'My Services' View

[Dan Munns]

Good stuff!  

[Jeremy]

Will the URL change as part of this migration? We are only asking as we are going Live in about 2 weeks with our instance and wanted to start with the 'new portal' rather than transitioning our staff to a new system and portal then again in a few weeks having to change the portal details.

[Gerry]

@Jeremy

The URL in the new user portal will not change...

https://beta.hornbill.com/<your_instance>/my-services/

Gerry

[Guest Paul Alexander]

Quick question - where have the descriptions gone for the services?

 

[Guest Chaz]

@Paul Alexander we looked at how other tools/services (not just service management) handled lists like this and the majority did not include descriptions and where they did they weren't truncated so we made a design choice to remove them in the new My Services view.

Was it something your users found useful?

[Keith]

I apologize for the lack of input on this topic so far, unfortunately, real life is getting in the way.

I have quite a few concerns about the changes to the service portal and the input to the user community. I feel that our current service portal looks far more professional than the proposed "My Services" view. 

Current Portal...

Current "My Services"... Sorry but in my opinion, this does not look great in comparison to above. 

 

Some of my issues are as follows:

1: Remove Hornbill branding and replace with ours. - Our users know nothing of Hornbill, our service desk is branded as "The Leica Support Hub"

2: The header area is too large. There is a lot of wasted space above the above the search box and I think the test of "My Services" is too large.

3: Too much wasted space at the sides of the screens.  I personally don't like the "Windowed" look and would like to play with the background image to see how I can improve the look. 

4: Again, too much wasted space in this area in my opinion. There is such a lot of space at the top of the screen before we get to the services themselves.

5: The texts seem to be using a different colour to that of the current service portal. Also lots of wasted space again. We should also have the option to show descriptions of the services.

I personally prefer the bulletin at the top but it needs to be very narrow. Perhaps more of a ticker tape effect would be better.  

 

 

 

Sorry to sound so negative.

 

Keith

 

 

 

 

 

[Aaron Summers]

@Keith

Just want to give you a head up, you have posted 3 duplicated attachments of the original attached.

 

Aaron

[Keith]

Thanks @Aaron Summers no idea how those last three got there? Please ignore them.

 

 

 

 

 

[Darren Rose]

On 7/25/2018 at 8:12 AM, Chaz said:

@Paul Alexander we looked at how other tools/services (not just service management) handled lists like this and the majority did not include descriptions and where they did they weren't truncated so we made a design choice to remove them in the new My Services view.

Was it something your users found useful?

Our users did find the descriptions very useful, yes. Whether this come become an option that turn on or off, that way your customers have a choice if they wish to display the description or not?

[Darren Rose]

Is there an update on when the Employee Portal will be moved from preview, and therefore suitable to publish to basic users instead of the current Service portal? 

Thanks

Darren 

[Gerry]

@Darren Rose

I am currently on leave ATM but will give a better update on my return. There are a number of outstanding usability issues which I wanted to have addressed before we finalise this. We also have a fair bit of back-end work to complete in order to complete the transition from service.hornbill.com, we will aim to get this done as quickly as possible.

We could take it out of preview now if needed sooner rather than later because it is functionally complete, please let me know if there are any gaps that you would need closing out. 

 

Gerry

[Gerry]

@Keith

Let me start here "Sorry to sound so negative.", there is no need for an apology, we thrive on feedback, negative or positive is good, and your always constructive in your input and I appreciate that very much.

In response to your comment, "I feel that our current service portal looks far more professional than the proposed "My Services" view. " I agree with you.  The original high-level brief was to create the same portal-like experience we have in the service portal, but in the user app, and in this regard we are not there yet which is why its a preview.  In fact, there is a lot of complexity and layers here to deal with, at the moment the focus has turned to the back-end code platform capabilities required to make the next phase happen. 

As it stands today, the Service Catalog is a function of the Service Manager application, and our goal is to transition this, so it becomes part of the core platform.  Why? Primarily because we want other applications that we have on our platform to be able to publish services, knowledge and additional information into the service catalog, this is technically very difficult to do while the SC is part of our SM application, primarily because of the strict security model around data domains our platform imposes.  We are doing this to underpin the ever-expanding use of our solution outside of IT, in particular in the broader ESM domain.  

Quote

Remove Hornbill branding and replace with ours. - Our users know nothing of Hornbill, our service desk is branded as "The Leica Support Hub" 

So this point was always going to be one of the most contentious points in the transition plan from the service portal to the user-app based My Services view, and some background is justified here.  The first thing to know is that the service portal (service.hornbill.com) and the customer portal (customer.hornbill.com) are both sharing the same code base.  In fact, the customer portal was the original design; we derived the service portal from the same code base to support what we would have otherwise called "self-service." in the IT Service Desk world. It was deemed by the product teams that we needed a new class of user (basic user) for internal support so in effect creating "internal customers," and as a result, the service portal was born to support these users.   It was always intended for the customer portal be fully brandable because that is how a CRM type service portal should be deployed to external customers, your external customers should never know/care what back-end system is used to power your front-end customer-facing services.  Now one could argue that would be true for deploying a portal internally and that is reasonable, so when we derived the service portal from the customer portal by making the same code work in a slightly different mode, we enabled full re-branding as a direct consequence which for the service portal was fine. 

The problem now is, both the service portal and the customer portal share the same code, and as a consequence, both portal experiences are delivering the lowest common denominator in function, and for our aspirations of developing a world-class set of capabilities to support ESP and digital transformation initiatives this has become a very limiting factor.  Both portals need to take their separate path; the customer portal requires more CRM-like capabilities; while the service portal needs to better support employees. 

By moving the service catalog out of the SM application into core features and creating the "My Services" view we are creating a platform that allows us to properly bridge the gap between a "basic" and "platform/process" users to address the many needs that we cannot efficiently fulfill.  

In particular, you said, "Our users know nothing of Hornbill" we recognize this to be true, by the same token we have never had a plan or desire to remove Hornbill branding from our core application, having brand recognition amongst our power users is an essential part of Hornbill's go-to-market strategy. Customer advocacy and it is impossible for customers to have an appreciation of what Hornbill is doing for them if they don't know Hornbill is powering the experience, so the branding in our power user app has to remain.   So the challenge for me to find a workable compromise for Hornbill and for what our customers have been used to as an indirect consequence of using a capability that was designed to support our CRM-like strategy. 

Further to that point, we also have in our sights a mobile app for your end users, something that will put the service catalog on their mobile devices and this will be native apps in the various app stores. Probably called something like the "Hornbill Service Catalog," this means your end users will have some form of visibility that Hornbill is the thing powering your service catalog in the same way as they have the awareness they are using O365 for documents and Sharepoint for documentation. 

Quote

 

The header area is too large. There is a lot of wasted space above the above the search box, and I think the test of "My Services" is too large.

 

Yes, 100% agree, this is where a lot of the problem is, this was a first cut that introduced material design, so things like tasks/approvals/.user profile and other areas that a basic/co-worker users have visibility of will be consistent, there is most definitely some way to go here. 

Quote

Too much wasted space at the sides of the screens.  I don't like the "Windowed" look and would like to play with the background image to see how I can improve the look.

Yes, we need more layout options here, this was our first cut, and I plan to make this quite a lot more customizable, even with the introduction of skins, this will all evolve as soon as we have the SC as part of the core platform. The core team will then be free to drive the evolution of this presentation; I would expect this to be a lot more tunable to personal and corporate/brand tastes. 

Quote

The texts seem to be using a different color to that of the current service portal. Also lots of wasted space again. We should also have the option to show descriptions of the services.

Noted, thank you. 

Well, I hope that at least gives you some comfort that we have considered a lot of what you have said, this is really only the start and is far from the finished article. You will see further changes in the coming weeks/months, and together I am confident we can create a world-class experience that will inspire everyone's digital transformation and ESM initiatives.

 

Gerry

[Giuseppe Iannacone]

@Keith and @Gerry

I agree with all the 5 points that Keith pointed out so precisely, and i have read the reply that Gerry has done. So I will add my point of view to enrich the discussion.

1. we might have a compromise letting us adding our brand with an addition branding for Hornbill (Something like "Customer Logo" Powered by HORNBILL)

2. give us the possibility to customize size, colors and foreground/background with an additional rectangle layer with opacity/transparency levels custumizable (this might be helpful when the portal background colors does fit well with the mail title colors and size)

3.  fully agree, maybe adding some transparency might result useful?

4. fully agree

5. fully agree

6. having the news and bulletin on the top is better and it will be good to have the possibility to set the size of the bar (like small, medium, large, extra-large)

Thank you!

[Darren Rose]

19 hours ago, Gerry said:

@Darren Rose

I am currently on leave ATM but will give a better update on my return. There are a number of outstanding usability issues which I wanted to have addressed before we finalise this. We also have a fair bit of back-end work to complete in order to complete the transition from service.hornbill.com, we will aim to get this done as quickly as possible.

We could take it out of preview now if needed sooner rather than later because it is functionally complete, please let me know if there are any gaps that you would need closing out. 

 

Gerry

Hi Gerry

No particular requirements from us at the moment - we have haven't run into any major issues, and reported any bugs we found.

My query was just one around communication. I am going to use the change to rebrand the portal, inline with other depts. in VINCI starting to use Hornbill. It makes sense for me to do it all under one comms plan, so I am just looking to schedule that for the best time. 

Enjoy your holiday! 

Thanks 

 

[Keith]

@Gerry

Apologies for not responding sooner but I am just back from vacation.

Thanks as always for providing an open and transparent response, which I appreciate very much.

On 8/12/2018 at 2:30 PM, Gerry said:

there is a lot of complexity and layers here to deal with, at the moment the focus has turned to the back-end code platform capabilities required to make the next phase happen. 

 

Given the statement above it sounds like we are still some considerable way off from this being anything more than a preview. I had initially thought this was meant to be a 30 day preview only but there's clearly still a lot to do. From the detailed history of the portals you have provided this sounds like quite an undertaking.

 

On 8/12/2018 at 2:30 PM, Gerry said:

So the challenge for me to find a workable compromise for Hornbill and for what our customers have been used to as an indirect consequence of using a capability that was designed to support our CRM-like strategy. 

 

I fully appreciate why the branding is important to you as I'm sure you do with regard how we would like to brand the application. I think @Giuseppe Iannacone's suggestion is a possible workable one whereby we could both enjoy some level of branding alongside each other. 

It's good to know your working on native apps and I'll look forward to reviewing them as they become available. 

Thanks also for the feedback on the points I raised regards to spacing/sizing etc. I'm sure most of these are common requests across the community and its good to know that these are acknowledged and will be considered as part of the development.

 

Regards

 

Keith

 

[samwoo]

I just wanted to say that I saw some 3 new settings and I've changed them... the new Service Portal looks really nice afte making these changes when going into the Services!

[Keith]

13 minutes ago, samwoo said:

I just wanted to say that I saw some 3 new settings and I've changed them... the new Service Portal looks really nice afte making these changes when going into the Services!

Do you wanna share what those settings are?  

[samwoo]

1 minute ago, Keith said:

Do you wanna share what those settings are?  

I could do....  stay tuned.

[samwoo]

employeeportal.experimental.automaticColours Enable automatic choice of colours based on the first character of the service name employeeportal.experimental.catalogLayouts Enable experimental catalog item layout improvements employeeportal.experimental.tileBackground Enable a tiled background, instead of a fading background. An appropriate image should be used in the Home Page Image field on the 'Home > System > Manage Portals > Customise Service Portal' page

(Service Manager settings)

They may have already existed before... but i've just found them by accident. Turned them all on to "Yes".

Look at this:

So the colour differs based on the first character of the Catalog - very nice!

[Gerry]

Please keep in mind these settings are experimental because we are changing things to improve the presentation of the employee portal, This has taken us longer than I would have hoped but we have a lot of backend changes to make, I am committed to bringing a really big step change to the presentation of this portal. We have had lots of feedback and are listening, so please keep it coming.

Gerry

[Martyn Houghton]

As we operate multiple desks on the same instance, it would be good to have the ability to set a default image source for the background, but have the option to specify a different source based on organisation membership.

Cheers

Martyn

[Martyn Houghton]

On 8/13/2018 at 12:34 AM, Giuseppe Iannacone said:

@Keith and @Gerry

I agree with all the 5 points that Keith pointed out so precisely, and i have read the reply that Gerry has done. So I will add my point of view to enrich the discussion.

1. we might have a compromise letting us adding our brand with an addition branding for Hornbill (Something like "Customer Logo" Powered by HORNBILL)

@Gerry

In terms of branding, has there been any further development on having the ability use the compromise option suggested by @Giuseppe Iannacone above?

Cheers

Martyn

[Dan Munns]

On 10/19/2018 at 10:39 AM, samwoo said:

employeeportal.experimental.automaticColours Enable automatic choice of colours based on the first character of the service name employeeportal.experimental.catalogLayouts Enable experimental catalog item layout improvements employeeportal.experimental.tileBackground Enable a tiled background, instead of a fading background. An appropriate image should be used in the Home Page Image field on the 'Home > System > Manage Portals > Customise Service Portal' page

(Service Manager settings)

They may have already existed before... but i've just found them by accident. Turned them all on to "Yes".

I have noticed that with catalogLayouts setting enabled, the creeping icons have returned, again no rhyme or reason, with the same icon not always creeping if shown in different services.

Also would it be possible to format the spacing to be centered rather than justified as the huge gap if only two CIs are visible looks (in my opinion) awful. 

Finally, maybe add an option to colour the CIs based on request type, with us being able to select the colour for each request type somewhere? 

Thanks 

 

[Dan Munns]

Are we going to see any further customisations in this area soon? 

Also could we have the option to remove the 'Preview' texts. I am wanting to pull the trigger on this with our portal soon but having the 'Preview' text will raise all kinds of questions. 

[Gerry]

@Dan Munns

We are looking at the final round of changes to the current implementation, those will be rolled out and preview will be removed in early January.  We are still making a lot of changes in this area though so it will continue to evolve and improve in the first half of 2019. 

Gerry