Micro Focus Service Management Automation Suite 2020.08 has been released

Recommended Software Update

Micro Focus is announcing the release of

Product: Service Management Automation Suite
Version: 2020.08
Languages: English

The following  new key features are available with this version:

HIGHLIGHTS
Service Manager (SMA-SM) – the SMA Service Portal works with existing instances of Service Manager, enabling customers to take advantage of the modern SMA Service Portal and mobile app without requiring changes to Service Manager. The Service Portal can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud. Enhancements in this release include:

• Approval Delegation – authorized users setting up a delegate now benefit from an entity picker for easier selection
• Approval Page
  • Ability to configure approval page for Change and Request Fulfillment
  • Ability to configure approval page for Request Fulfillment on mobile
  • Request, Change and Request Fulfillment attachments are visible to approvers in approval page
• Mobile App – optionally include comment during approvals
• Ability to set default "Sort by" on Offering list within a Category
• Support two-way SSL for SMA mixed mode (also 2020.05.001 patch)

SMAX

• Software Asset Management (SAM) – recently introduced under Controlled Availability, is now Generally Available for Premium users. SAM marries the license entitlement rules of SMAX with the discovered installation details of Universal Discovery to provide compliance reports. New in this release:
  • SAM component is now containerized and included in SMAX installation and subsequent updates
  • Supports SCCM data integrated into UCMDB
  • Additional Microsoft Content (see release notes for complete list)
• Containerized Multi-deployment of SMAX and CMS – recently introduced native SACM is now provided as a common CDF deployment/cluster. Shared resources lowers cost and reduces operations management overhead.
• Cloud Management with HCMX – provides easy-to-use, catalog-based service consumption with comprehensive fulfillment orchestration, and strong governance and cost control. Licensed separately, the following are in this release:
  • Centralized cloud cost reports with powerful filtering options including cloud-native tag
  • Cost-saving recommendations to purchasing Reserved Instance (RI) capacity
  • Deployment Operation console enabling tracking of service deployments
  • Content update for Oracle cloud and Nutanix hypervisor
• Studio Enhancements–
  • New lookup() function allows business logic to search for a specific record and return the value from a field from that record.  For example you can query and retrieve other Incident IDs based on your criteria from within the Incident rules.
  • Execute REST calls to a remote API without the need for an On-Premise Bridge (OPB) agent for simpler architecture
• Expanded Support for Domain Segmentation – used, for example, to segment business units, domain segmentation now includes SACM entities (device, system element, service component, actual service). 1000 data domains/tenant are supported (up from 250).
• Attachment Allow List – to ensure SMAX is secure by default, 8 file types have been removed from the default allow list, and the blank allow list will now prevent all attachments instead of allowing all. Existing allow lists will not be modified during the 2020.08 release update.
• Experience Mode – Allows the tenant admin to set the base experience for all users separately from the licenses that are allocated to the tenant.  The experience modes selected partially control the visibility of the mega menu entries and work with Roles to provide the access for each individual user.
• Implementation Best Practices Documentation – please note the move of this Micro Focus authored material from the Practitioner Notes section to the Get Started section
  • Key Concepts (was Getting Started): this guide encompasses the Service Management applications inside of SMAX, including Service Request, Incident, Change, and many others. Implementer Glenn Walker shares what functionality is available in SMAX, investigating the "what" and "why" aspects of the product rather than the "how".
  • (New!) Way of Working: This document highlights some of the important concepts and approaches within SMAX. This document is particularly helpful to customers evolving from other solutions.
• Additional News
  • SMAX SaaS now available for purchase on the AWS Marketplace – customers of the AWS Enterprise Discount Program (EDP)
  • Can now purchase SMAX under the EDP. See here for details https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B08C5MDRH8.

Release Readiness and other recordings for practitioners

• Service Manager and SMA-SM Practitioner Portal here
• Service Management Automation X Practitioner Portal here

For more information, please check the Release Notes for this version (available from MySupport).

If you have an active support subscription for these products, please plan for downloading this version from the Software Licenses and Downloads Portal. To access these products in the Software Licenses and Downloads Portal, you will need to sign in with your Micro Focus credentials.

Our goal is to provide you with clear visibility into the support time-line of software products, enabling you to use this information to plan, test, and deploy new product versions. For more information, check our MySupport Software Product Lifecycle pages, where you can find support time-line information for previously released versions. For this newly released version, the following time-line applies (dates subject to change, always check the Software Product Lifecycle pages referenced above for the latest information):

Please note that all Service Management Automation Suite customers with active support subscriptions are eligible to update to Service Management Automation Suite 2020.08.