Problem Tracking Software Status FOCUS — June 8 th 2000 Tony Cass —

2 Tony Cass Problem Tracking Support  Provided by IT using Remedy Corporation’s Action Request System.  Two “Remedy” applications are supported by the IT/TS/IR section: –CERN PRMS for general Problem Tracking –A call management system to support the IT/PDP System Administration Contract.  Details are available on the Web at –

3 Tony Cass CERN PRMS — Background  The PRMS application –is built on top of Remedy’s standard “HelpDesk” application, –was designed to meet the requirements of the outsourced Distributed Computing Support Contract which started at the beginning of 1999, and –was extended at the end of April this year to support “multiple domains”, i.e. to allow reuse of the workflow by other groups—such as experiments.

4 Tony Cass CERN PRMS — Problems  Complexity –The CERN PRMS application is complex, involving over 3500 “active links” and some 150 different “forms” (many of which hold details of which users can do what). –This complexity was the cause of the long development time required to provide the support for multiple domains—and thus to provide a replacement for the GNATS service.  Inflexibility –PRMS forms and active links are shared by the different domains and so cannot be changed independently. Since, as noted above, the “user rights” are held in a form this means that any changes have to be managed centrally. This means that the system looks inflexible to users—and making trivial administrative changes adds overhead for the support staff.

5 Tony Cass CERN PRMS — The Consultant’s View  A consultant came to CERN in mid-May to review the IT Remedy service.  The final report 1 was positive, including phrases such as –“The Remedy server has been well set up and configured”, and –“[The current helpdesk application] is quite impressive and has obviously had a lot of thought put into it.”  However, the report also concludes that –we need a backup server and a disaster recovery plan, and –the PRMS application is now being hindered rather than helped by the link with Remedy’s canned HelpDesk application. 1 Report available at

6 Tony Cass CERN PRMS — The Way Forward  The PRMS application will be detached from the Remedy HelpDesk base in July. This will –provide a solid base for future development »e.g. integration of the IT/US workflow –and allow us to delegate authority for administrative changes in the different domains.  This plan was approved at a Remedy User Meeting on June 5 th. –More generally, all PRMS development items are prioritised at such meetings and the PRMS “implementation rollout schedule” is published on the web and updated regularly.

7 Tony Cass CERN PRMS and the Web  Two Web interfaces are available, –a simple but restrictive interface, ARWeb, and –RemedyWeb, which has the full functionality of the standard client interface but is seen as being too complex.  An ARWeb interface to the PRMS system has been developed and is being improved with active collaboration from OPAL and LHCb.