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CA Service Desk Manager

Reviews of CA Service Desk Manager

3.5 (13)
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Pros

  • Its based on ITIL and other Industry leading framework so one can use it relaxing about audits, Packed with many automation and self-service features to make the day to day support supper easy.

  • The communities are helpful and most of the folks there are very nice.

  • Big and powerful software suite, capable of solving all your ITSM needs, with huge complexity.

  • It was very simple to assign very specific access privileges to different users. We accomplished a robust and fully functional integration of our monitoring alerts for ticket creation.

Cons

  • From a UI perspective the software is a train wreck. Most of our service agents hate it.

  • At the time of writing this review their Process Automation piece of the suite is inherently flawed to the point that it has broken all integration with the rest of the software.

  • They seem to have the sense of "we feel your pain too" mentality. Overall the quality of this software and the overall architecture is a train wreck.

  • It is terribly resource hungry, the client frontend downloads a pile of code before it fires up, so a network killer for anybody that is on a wan or wifi in remote locations.

Showing Most Helpful

Showing 13 of 13 reviews

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Ravi S. avatar
Ravi S.
Senio manager Customer engineering
Financial Services, 10,001+ employees
Used the software for: 2+ years
Overall Rating
5.0
Ease of Use
5.0
Customer Service
4.0
Features
5.0
Value for Money
4.0
Likelihood to Recommend
10/10
Reviewer Source
Source: Capterra
November 26, 2020

"Best ITIL management software"

Pros: Moved to CA from Remedy, extremely lightweight, thin client, covers all aspects of ITIL incident management, change management, problem management with the functionality to generate MI reports and main knowledge bases for various level of support teams in the organisation. The ability to flag tickets and trigger notifications to escalation points based on various levels of SLA breach. Easy to transfer tickets within teams, with inline editing to edit multiple tickets at once makes it easier for the batters to manage queues.

Cons: Auto scheduling of reports and visualisation should be added for better representation of data such as graphs and charts.

Alternatives Considered: BMC Helix ITSM
Verified Reviewer
Operations Director
Information Technology and Services, 51-200 employees
Used the software for: 2+ years
Overall Rating
4.0
Ease of Use
3.0
Customer Service
5.0
Features
3.0
Value for Money
3.0
Likelihood to Recommend
6/10
Reviewer Source
Source: Capterra
August 1, 2018

"Big and powerful software suite, capable of solving all your ITSM needs, with huge complexity"

Overall: We were able to implement ITIL and ISO 27K compliant processes. It was very simple to assign very specific access privileges to different users. We accomplished a robust and fully functional integration of our monitoring alerts for ticket creation. Business rules have reduced a lot of human errors and minimized non-compliant execution of our processes.

Pros: The suite can provide anything we need regarding our ITSM needs. We can implement business rules, custom fields, automated validations, workflows, processes, etc. There's basically no limit, no ITSM business need we can't somehow do. No ITIL process we can't implement and certify. The management and agent GUI is consistent, once you understand how things are organized, you can easily navigate and find whatever option you need. Role based access control provides maximum granularity to satisfy the needs of the most strict security policies. CA's technical support is among the quickest and most capable support teams I've ever been served by.

Cons: There are too many software products in the suite, all of them needed to have a fully functional and compliant service desk. From the desk itself, to process automation, business reports, service catalog, self service GUI, access control management. These products have been created along a very long timeframe, which translates on very different software development fundamentals. While Service Desk is a rather old piece of software which relies on obsolete technologies la .NET 2.0 and the Java plug-in, service catalog and self service portal are more modern pieces of software. The APIs are not as robust as expected, or as seen in disruptive competition, a very limited REST api and a very complex SOAP webservice make it a big challenge to build robust integrations. CA support has confirmed there are no plans for building from scratch a new, modern version of Service Desk.

Joel B.
Sr. Software Developer
Banking, 5,001-10,000 employees
Used the software for: 2+ years
Overall Rating
1.0
Ease of Use
1.0
Customer Service
1.0
Features
1.0
Value for Money
1.0
Reviewer Source
Source: SoftwareAdvice
August 1, 2019

"Sounds Great on Paper... Start using it and you'll hate it."

Overall: From a UI perspective the software is a train wreck. Most of our service agents hate it. From a Development stand point, you will spend a lot of time just chasing your tail trying to figure out why something isn't working only to find out that there is a known bug within the software that is preventing you from doing what you intended to do. The communities are helpful and most of the folks there are very nice. They seem to have the sense of "we feel your pain too" mentality. Overall the quality of this software and the overall architecture is a train wreck. This was supposedly a cheaper alternative to some of the competition but the down side is we wasted millions trying to make this thing work when in reality it never would. Its a broken smoldering pile. STEER CLEAR!

Pros: The concept and what it was attempting to do is brilliant. If it actually worked it would have transformed the entire agencies IT structure.

Cons: It didn't work. It was full of bugs and it seemed like we were basically paying to test out their software. The CA / Broadcom QA team is non-existent. At the time of writing this review their Process Automation piece of the suite is inherently flawed to the point that it has broken all integration with the rest of the software.

Saumendra M.
Sr. Technology Specialist
Information Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees
Used the software for: 2+ years
Overall Rating
5.0
Ease of Use
5.0
Customer Service
4.0
Features
5.0
Value for Money
5.0
Likelihood to Recommend
10/10
Reviewer Source
Source: Capterra
October 28, 2022

"A highly mature product with all Industry leading features"

Overall: Life is supper cool as all the compliance and industry standard practices are taken care by core of the application framework !!

Pros: Its based on ITIL and other Industry leading framework so one can use it relaxing about audits, Packed with many automation and self-service features to make the day to day support supper easy.Easy Integration with different data source , directory services and other eco system is the beauty of the product .Reporting and Knowledge management feature makes it the most appealing product among its competitors.

Cons: A bit resource heavy on server side.

Alex T.
Process Analyst
Hospital & Health Care, 10,001+ employees
Used the software for: 1-2 years
Overall Rating
4.0
Ease of Use
4.0
Features
4.0
Likelihood to Recommend
8/10
Reviewer Source
Source: SoftwareAdvice
July 11, 2018

"Decent Ticketing System"

Overall: Not bad, if you have only one team with consistent needs using the software. Once you need to customize it, you feel its limitations.

Pros: Was our previous ticketing software for our Contact Center before moving to ServiceNow. Able to capture category, subcategory, comments, affected end-user, and much more. Can also report out of CA to track rep performance, call trends, etc.

Cons: Not nearly as customizable as ServiceNow, and its reporting functionality isn't as robust, either. Our Supply Chain Contact Center shared CA with our IT Contact Center, and, since it had such limited customization options, we had a number of challenges making one piece of software work for both teams. We've removed that problem with ServiceNow

Brian V.
SNR DBA
Information Technology and Services, 1,001-5,000 employees
Used the software for: 2+ years
Overall Rating
2.0
Ease of Use
2.0
Customer Service
2.0
Features
2.0
Value for Money
2.0
Likelihood to Recommend
1/10
Reviewer Source
Source: SoftwareAdvice
May 12, 2019

"CA Service Desk Manager - Version: 'SDr12_6-165'"

Overall: Terrible, there are better opensourcer free offerings out there if you want CMDB, incident, Change and problem management or something the is a little more stable and closer to ITIL

Pros: Only redeeming feature is that it is a centralized Change/Incident management system. The colour is blue, and that is where it ends.

Cons: The CMDB part of it is near impossible to use, especialy if you have 30+ clients, 10000+ CI's and all the entities that hang of that. It is terribly resource hungry, the client frontend downloads a pile of code before it fires up, so a network killer for anybody that is on a wan or wifi in remote locations. When you have 100+ technicians trying to update their incidents/change orders it is prone to hang or not update. Very very difficult to extract any meaningfull data out of the system, their is no meaningful built in help. If there was ever a counter productive product, this is one of them.

Mohit J.
Consultant
Information Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees
Used the software for: 2+ years
Overall Rating
3.0
Ease of Use
3.0
Customer Service
3.0
Features
3.0
Value for Money
3.0
Likelihood to Recommend
6/10
Reviewer Source
Source: Capterra
March 8, 2018

"I am having moderate experience with CA service desk manager."

Overall: This provides all benefits of any ITIL compliant ticketing tool. We have started managing all our incidents/service requests through this and effectively managing SLA's

Pros: It is fast and easy to implement in any given organization. It has all basic and advanced features of a ITIL compliant ticketing tool.

Cons: I certainly don't like the customization ability of this tool. We have struggled much with our tools team for getting the customized report. Also, analyzing the activity logs of any ticket is not so easy , you have to invest 10 minutes for a single ticket.

Karen B.
Desktop Support Manager
Used the software for: 2+ years
Overall Rating
4.0
Ease of Use
5.0
Customer Service
4.0
Features
4.0
Value for Money
2.0
Likelihood to Recommend
6/10
Reviewer Source
Source: Capterra
February 6, 2018

"CA service desk was easy to install with the exception of a few database problems"

Overall: Use of customer service and general CRM reports that were tailored

Pros: It is easy for new users to learn, the software does not require a lot of training man hours for one to use it.

Cons: the cost of the software, we needed to contact the support personnel on a few occasions to get the software to work as it should

Verified Reviewer
Project Manager
Computer Networking, 5,001-10,000 employees
Used the software for: 2+ years
Overall Rating
4.0
Ease of Use
3.0
Customer Service
4.0
Features
3.0
Value for Money
3.0
Likelihood to Recommend
6/10
Reviewer Source
Source: Capterra
March 12, 2019

"Classical Service Desk Product"

Overall: Streamline the ITIL process of an organization and help automating their IT infrastructure

Pros: One of the classical SD product developed using legacy and proprietary language but well advanced technical product.

Cons: Customization and downtime is hours if you migrate or upgade

Ian V.
Systems Analyst
Government Administration, 1,001-5,000 employees
Used the software for: 2+ years
Overall Rating
4.0
Ease of Use
3.0
Features
3.0
Likelihood to Recommend
6/10
Reviewer Source
Source: Capterra
December 28, 2018

"So much customization, while also feeling dated."

Pros: Amazing support! Every issue I have contacted them with has been resolved beyond my expectation.

Cons: Difficulties tracking and identifying tickets requiring a very granular and intricate process management.

Adnan L.
Project manager
Information Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees
Used the software for: 1-2 years
Overall Rating
4.0
Ease of Use
3.0
Customer Service
3.0
Features
4.0
Value for Money
3.0
Likelihood to Recommend
5/10
Reviewer Source
Source: SoftwareAdvice
September 14, 2017

"Good value for money "

Pros: Detailed service desk tool with lots of features and functions needed for a complete service management system

Cons: Too complex to use due to lots of things and moreover the user interface is not simple plus right click doesn't work everywhere

Karen B.
Manager
Used the software for:
Overall Rating
4.0
Ease of Use
5.0
Customer Service
4.0
Features
4.0
Value for Money
2.0
Reviewer Source
Source: Capterra
April 15, 2017

"CA Service DESK"

Overall: the organisation to which I am employed has used this software as a tool mainly for help desk staff. The asset management portion is not currently being used.

MARCO D. avatar
MARCO D.
Regional Sales Mgr
Information Technology and Services, 201-500 employees
Used the software for: Less than 6 months
Overall Rating
2.0
Ease of Use
2.0
Customer Service
4.0
Features
2.0
Value for Money
2.0
Likelihood to Recommend
3/10
Reviewer Source
Source: Capterra
August 29, 2019

"CA Service Desk"

Overall: Tool that is rapidly going out of the market. No Portal concept, no friendly interface, CA is not pushing it

Pros: Support and many large organization used it, so user group was useful

Cons: Lack of functionalities, unfriendly, old tool.