer portal, if navigated from old portal.

  • Extended integration with ZENworks

    • New store extensions to allow assignments to be made by placing ZENworks devices into ZENworks device groups.

    • New storage extension to facilitate requesting access to OS deployment bundles through the ZENworks Service Desk store.

2.2 ZENworks Service Desk 8.1.1

The section includes the new features and defects fixed in ZENworks Service Desk 8.1.1:

New Features in ZENworks Service Desk 8.1.1

The new features in ZENworks Service Desk 8.1.1 include:

  • Enabling Generic Request by introducing new privilege called Item in Request to make the item selection optional or hidden from end users, while logging a request.

  • The login screen in Customer Portal can be customized to include custom text such as legal information.

  • Item search suggestions are now displayed along with the configured identifier, thereby enabling you to easily identify items while creating a request within the Customer Portal.

  • Provision to view details of an alert in the Customer Portal.

  • Resolving requests in the Customer Portal does not require Note to be added.

  • Mobile Device, Documentation and Software can be configured as Service categories.

  • In a desktop browser, the table header is frozen in the list view of all pages within the Customer Portal, enabling you to view the column titles while scrolling the page.

  • You can now navigate between the auto-suggested search results, displayed in the Search drop-down list within the Customer Portal, by using keyboard.

  • View description and item name details in the Quick Call listing page in the Customer Portal.

  • Ability to configure maximum size limit for emails with attachments. Default attachment size is restricted to 100 MB.

Important Defects Fixed in ZENworks Service Desk 8.1.1

The following defects have been fixed as a part of the ZENworks Service Desk 8.1.1 release:

  • Unable to approve or reject requests through emails if the user's locale is different from the default email locale.

  • Undeliverable email completely stops email polling.

  • Error while clicking on the Search button in the Analysis tab while adding an existing request to a Problem Group.

  • The approval badge is displayed even after the request is approved.

  • Unable to view the Group Quick Call details in the Customer Portal if the browser locale is not English.

  • Attachments are not included when email notifications are sent to the team.

  • Client side validation is not working for Group Quick Calls.

  • Data entered in Custom Fields gets reverted to the default value when an item is edited and saved.

  • Misalignment of dynamic form fields in the Technician Portal.

  • Erratic auto-suggested search results while typing item name or selecting item type while logging a request.

2.3 ZENworks Service Desk 8.1.2

Important Defects Fixed in ZENworks Service Desk 8.1.2

Following are some of the important defects that have been fixed as a part of the ZENworks Service Desk 8.1.2 release:

  • The ZENworks Service Desk 8.1 or 8.1.1 web interface might randomly become unresponsive.

  • The Serviced Customer survey link in an email navigates the customer to a survey of a different closed ticket.

  • If the data type is boolean, the Custom Field radio button might be misaligned.

  • Unable to import items from ZENworks configured with the Oracle database, if multiple ZENworks schema is available.

  • The option to build reports using the Report Builder feature is not available.

  • If the Item Type list contains Assigned as one of the table column, then an exception is displayed.

  • In the Release request, the Manager label is misleading.

  • Under item ownership, the deleted users are not displayed as deleted.

Along with these defects, some minor defects have been addressed in this release.

3.0 Enabling the Old Customer Portal

After migrating to ZENworks Service Desk 8.1, the old customer portal will be disabled. To enable the old Customer portal, perform the following steps:

  1. Go to the system.properties file available in the following location:

    /opt/novell/servicedesk/server/webapps/LiveTime/WEB-INF/LiveTime.woa/Contents/Resources

  2. Add the following line at the end of the system.properties file:

    zsd.useOldCustomerPortal=true

  3. Restart the ZENworks Service Desk service.

NOTE:

  • By enabling the old customer portal, some of the new features added for the new customer portal in ZENworks Service Desk 8.1 might not work.

  • After enabling the old customer portal, in the ZENworks Service Desk Home page, the Customer link in the upper-right corner takes you to the old customer portal, if users have the customer role.

  • To go to the new customer portal, you can perform any of the following:

    • In the login page, click the Take me to the new end-user portal link.

    • Use the following URL:

      https://<zenworks_service_desk_server>/servicedesk/

4.0 Platform Support Matrix

For more information on ZENworks Service Desk 8.1 platform support, see ZENworks Service Desk Platform Support Matrix.

5.0 Deploying or Upgrading or Migrating to the ZENworks Service Desk 8.1

Refer to the following sections to understand which installation process is appropriate for your current environment:

5.1 Upgrading to ZENworks Service Desk 8.1.2

ZENworks Service Desk 8.1.2 is available only through Online Update. Based on your current version of ZENworks Service Desk, refer to the following points to upgrade to ZENworks Service Desk 8.1.2:

6.0 Known Issues

This section displays the list of known issues in the ZENworks Service Desk 8.1/8.1.2.

6.1 Remote Management does not work with ZENworks 2017 Update 4

The Remote Management feature does not work with ZENworks 2017 Update 4.

Workaround: None. Contact Micro Focus Customer Center to obtain a patch that should be applied on the ZENworks 2017 Update 4 Primary Servers.

6.2 Unable to paste images in the TinyMCE editor using Microsoft Edge, Chrome and Internet Explorer

While adding a content in rich text editor box, unable to paste an image that is available in the system.

Workaround: Try with a supported browser such as Mozilla Firefox.

6.3 An application exception might be displayed, if you save the database or license configuration

During installation or upgrade, if you save the database or license configuration, in the login page, java.lang.reflect.InvocationException or java.lang.NullpointerException might be displayed.

Workaround: Restart the Service Desk service. Ensure that the database is up and running and that there are no connection issues between database and ZENworks Service Desk appliance

6.4 If the default store team is edited, the enable queue error message might be displayed

If the default store team is edited, then the enable queue error message might be displayed.

Workaround: In the Team Information tab (Users > Teams > Default Store Team > Team Information > Information), swap the store user with a different username.

6.5 Email attached using drag and drop in GroupWise and sent to ZENworks Service Desk will not be added as a note to the request

In ZENworks Service Desk, if you drag and drop an email as attachment in the GroupWise client, then the attachment content will not be added as a note to the request instead it will be added as an attachment.

Solution: In the GroupWise client, use the Forward as Attachment option instead of drag and drop.

6.6 If ZENworks is configured with the Microsoft SQL Server Database, AMIE and ZENworks AMIE import might fail

AMIE and ZENworks AMIE import fails when ZENworks is configured with the MS SQL Server and the database name has the special character, hyphen '-'

Workaround: None.

6.7 A horizontal bar might be displayed in Description or Note

If <pre> tag is present in the content of the request description or note, then a horizontal bar might be displayed.

Workaround: If possible, remove the <pre> tag and retry.

6.8 The URL field in the custom form displays an error if protocol is not specified

While editing a request that includes custom form with URL, the URL field displays an error if a protocol is not specified.

Workaround: Add the protocol in the URL.

7.0 Additional Documentation

This Readme includes information specific to the ZENworks Service Desk 8.1 release. For all other ZENworks Service Desk documentation, see the ZENworks Service Desk 8.1 documentation website.