I think a proper self-service portal for BigFix is long overdue! The current way that offers work really isn’t very useful, but it could be re-designed into a self service portal with an improved UI, where end users could browse and install new software, updates and other configuration patches.
I think end users would much rather use a user interface that looks like this:
Other competitors to IEM offer similar features and even open source client management and software deployment tools so I think IBM could pull off self-service.
I think it would be a nice addition. There are other competitors, like Altiris, that have a similar “catalog” interface but it’s clunky and doesn’t work 100% of the time (or maybe that’s just where I work) and creating the packages for it, I’ve learned, is not very intuitive.
I figure something like this could be done with a dashboard and wizard that is used to first create the package and use whatever icons or other media you want to make it pretty and the dashboard would be used for determining which endpoints would have access to it?
Obviously this feature is not required and the example shown above would be more like an update/patch that should be administered when needed rather than leaving it to the user but I wouldn’t mind a self-service portal that the user could browse and install from. Might make deploying images and proprietary software for server builds easier as well.
We use a slew of IBM integrated products, two of them being IEM and SCCD and they incorporate this exact scenario, not quite as handsome as your suggestion, but the concept none-the-less. I would also like to see them spruce their interface up in IEM, but I think it would conflict with their initiative to deliver this service through one of their other top products. Once selected, it creates a ticket in SCCD, sends an approval request to their manager if needed, and then sends the command to IEM to push this package to the endpoint, and then closes the ticket when its completed.
Just the sheer ability to deliver software via IEM through the dashboard they offer to create packages and fixlets undermines this other software and the dashboard has been in IEM for years. The only thing IEM would be doing differently is providing the service portal UI through the client.
I certainly wouldn’t oppose additional improvements to the SWD UI, but the Offers tab is not supposed to be the primary interface for self-service SWD. About 18 months ago a web-based self-service portal and corresponding client-side dashboard was released to provide the capabilities you described. Here is a screenshot of the dashboard on the client:
As @morrisjh mentioned, for a full featured appstore with user ratings, approvals, etc, we would look to SCCD (or similar product) to fill that role and integrate IEM with for the delivery portion.
Hi, my name is Liz. I’m BigFix UX Designer and working on a new Self Service App. I would love to get your input, please contact me (ethi@us.ibm.com).
I’ve noticed that the example above contains a list of categories of Communication, Internet, Internet & Cloud, Media, etc… Most other app store example I’ve seen have similar list of categories.
If you could customize your own list of categories, what would it be for your Device Owner?
Thanks for the reply. I think the best approach is to mimic the style of the native OS app store so that the self-service experience is as intuitive as possible. Some admins might want the experience to be similar across all platforms for consistency and training materials, etc. but I think most end users would prefer that it match the OS they are using.
As for categories, preferably they would be customizable either in the fixlet/task or in the action or self-service dashboard so that the admin could organize the software in whatever way fit their environment as well as add custom categories.
Could you please send me an email (ethi@us.ibm.com) so I could have your contact information? I will set up a time so we could walk through the current SSA concept.
We use ServiceNow for our ticketing system. I came across a youtube video that showed SCCM integrated into ServiceNow for self-service. The end user is able to install pre-approve software and for software that needed approval, the person that needs to approve the software got notified. Once it was approved the install proceeded as normal. If there was an issue with the install, a ticket was automatically generated for the appropriate group.
It would be nice is there was an approval process, especially for software with a price tag. If the current clientui had some more information on what is happening when the user clicks install would be helpful. Changing to the Progress tab isn’t intuitive for the end user to check on the status of the install.
Hi Liz,
It would be nice if on the Self Service portal we could have the default page as “Available Software” instead of the default “Mobile Devices”.
Secondly, as has been requested - Available Software could be categorized as under -
Office Applications, Business Apps, Engineering Apps or maybe allow the SSP administrator to create the Categories himself.
Hi - Are you currently using Inventory (aka SUA)? For Release 1, we do not have a concept of approval workflow. I am however, taking note on all the potential request for future releases to help determine the next set of items we should look into.
I would like to set up a time with you to review what we’re proposing for Release 1, 2016 H2. Could you send me an email at ethi@us.ibm.com?
Hi Ravik - I would like to set up a call with you to review what we currently have for Release 1 to see if it inline with what you have in mind. Could you please send me an email at ethi@us.ibm.com?
