Account designers and administrators are now able to export and import custom views. This can be useful, for example, when custom views have been created in a QA environment. After these custom views have been...
Category: Usability
With growing watchlists, the need to maintain those lists also grows. Every record that a person is watching is added to the Watchlist view, which is an alternative view to the Inbox view: A watchlist...
The Skill Pool filter has been added to tasks. Both from the ‘Tasks’ section of the Records console and from the task-related reports from the ‘Reports’ section of the Analytics console, it is now possible...
Whenever a note is added to a record, notifications are sent to the people for whom that record is relevant, depending on their notification settings. This also happens whenever an automation rule or integration adds...
In some organizations, UI extensions are becoming quite large and complex. To ensure a good understanding of the purpose and dependencies of each UI extension, a Description field has been added to UI extensions in...
A person with the Account designer or Account administrator role can now see a new option in the Actions menu for all record types in view mode in 4me: ‘Copy NodeID’. Selecting this option copies...
When a service desk analyst opens the Service Desk console to assist someone, the recent requests of that requester are immediately visible to that analyst. Until now, the open request were shown first, and then...
When a requester has been selected by a service desk analyst (SDA) to register a new request, the recent requests of that requester are visible in the Service Desk console. This may help the SDA...
A small usability enhancement has been made to the ‘Pickups’ view, which is accessible by clicking on the ‘Pickups within target’ KPI of an FLSA Report in the Analytics console. The ‘Breaches’ column (the column...
A ‘Job Title’ filter has been added to the person record. This can be helpful when searching for people with a specific role, but also for performing bulk updates. The filter can function with only...
When an incident, RFC or RFI is created or edited, the Service Hierarchy Browser (SHB) opens at the right side of the screen. Here, a specialist can apply the correct service instance, configuration item, template,...
When a request is being created or edited, the Service Hierarchy Browser (SHB) opens automatically at the right side of the screen. If the person selected in the Requested for field is a user of...
In organizations that have a directory account and multiple support domain accounts, some people can have roles in several of those accounts. When an account administrator clicks the Link roles… link to add roles for...
A seemingly small update has been made to the appearance of self-service search. Seemingly, because in preparation for many more user interface updates that will be rolled out incrementally in the next few months, the...
The possibilities for basic text formatting within 4me have steadily increased over the years. One of them is numbered lists, which can have sub-lists (or nested lists) within them, to create structures like the table...
A small usability enhancement has been made for Project Management. Often, when editing a project task to add an assignee for that task, a user will want to link him- or herself. This would then...
In 4me self Service and in the 4me Mobile App it is now also possible to reverse the order of notes in requests, tasks, and other records that can contain notes. For this, the Sort...
Last week, a new field was added to the task templates, making it possible to add a note to an approval task, or make a note required when completing any other (project) task. In the...
Since the initial announcement of Google Maps support by means of a Location field in UI extensions, this functionality has been notably improved. Three very useful options have been added to the ‘Snippets’ section of...
Recently, the 4me Specialist Interface was updated to hide the view pane when editing a record with notes, granting more space to work on that record while, if possible, showing the notes separated from the...
Custom collection elements are special records that could not be registered using one of the standard record types available in the 4me service. Each custom collection element belongs to one custom collection. These custom collection...
After several changes have been made to the placement of the ‘Notes’ section over the last few weeks, the section itself has now received an update, too. This update serves to make the notes easier...
One of the challenges of user interface (UI) design is the balancing act between content and white space: how to show as much information as possible without compromising usability. Different screen sizes must be taken...
In 4me®, notes added to requests, tasks, or other records are always read from top to bottom. Many requests have been registered to change this order, but, at the same time, many other people prefer...
It was already possible for account designers to define a maximum length of a text field within a UI extension, using the HTML attribute maxlength. Now, it is also possible to define a minimum length...
The Workflow Progress Tracker allows requesters to track the progress of their requests, even when these are linked to a workflow. This progress tracker is presented at the top of any open request that is...
Specialist Interface users with larger screens can now see the ‘Notes’ section of many record types separated from the other sections and basic information of those records. Making better use of the available screen real...
In the ‘Search Phrases’ section of 4me’s Analytics console, the top 100 search phrases, their conversions and their conversion rates are listed. By default, the searches that were performed in the Service Desk console are...
It is now possible to hide – and unhide – the menu sidebar. This can give users a bit more screen space, whenever they need it. A hamburger menu button is added to the top...
The basic ‘All Configuration Items’ view shows the label, name, support team, status, and site of each configuration item (CI) that is registered in an account or its child accounts. The data in this view...
Over the coming months the Virtual Agent will receive a number of upgrades. This first enhancement improves the results from a search using the Virtual Agent by including both the most relevant knowledge articles and...
Key contacts and customer representatives can see the ‘All Requests’ section in 4me Self Service. For persons with the Key Contact role, all requests that are related to the organization of the key contact are...
In several record types, the Supplier field is present for selecting the supplier organization that has been asked to assist with the request, problem, task or project. Working with external supplier organizations is commonplace in...
The email template fields can be used to customize the email notifications that 4me® generates. Three fields have been added to the long list of already available email template fields: updated_by_organization_name:The name of the organization...
A new field type has been added to the ‘Snippets’ section of the UI Extensions form. The Location field adds a map, powered by Google Maps, to the record type selected in the Category field...
Since last year it is possible for specialists to customize what they see in views, by using the ‘Customize Columns’ option from the vertical ellipsis (⋮). The view can then be saved as a personal...
Working in text fields is now considered user activity. To be clear: when a user has been inactive for a certain time, he or she must log in again. This time is the ‘Idle session...
After last week’s updates to the main page of the Service Desk console, the underlying pages have also received a makeover. The support domains, services, configuration items and other items that can be selected are...
When creating a UI extension, the snippet generator can be an invaluable tool. A small enhancement to this tool may make working with it even more enjoyable. When clicking the Insert Snippet button in the...
Work continues on updating the 4me Specialist Interface. After updating the views, the previews, the font, the service hierarchy browser, the main menu and several smaller aspects of the user interface, the Service Desk console...
Organizations that want to better understand how their users use 4me can now install the Hotjar app from our app store. Hotjar uses heatmaps that help you see what people actually do; where they click,...
As part of the redesign effort of the Specialist Interface, several new enhancements were introduced this week. The most striking change is undoubtedly that of the buttons of the five consoles, which are no longer...
When a user wants to see data related to a specific organization, it is possible to filter a report or other relevant records by that organization. If that user also wants to see data from...
Several new updates to the 4me Specialist Interface have been made. These are aimed at modernizing the interfaces, improving usability and readability, and making better use of the larger screen resolutions that have become more...
In the ‘Translations’ section of the Settings console, the service categories, services, request templates and UI Extensions can be translated. Translating these records ensures that the end user sees them in their preferred language. These...
New person records in 4me can either be created by administrators or by service desk analysts. It was, until now, not possible for a person with the Service Desk Analyst role to update the Auto...
It is now possible for specialists to add or update the request template of an existing request using 4me Self Service or the mobile app. Thus far, this was only possible using the 4me Specialist...
It was already possible to filter configuration items on their serial number. Now it is also possible to look up CIs by their serial number. This can be useful, for example, when a ticket must...
The ‘Automation Rules’ section within requests, tasks and project tasks is useful for a limited group of users but takes up valuable space in those forms that many users just scroll past. For this reason,...
In the View mode of a service offering, any request templates that have been disabled are displayed in a strike-through font, like this: Provide external hard disk drive. In the ‘Standard Service Requests’ section of...
A new filter has been added to the ‘Inbox’ view of the 4me Specialist Interface for ‘My Inbox’. This ‘Member’ filter allows users to see only requests that are assigned ‘to me’. Using such a...
People that access 4me will immediately notice the new login screen. It has been modernized, both visually and functionally. Single sign-on options are now presented first, as these are now used more often than the...
In some organizations, especially in large enterprises, the number of services and service instances can be quite large. Up to now, the easiest way to determine in which support domain account a service or service...
When a specialist looks at a configuration item in View mode, several attributes are visible that are in fact not from the Configuration Item record type but from the Product record type it is related...
It is now possible to use automation rules to update the members of a skill pool, and conversely to link a skill pool to a person. This can be very practical for making services available...
It is now possible to create an automation rule that looks up the people of an organization, or an automation rule that look up the time zone of a site. This can be useful, for...
When a configuration item (CI) that is not a software version is registered in 4me and configuration items of the same product category already exist, a label is suggested based on the existing numbering scheme. ...
To avoid any confusion around the purpose of some of the sections in the Settings console and to prepare for changes to come, two sections have been renamed. The ‘Applications’ section is now called ‘OAuth...
When the knowledge articles from a service provider are shared with the covered specialists of trusted accounts, these specialists are immediately provided with vital knowledge that can make a difference in doing their own work...
When an invoice is linked to a change, contract, SLA, FLSA or project, the invoice may be amortized. When the ‘Amortize’ checkbox is checked, the Amortization start and Amortization end fields become available. To simplify...
When copying and pasting amounts into 4me forms, it can happen that non-numeric characters such as currency symbols are accidentally included in the copied data. To facilitate the task of the financial manager in these...
When a request is registered or updated from the Service Desk console and the configuration item that is involved is known, that configuration item should be related to the request. After clicking ‘Link configuration items’...
Recently, a new filter has been added that makes it possible to get an overview of which users in an account are billable for the 4me service and which users are not. This ‘Billable’ filter...
A new filter has been added that can show users in which records they were mentioned. The ‘Mentioning me’ filter is available in the Specialist interface for all record types that allow mentioning: RequestsProblemsReleaseChangesTasksProjectsProject TasksRisks
Whenever a major incident happens that affects multiple users, it is possible in 4me to create a broadcast that is sent to specific groups of users to inform them about the unavailability or degradation of...
An earlier release made it possible to link invoices to configuration items. With that enhancement, several fields were moved from the Configuration Item record type to the invoice record type, such as PO number and...
Rich text boxes can become very long, for example when extensive instructions are placed in a knowledge article. To format text at the beginning of the article would in those cases involve a lot of...
Due to the way HTML code is sent from Microsoft Office applications to the clipboard when copying data, it had so far not been possible to copy text and images at the same time from...
As service cost tracking is becoming one of the central pillars of 4me, several more adjustments have been made to the Invoice form. With last week’s enhancements regarding invoices for configuration items, the possibility for...
In November last year, 4me introduced 4me Connect, allowing specialists to call other users with audio and video. This feature has now received a major update: instead of a video-calling feature with a chat option, ...
Since the Financial Manager role is authorized to update the financial information of a number of record types, a person with this role can now also import the financial information of those record types. This...
Request templates are now accessible by automation rules. This means that organizations can now automatically apply a request template to a new or existing request. Request templates can be selected within automation rules using the...
Since the beginning of last June, it has been possible for end users to withdraw their request in 4me Self Service, when they no longer need the request to be completed. A few more enhancements...
To allow people to customize what they see in views, they can now specify which columns should be included in table views. They can also dictate the order in which these columns are presented. Customizing...
Some small enhancements have been made to make the ‘Account Trust’ view more user friendly for accounts that have a lot of trusts with other accounts. When the trusted account is a support domain, the...
Changes in organizations, for example when teams merge or people depart, usually mean that assignee(s) or the team of task templates needs to be updated. To accommodate organizations in these and other situations, a number...
The ability to use automation rules to look up the service provider of the service of the service instance of a request has been added. This can be useful, for example, when information needs to...
Since last month, the ability to register invoices has been extended from projects to changes, contracts, service level agreements and first line support agreements. Now, financial managers are also able to add new invoices from...
Last week it was announced that new reports on task completion duration have become available. In general, information about resolution duration for tasks, requests and other record types can be important for organizations to monitor...
Widgets are convenient tools that help organizations add meaningful content to their 4me Self Service homepage. One of the most used widgets, the User Name widget, has just been enhanced so that it self-adapts to...
Reports, including all selected filters and other presentation options, can now be directly added to existing or new dashboards. This eliminates the need for a specialist to recreate these choices when the report needs to...
Since last year it is possible to define personal views in 4me. From any of the standard views of the Inbox, Records and Setting consoles, and even from drilldown views of reports in the Analytics...
Since the previous release, invoices can be related to changes, projects, service level agreements, first line support agreements and contracts. Depending on which record type a financial manager selects, the Supplier field can now be...
SLA reports show both the target and actual level of service provided for the KPIs ‘Availability’, ‘Reliability’, ‘Responses within target’ and ‘Resolutions within target’. For people who want to know exactly how the actuals are...
Rich text fields now accept data copied from Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice Calc and Google Sheets. When cells of a spreadsheet are copied and then pasted in a Note field, or any other field that supports...
When someone performs a search in 4me Self Service, the search results may contain several services. For each service, 4me now also displays the support domain and service category. The extra information is mainly intended to...
It is not uncommon for a knowledge article to refer to a document in which more information can be found. In such cases, the expectation has always been that the creator of the article would...
When work on a task should not start before a specific date and time, the change or project manager specifies this start moment in the Start no earlier than field. This ensures that when the...
When people are looking at an agile board, they are now able to see which items are in the status 'Waiting for…' or 'Waiting for Customer'. A small 'sleep' icon is now displayed for each...
The texts that are entered in multi-line text fields were already checked for spelling errors. Now the texts people write in the Subject field of, for example, requests and projects are also spellchecked. The same...
When change managers start to register a new change, they are prompted to select a change template. In the past, a dropdown field would allow them to select the appropriate template for the change they...
It is quite common for people not to be able to see the difference between green and red. For those people, editing automation rules was significantly less user friendly. That's because when people are formulating...
The welcome screen that is visible in the right pane of the Inbox console when specialists access 4me, has been given a slightly more modern look. The old icons have been replaced with 'flat-design' icons...
Because it is now common for organizations to have well over 100 services registered in their 4me account, the time has come to upgrade the Service field from a simple dropdown field to a suggest...
When an enterprise employee needs to register a new request for a colleague, the option 'Submit this request for someone else' can be used to select this colleague. To make sure that the right person...
Several improvements have been made to make it a little easier for people to work with reservations. The first and most important improvement ensures that people who reserved an asset are now able to change...
To improve the usability of the audit trails a little further, the name of the record type is now included in the audit trail header. This is especially helpful when a user returns to a...
The 4me Specialist Interface allows specialist to export the records they see in a view. Similarly, in 4me Self Service, key contacts are able to export the requests from their organization. What's new is how...
Every screen of the 4me Self Service interface now offers a 'Back' option in the upper left corner. This option is similar to the Back button of browser applications. What's nice about the new 'Back'...
The buttons that allow users to select their preferred identity provider for accessing 4me have gotten a facelift. Their improved styling presents each single sign-on (SSO) option as a button. Each button now has the...
With over 350 standard reports available in 4me's Analytics console, it is understandable that people have been asking how the data points presented in the reports are calculated. For most reports this is almost self-explanatory,...
Specialists can now collapse the agile board section that is presented below a request if they prefer not to see this section. To make this possible, the name of the agile board is now presented...
When a specialist is working on a request, the Service Hierarchy Browser (SHB) is there to provide relevant context. The SHB tells the specialist, for example, which service instances (SIs) underpin the SI that is...
Sites now have a 'People' section, similar to the 'People' section of organizations. This means that when a site is opened in View mode, the people whose person record is linked to the site can...
Many designers and administrators never specified a text for the section title that is displayed above a UI extension when it is presented to a user. They probably did not realize they could use the...
The ability to add keywords to request templates, knowledge articles and services makes it possible to help users find a record when they search for it using words that are not included in any of...
For specialists it has become possible to add the first time entry to a request, problem or task without having to place it in Edit mode. To make this possible, the 'Time Entries' section is...
The shortcut keys in the 4me Specialist Interface have been simplified. In the past, users could open a record's audit trail with the key combination Ctrl+Shift+T. Users can now press Shift+T instead to achieve the same...
When people are done editing a record in the 4me Specialist Interface, they can press the Save button in the toolbar or the Save button at the bottom of the form. In the 4me App...
When someone is editing a record using the 4me App or 4me Self Service and then navigates away from this record without first saving the changes, a warning will now be displayed. The warning gives...
When a contract is activated or expires, the supplier contact who is linked to the contract no longer receives an automated notification from 4me. Likewise, when the notice date of a contract is approaching, the...
A few weeks ago, the ‘Apps’ section (edit: nowadays called the 'App Store') that can be found in the Settings console was given a makeover. Since then, every single sign-on (SSO) configuration is treated just...
Since the introduction of the Watchlist functionality, it has been easy for both specialists and end users to add items to their watchlist. A simple click on the 'eye' icon above a record is all...
The 4me Specialist Interface continues to gradually get a slightly more modern look. About a year ago, the styling of a field that is in focus was improved and shortly thereafter the Search box that...
By popular demand, people who have the Key Contact role are now able to filter the requests they have access to in the ‘All Requests’ section of 4me Self Service and the 4me App. To...
A small usability improvement has been made for service level managers. When they register a new SLA, they will notice that the Service offering field behaves differently. It used to be a simple dropdown field,...
The 'Apps' section (edit: nowadays called 'App Store') of the Settings console has undergone a makeover. It now offers more standard integrations and presents them in a way that makes them easier to manage by...
Many support organizations have mounted large screens in common areas to display 4me dashboards that help employees stay informed of the current situation. These dashboards are placed in full screen mode so that they take...
The request views in the Records console now display the urgent icon for urgent requests in the first column. Similarly, the major incident icon now gets displayed in this column for requests that have been...
Request templates are prepared for types of requests that are frequently submitted. They make it easy for requesters to submit such requests. By linking a request template to a service offering, it becomes possible to...
The URLs for the authorization requests and the access token requests that are used in the different OAuth grants had to include the ID of the 4me account in which a token was generated. To...
The new Actions menu option ‘Assign Coordinator’ is now available for specialists when they open one of the teams that they are a member of. The ‘Assign Coordinator’ option can be selected to assign a...
The rule that dictates when the Configuration items field of a request becomes required has been perfected just a little more. This time, the objective was to ensure that specialists of a customer organization never...
Most 4me customers have multiple people who are able to act as administrator for one or more of the organization’s 4me accounts. From time to time the administrators can therefore find themselves working on the...
Many organizations are already making good use of the recently introduced custom collections functionality. This functionality makes it possible to give each custom collection element a unique picture. Seeing these pictures in the list of...
To help specialists when they are linking a configuration item (CI) to a request, problem, implementation task, service instance or to another CI, the status of the CIs is now also presented when a list...
A small usability feature has been added to assist users when they are about to perform a mass update of the records they selected in a view. Before executing the mass update, users can now...
Many of the actions available in the 4me toolbar and in the Actions menu can now be used to update multiple records at the same time. This extension of 4me’s mass update functionality can significantly...
The Forward button in the 4me toolbar has always made it easy for people to pass a request, problem or task to a different member of their team. Now this button can also be used...
Now that 4me Connect is available in QA for all customers, specialists will rely more on 4me's presence indicator to see when it is possible to contact a colleague. To ensure specialists can indicate when...
When people look at their timesheet in 4me, they can see all the time entries they registered. These may include some time entries for change and project tasks that they worked on. Such time entries...
When 4me offers a knowledge article to a specialist, and this article has not yet been validated, the 'Not Validated' warning is now displayed. This happens in the search results when they contain knowledge articles...
After a project task has been assigned to someone, this person can open the project task in 4me Self Service or in the 4me App, even if this person does not have the Specialist role. ...
Even though Microsoft is planning to support Internet Explorer 11 through October 14, 2025, they recommend users migrate off IE11 in favor of Edge as it is safer and faster. In Enterprise Mode, Microsoft Edge...
When someone opens a report that is based on time entry data, it is possible to drill down to a list of time entries. Such a time entries view makes it possible to inspect individual...
The views that list the reservations have been simplified to make them just a little more intuitive for specialists. These views used to offer the following three state buttons in the upper right corner: Upcoming,...
It recently became possible for directory administrators to go to the 'Billable Users' section of the Settings console in their directory account to download not just the billable users registered in the directory account, but...
4me already made it possible to generate a short URL for a request template, knowledge article, configuration item, as well as many other types of information like phone numbers, maps, SMS messages, etc. These short...
A long list of parameters was already available to add dynamic custom links to 4me's Actions menu. When designers and administrators go to the 'Custom Links' section of the Settings console, they will notice two...
A minor change has been made in 4me Self Service and the 4me App. The goal of this adjustment is to make the registration of a new request just a little more intuitive. Feedback from...
Two new reports have been added to help organizations generate an overview of amount of time, and the number of times, work is performed for each service. These new reports can be found in the...
All graphs that were available in the 'KPIs' section of the Analytics console are now available in the 'Reports' section. The advantages of having standard reports available for the KPIs are: standard reports offer more...
As part of the introduction of custom collections, the concept of a 'custom view' was introduced. The ability to define custom views has now been extended to make it possible for specialists to define their...
A minor usability enhancement has become available in the code fields that are available, for example, in the 'UI Extensions', 'Self Service Design' and 'PDF Design' sections of the Settings console. This enhancement makes a...
To make multi-factor authentication (MFA) a little easier for users, 4me now supports the use of hardware security keys, such as the ones provided by Yubico, Thetis and FEITIAN. A hardware security key does not...
Custom suggest fields recently became available with the introduction of custom collections. Custom suggest fields can be added to UI extensions when it is necessary to ask users to select a value from a list...
When a request is placed in Edit mode, the Service Hierarchy Browser (also known as the SHB or sidebar) opens automatically to provide information that may help the specialist with the request. For example, the...
4me's SCIM provisioning capabilities have been extended to make it possible for organizations to automatically include a link for starting a Microsoft Teams chat session in each 4me person record. Using SCIM, it is possible...
The minimum planned effort for the completion of a task that is part of a change or project was one minute. But because more and more tasks are executed automatically, it is now possible to...
There are some date range filters for which it makes sense to specify a date range in the future. Think for example of the 'Completion target' filter for change views, or the 'Expiry date' filter...
It is common to place the same report multiple times on the same dashboard. Different filters can then be applied to each version of the report to ensure each conveys different information. For example, the...
In 4me it is possible for someone to have SLA coverage for more than one instance of the same service. For example, a manager of a multinational organization may be covered for several payroll environments. ...
A small usability improvement now causes the status of related service instances to be displayed when a task template, change template, task or change is opened in View mode. This additional piece of information can...
The Add Reports button of a dashboard now becomes inactive when the maximum number of reports has been added to the dashboard. This small usability enhancement is intended to make it clear when no more...
When someone would open a calendar in View mode, 4me used to list all the teams and service offerings that use the calendar to define their work hours, support hours or service hours. Over time,...
Most organizations have activated single sign-on (SSO) in their 4me accounts. They rely on their identity provider (such as Azure AD, Okta or OneLogin) to ensure that people are authenticated before they can access 4me. ...
After downloading the 4me App from the App Store or Google Play, users are asked to enter their organization’s 4me account. This is the subdomain part of the URL people use to access their organization’s...
Because of the limited space available on a smartphone screen, the status is not presented when people open their watchlist in the 4me App or 4me Self Service. This made it difficult for people to...
When 4me automatically adds a note to a request, this system note may cause a notification to be sent to the requester, the specialist to whom the request is assigned, and everyone who has added...
To make sure that people do not accidentally select an inactive configuration item (CI) where it does not make sense to link an inactive CI, 4me no longer offers inactive CIs when someone is relating...
In 4me it is possible for account administrators to give each product category a small picture or avatar. This image then becomes the default picture for all products in which this category is selected. But...
By default, the option that allows people to submit requests for others used to be switched on in the 'Self Service Settings' section of the Settings console. To avoid surprises for support organizations that are...
To ensure that a consistent naming convention is used, the report 'Applied Request Templates' has been renamed to 'Requests by Template'. Similarly, the report 'Applied Knowledge Articles' has been renamed to 'Requests by Knowledge Article'....
When several filters have been applied to a view, the definitions of these filters take up a lot of space at the top of the view. To make more space available for the items that...
The filters that have been applied to a dashboard are visible at the top of the dashboard when it is in Edit mode. In View mode, however, that is no longer the case. When a...
The green dot that is displayed for a person who is currently working in 4me has become visible in more places. This helps specialists see who of their colleagues are available. They will now notice...
Because most support organizations using 4me have over 30 sites registered in their 4me account, the Site field has been turned into a suggest field. Suggest fields allow the user to enter the first few...
When people are preparing a new dashboard they use the Add Reports button to select the reports that they want to see on the dashboard Clicking on the Add Reports button causes a dialog to...
When a specialist is working on a record and someone else opens that same record, 4me's collision detection feature displays a warning. What’s new is that the specialist is now able to click on the...
In the past, customers have been able to chose from one of three different pricing plans when they decided to subscribe to the 4me service. These plans were called: Basic, Premium and Premium Plus. To...
Many specialists have already noticed that the list of available filters has become rather long for some views and reports. The request views and reports, for example, already offer well over 30 filters. To make...
The Search box that is available at the top of many dialog windows within the 4me Specialist Interface has been modernized a little. Apart from the new styling, which was introduced earlier for search select...
The view in the ‘Inbound’ Email’ section of the Settings console is used by 4me account administrators to see which email messages were sent to the 4me account of their organization. In this view, they...
The Location field of person records and configuration item (CI) records has always been a simple text field. After selecting a facility in the Site field of a person or CI record, the Location field...
A minor usability improvement has been released that makes it possible for users to recognize the purpose of a field more quickly. Whenever another record can be looked up in a field, the search icon...
When a 4me account is created for an organization, the security settings for this account now limit the file types that its 4me users are allowed to upload as attachments or inline images. By default,...
The work hours of teams, as well as the service and support hours of service offerings, are maintained in the 'Calendars' section of the Settings console by 4me account administrators. There the administrators can add...
The ability to duplicate templates has been available for a few years already. It is widely used to speed up the creation of new templates. After the introduction of automation rules for changes and projects,...
The ‘All Organizations’ view lists internal, external and trusted organizations. This has created a need to easily distinguish between these different types of organizations. When a specialist opens an organization record of a supplier or...
Specialists who are using the 4me App on their smartphone may notice the real-time collision detection feature that was already available in the 4me Specialist Interface. That’s because this feature has been extended to the...
When the table layout is selected for the Inbox views, these views by default list the major incidents on top, followed by the assignments that are marked as urgent, below which the remaining inbox items...
The sorting option 'Updated' has become available in the ‘My Inbox’ view and the ‘My Team's Inbox’ view. This makes it possible to get the inbox items that have not been updated for a while...
A very minor usability feature has been added that allows specialists to quickly look up the creation date of a record which ID is listed in a view. By hovering the mouse cursor over the...
It is fairly common that specialists need to look up the serial number of a configuration item (CI) when they are asked to work on a request. They normally do not go to the CI...
The auto translation functionality that translates notes for 4me users has been a resounding success, especially in organizations that support people who speak many different languages. The service desks of these organizations no longer need...
The recently released feature that makes it easy to copy the ID of records such as requests and tasks received positive feedback. That is why more fields now offer specialists the ‘Copy to clipboard’ feature. ...
When someone goes to the Records console and selects 'People', the view 'All People' opens by default. This view used to list all people of the account that is selected in the Account Switcher, plus...
When someone performs an import of records into 4me, the import file gets queued for processing, it then gets processed and once the import has been completed 4me sends the user an email notification. This...
It has become easier to export one or more new or updated UI extensions from QA and import them into production after they have been tested. That is because it is now possible to export...
A helpful feature has been added to allow specialists to point their colleagues to a specific note in a request, problem, change, project task, etc. When they are writing an email or when they are...
Because the IDs of records like requests and tasks can be quite long, it is time consuming to write them manually. It is much faster to copy an ID when it needs to be specified...
The 'Holidays' section of the Settings console is where administrators go to maintain the holidays for their support organization. When they go there now, they will notice that the 'Holidays' view has 2 additional columns: the...
The 'Roles & Teams' section of the Person form has been redesigned. This section is now easier to use for administrators of organizations with many 4me accounts and trusts with 4me accounts from other organizations. In...
When a specialist sets the status of a request to 'Completed', the Note field becomes required. The same thing happens, for example, when the status is set to 'Waiting for...' in a problem or task....
Previously it was not possible to include images in the feedback that end users provide to improve knowledge articles, see Provide Feedback on Knowledge Articles. Because customers have indicated that it would be helpful if...
A simple but helpful usability feature has been added to 4me's Export functionality. Now, when someone exports some records from 4me, the confirmation popup includes a link to the export job. This export job can...
The people views that are available in the Records console now show the small crown icon next to the name of each person who has been marked as a VIP. This makes the VIPs stand...
When a service desk analyst enters some text in the Requester field of the Service Desk console, 4me suggests all person records that match all or part of this text in the following fields: Name...
To show the language preference of a person, 4me used to display a circle over the person's picture with a flag that symbolized this language. This was mainly useful for multilingual service desk analysts when...
There are a few 4me forms in which the user can duplicate some of the form’s fields multiple times. Specifically, this is possible in: a broadcast for adding a translation an email design for adding...
Six additional languages were already added to 4me's popular
Handling a major service outage can be stressful. End users may have submitted many requests during the outage and most of these will have been grouped together. But after the outage was resolved and the...
When a view is opened in the Records console and a record is selected in this view, it is now possible to open the Change Calendar. This can be done by pressing the Actions button...
When a view's sort order is adjusted, the new sort order becomes visible in the address bar of the browser. The advantage of this is that when the user bookmarks this URL, the sort order...
4me’s Grouping feature allows specialists to combine multiple requests into a group. Once a request group has been created, specialists can work on this group. Any update of the request group is automatically copied to...
A system note now gets added whenever someone marks an assignment as urgent. The system note is inserted in the right sequential order in the Notes section of the request, problem, change task or project...
The Service Hierarchy Browser (SHB) is the vertical bar that opens on the right side of the screen when a request is placed in Edit mode. It is one of those unique features that 4me...
Many people have been looking forward to see how 4me's development team would incorporate native chatbot functionality in the 4me service. Today, everyone can see how the 4me's service-oriented data structure and tightly integrated KCS-based...
Fans of the Auto Translation feature will be happy to hear that it now supports an additional six languages. That is on top of the 20 languages it already supported. Continue reading
This could be the best usability feature that no one will ever notice. When someone selects a record in a view, this record opens in View mode to the right of the view. A person...
Whenever 4me sends out an email notification to someone about a record such as a request or task, an entry is added to the audit trail of this record. This feature was implemented some time ago...
The Gantt charts of changes and projects that are managed in 4me offer a helpful graphical overview of the tasks, the order in which they should be completed, as well as their timing. To provide an...
4me records are often related to multiple other records. The unique strength of 4me is that it allows support organizations to link their 4me accounts so that they can work together. When one organization’s 4me record contains...
When a request group is set to the status 'Waiting for Customer', the requesters of the requests that are included in this group are notified. Their individual requests show up in 4me Self Service and the...
Henceforth, the Auto Translation option is switched on by default. This means that when a new Person record is created, the Auto translation box is checked. This is the case regardless of whether this person record is...
Specifying a time is relatively frustrating in most user interfaces. That is why a lot of attention has been given to making this easy in 4me. In the Time spent field, for example, it is easy...
4me’s Service Navigator could already be opened from requests, problems, changes, releases, projects and SLA reports. Now it is also possible to open the Service Navigator from change tasks and project tasks. To do this, simply...
A minor usability enhancement has been released for the Auto Translation feature. Now, when someone hovers the mouse cursor over the Translation icon, the tooltip explains which language the note was translated from. Or, if...
Many quick range options were already available in 4me to make it easy to select one of the most commonly used date ranges for a view or report. But apparently there are a few more...
When an account designer uses the Snippet feature to add a field to a UI extension, 4me now ensures that the field ID it suggests is not already included in the HTML. Even if the...
A new usability feature has been added that prevents users from accidentally closing a browser tab if that tab contains any unsaved changes in 4me. So if someone was busy submitting a new request and...
The inbox views in 4me and the request header now display the desired completion whenever a desired completion date and time have been specified in a request and the status is ‘Waiting for Customer’. Unlike...
At the bottom of the ‘My Inbox’ section, the 4me App and 4me Self Service used to list the change tasks and the project tasks that were assigned to the user and are already finished....
As previously announced, classic Self Service has now been retired. In all production, QA and demo accounts, the option 'Use classic Self Service' has been unchecked and this checkbox has been removed from the 'Self...
When the Service Desk Analyst role was given the ability to update a request’s requester (see Update the Requester of a Request), the Specialist role also got an extra capability. Specialists were already able to...
It is now possible to display a placeholder text in a rich text field of a UI extension. A placeholder text is typically used to make it easier for users to understand what to fill...
After a request has been saved for the first time, it was no longer possible to select a different person in the Requested by or the Requested for fields. That was intentional, because the person...
The option 'Service Navigator' is now also available in the Actions menu for people who are working in the 'SLA Reports' section of 4me's Analytics console. When this option is selected from the Actions menu,...
When the knowledge articles are accessed in the Records console of 4me, there are a few views available. One of these used to be called: 'My Knowledge Articles'. The name of this view seemed to...
When requests are grouped together they are linked to a request group. This makes it easy for specialists, because they only need to update the request group. Any updates in the request group are automatically...
When 4me presents a list of options for someone to choose from, it now handles special characters a little more elegantly. 4me recognizes, for example that an ö is similar to an o and that...
There are a few fields in which an option can be selected and where each option has a name that is followed by a short description. This short description is helpful when one of the...
When a request is passed from the 4me account of a customer organization to the 4me account of one of its providers and this provider sets the status to ‘Waiting for Customer’ or ‘Completed’, then...
A small adjustment has been made to the Import functionality for person records. This adjustment perfects the way 4me ensures that a new record does not get generated during an import for a person record...
When the Mail API receives an email, the body of the email becomes a note. Any note that the Mail API generates already started with the To and Cc email addresses of the inbound email....
When an existing request is opened in the Service Desk console, there are now several more options available. These options have been added to allow people to not only register new requests, but to also...
The Source and Source ID fields have been added for UI extensions. These fields are hidden, but they do show up in the audit trails and in the export files. They have now also been...
A usability enhancement has been implemented for the Desired completion field. It is now hidden by default. When it is not visible, a link is provided instead. The goal is to make sure that service...
The Time spent field has been moved to a position just above the Save button. The advantage of this new position is that people can review the information they have added to a request, problem...
It is possible to specify a date range filter for many reports and views in 4me. The limitation was, however, that the selected date range had to fall within the last 13 month. This restriction...
Problem managers periodically review the requests that 4me me has listed for them in the 'Requests for Problem Identification' view. To help problem managers go through this list more quickly, 4me now automatically opens the...
A recent performance enhancement has made it possible to open a configuration item (CI) and quickly search or browse through all its relations. Regardless of how many relations the CI has with other CIs, the...
It is possible for account designers and account administrators to share dashboards with others. When someone else opened a shared dashboard, however, it was not possible for this person to modify the filters that were...
People who are colorblind had trouble distinguishing between the gray impact icon 'Low' and the red impact icon 'Medium'. They had the same issue when 4me showed them with the gray impact icon 'High' and...
It is no longer necessary for the value in the Employee ID field of a Person record to be unique. This extra flexibility is provided for large enterprises that have multiple legal entities in different...
When someone has the Specialist role of a 4me account, this person is able to edit requests in that account. This person can, for example, update the status of a request from 'Assigned' to 'Accepted',...
When an external server is down, all webhooks that tried, but failed, to reach this server are now remembered as 'offending' webhooks. This allows 4me to include the name and 4me account ID of the...
As a follow-up to the recent improvement of the Source labels that are displayed in the request reports, the default values that 4me specifies in the Source field of requests have now also been adjusted...
There are three reports available in 4me and one in 4me Self Service (for key contacts) that break down the number of requests by source. In the past, when organizations started using 4me, they would...
The International Foundation for Digital Competences (IFDC) and 4me, Inc., provider of the 4me Enterprise Service Management service, today signed an agreement to further support and promote VeriSM™. VeriSM™ is a service management approach for the...
Two small but helpful improvements have been released to help administrators who are in charge of the webhooks that their organization has set up in 4me. The first improvement ensures that the value in the...
The VIP checkbox on the Person form has been replaced by an icon that can be pressed to mark someone as a VIP. This icon is available to the right of the Name field to...
When users go to the Analytics console and open the 'Reports' section, they will notice that a new column has been added to the list of reports. This column contains the report type icon. This...
When a view is opened that lists completed requests, it is now possible to filter this view on the satisfaction response provided by the requester. But the 'Satisfaction' filter is not the only new filter...
The Member filter has been added to the 'My Team's Inbox' view. This makes it possible for someone who is a member of one or more teams to open the 'My Team's Inbox' view and...
A minor adjustment has been made in the validation rules for the Support team field of the Configuration Item form. Because of this adjustment, this field is no longer required when the status of the...
In the past, it could happen that a user would not be able to filter a report in 4me on two specific services if these services were alphabetically far apart. That was because the user...
In the past, it was possible to see which automation rules were added to a request or task by expanding its ‘Automation Rules’ section. But just like their Audit Trail, people will mostly use this...
The Support URL field used to be included in the 'Custom Links' section of the Settings console. There it was mostly overlooked, despite the fact that it can be quite useful. This field makes it...
A small but helpful usability feature has been added for the people who maintain translations in the 'Translations' section of 4me's Settings console. Now, when they select a phrase to translate, they will see that...
A subtle usability feature has been added to the 'My Inbox' view. When this view is placed in the new multi-line layout, the value of the Team field is now displayed for each item that...
When a request is completed, the requester is encouraged to provide feedback. Doing so would take the requester to a new browser window that would either thank this person for providing positive feedback, or would...
When an end user or support specialist opens a request in Self Service and this request has already been completed, this request will now be presented in View mode. That should make the information in...
4me has a special interface for specialists who work with a tablet. It is now possible to use this interface on larger screens as well. When the width of the browser window is reduced so...
To ensure that organizations can optimize the accessibility of their 4me Self Service home page for people with disabilities, it is now possible to include Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) attributes in the Self Service...
In 4me it is possible to upload a small picture, or avatar, for specific records. That makes these records easier to recognize for users. The records for which a picture can be uploaded are: Holidays...
When a new 4me account is being populated in QA and several request templates and knowledge articles have been prepared and approved, they can be exported and imported again into the organization’s 4me production account...
The text, which was displayed when someone moved the mouse cursor over the red dot that indicates that a service is down, has been adjusted. This was necessary because it turns out that people frequently...
Service desk analysts who work for very large enterprises have reported that it is sometimes difficult to know who to select when someone with a common name calls the service desk. In such cases, the...
When a team coordinator needs to decide who to assign an urgent request to, it would help if it were possible to see who is currently working in 4me. That is now possible. When someone...
In 4me, everyone can select their local time zone in their profile. This ensures that 4me presents all dates and times (such as resolution targets) in the selected time zone. What is new is that...
Service desk analysts will notice that a small adjustment has been made in the Service Desk console. There, the User field has been renamed to 'Requester'. In addition, the button has been relabeled to ‘New...
Last week it became possible for an enterprise customer to allow a managed service provider (MSP) to register requests for the customer’s specialists, without having to make the customer’s Service Desk Analyst role available to...
The 'Copy note to change' option was introduced a few years ago. It is a helpful feature for specialists to inform the manager of a change about the information they are entering in the Note...
When a specialist opens a request that was submitted by someone from another account, the name of the account in which the requester's person record is registered is now displayed next to the name of...
A minor but helpful usability feature has been added for auditors and account administrators in the ‘Audit Entries’ section of the Settings console. In this section they have always been able to review audit entries....
Organizations perfect the categorization of their services from time to time. When they do, they are often left with a few service categories that no longer contain any services. To help them maintain a clean...
The Reference feature has become available in the Note fields of requests, problems, releases, changes, change tasks, projects and project tasks. This is an important usability feature that makes it possible for specialists to include...
People who regularly work in 4me's quality assurance environment will probably have experienced a moment of confusion every now and then where they switched browser windows and thought they were in production, but were actually...
A minor optimization has been introduced that prevents a browser notification from popping up immediately after someone submitted a request for him/herself. The reason why this popup now gets suppressed is that it could be...
A new product category has been added, because several organizations indicated a need for it. This new category is called 'Security Certificate'. It was already possible for organizations to add this category by themselves in...
An extra column has been added to the views that can contain completed requests. This column shows the satisfaction feedback that was received from the requester. A green thumbs up icon is displayed when the...
When someone performs a search is Self Service, the search looks through all the records that this person has access to in Self Service. That means that the search results may include this person’s requests,...
The views of 4me’s Inbox console have undergone a major makeover. When specialists open their 4me inbox, they will initially not notice a major change. Their inbox still presents the assignments in a table layout....
A few record types still had long lists of checkboxes. These lists have been replaced by a link that offers a list of suggestions when pressed. This makes it easier to look up and select the...
The audit trail that 4me maintains for each record provides an easy-to-understand overview of a record's entire history from the moment it was created. As records age, though, their audit trails can become quite long....
People may have already noticed that the attachment file size limit has increased significantly. In the past the maximum size of an attachment, including videos and files in the Media Library was 20 MB. This...
When a configuration manager registers a new product, the name of this product gets filled out automatically in the Name field when its brand, model and category are specified. The REST API for products now...
Sometimes an SLA is no longer considered affected by a request. That happens, for example, when the provider that is responsible for the SLA has rejected the request.Continue reading
Apart from being able to filter the configuration item views, configuration managers are now also able to perform mass updates of the CI records. This is a powerful new feature that makes it much easier...
Some people already noticed the filter icon that is now visible in the header of the views within the Records console. When a user clicks on this icon, the filter options for the view are...
A helpful feature has been added that gives service desk analysts and specialists another way to quickly find a specific configuration item (CI). Continue reading
When an organization has prepared a large number of request templates for some of its services, it can be a little cumbersome for support specialists to find the correct template in the Service Hierarchy Browser...
An interesting feature has been added to the Service Hierarchy Browser (SHB). It has always been possible to click on a child service instances in the SHB to go down a level in the service...
A few weeks ago several improvements for 4me's code editor were released. Today, the people responsible for maintaining their organization's Self Service design will be happy to hear that the usability of the 'Self Service...
The entire list of the roughly 200 icons that are used in 4me has been made available for you on the 4me Developer website. This makes it easy for designers to look up an icon...
The 'Translations' section of the Settings console has been improved. The objective of this change was to make it easier to find a specific phrase within a specific record type when it needs to be...
All information in the Service Desk console now gets presented in the preferred language of the service desk analyst whenever possible. The information that can appear in the Service Desk console and which organizations can...
The 'Current Usage' section of the Settings console has been modified to allow organizations to get a real-time view of all the billable users in their 4me account. That means that this view now lists...
The audit trails have been improved to make it a little easier to see what has been updated in fields that can contain a lot of information. The previous value and the new value are...
Users can print out 4me records (e.g. requests or knowledge articles), or they can generate PDF files from these records. They can do this, using the 'Print...' option of the Actions menu. Continue reading
When you go to 4me's Records console and select the 'People' option, you will notice that two extra columns have been added by default. Continue reading
Some of the design capabilities in 4me allow organizations to add HTML, JavaScript and CSS. They can do this using the code editor that 4me provides. A few new usability features have been added to...
The computer telephony integration (CTI) capabilities of 4me have been extended again. The new feature that was added allows support organizations to use their automatic call distributor (ACD) to collect a request ID from a...
When a request is passed from the 4me account of an IT department to the 4me account of one of its managed service providers, the specialists of the MSP were already able to mention the...
The order in which the requests that are linked to a change are presented within that change has improved. In the past, the requests would be sorted by their ID. Now they are sorted first...
People use their Notification Center, which was recently introduced, in different ways. For those who prefer to be able to remove individual notifications without having to open the record for which the notification was generated, the...
4me automatically generates notifications. These notifications may inform a requester that his request has been completed, tell a specialist that someone added a note to a task that is assigned to her, etc. These notifications...
After setting up a new time allocation, it still needs to be made available to the employees of the right organizations. Only then will these people be able to select it when they are registering...
A minor, but very useful, improvement has been made in all horizontal bar charts. The labels on the vertical axis are now hyperlinked. Continue reading
The Service instance field of requests has been improved. Service desk analysts and specialists will notice this after they have placed a request in Edit mode. The Service instance field now behaves in a similar...
The Support ID field is available in each person record. This field is used by support organizations to enter a number or code that service desk analysts can ask for when someone contacts the service...
It is now possible to reactivate an expired SLA, first line support agreement or contract. This makes it possible to temporarily expire an agreement, or to activate a contract again after its status was accidentally...
The Expiry Date column has been added to the views of SLAs, first line support agreements and contracts. This column is primarily intended to provide an easy way to look up the agreements and contracts...
A helpful usability feature has been added to the 4me Learning Center. The online 4me training exercises have all gotten a progress indicator. This should give trainees an idea of the progress they have made....
After an end user has selected a service in Self Service, a list of the available request templates (or standard requests) for that service is suggested. The same screen now also offers the public knowledge...
Sometimes a new knowledge article needs to be prepared that is very similar to an existing one. If the existing article has already been translated and keywords have been added, being able to duplicate this...
After opening a configuration item (CI) in Edit mode, a configuration manager is able to relate people to it as users. That has always been possible. Now it is possible to do this the other...
In the Service Desk console, the service desk analysts were already able to open a knowledge article from the list of search results in a separate browser tab. This is done by performing a Ctrl...
Apparently, users have often felt uncomfortable about declining requests because they were uncertain about where a declined request would get routed. That is why 4me now displays a message when a request is being declined....
Automation rules can now be added directly to task templates. In the past, it was only possible to add automation rules to task templates that belong to a specific change or project template. Continue reading
The visibility options for request templates have been renamed. They used to be called 'Self Service' and 'Service Hierarchy Browser'. But because specialists can now find all the request templates in Self Service that they...
API tokens needs to be treated with great care because they allow people to access the 4me service through the 4me APIs. If someone believes that his/her API token has accidentally been shared with others, it is possible to...
When an email is sent to 4me, the Mail API ensures that the information in the body of the email gets added as a new note. From now on, the notes generated by the Mail...
When an inbound email contains more than 20 attachments, only the first 20 files are attached to the new note that the Mail API generates. What's new is that in such cases the following message...
Many of the views in 4me offer some buttons in their header. These are the state buttons. By pressing a state button, you retrieve a different list of records. Continue reading
Within 4me, there are many places where it is possible to relate a record to other records. To make it easy to find the right records, 4me provides lists of suggestions. Continue reading
Since the 'Reports' section was added to the Analytics console, the number of reports in this section has been growing steadily. Right now there are already 46 reports in this section and this number is...
When a custom date range can be set for a report, the quick ranges make this very easy. Users have indicated, however, that a few more quick ranges would be useful. Continue reading
Let's say that there is an issue with the production environment of the Sales Tracking application service. The specialist who is working on the incident has determined that there is something wrong with the infrastructure..Continue...
Mentions have become so popular that people expect this functionality to be available whenever they are adding a note to an assignment. That is why Mentions are now also available in the dialog window that...
Because service desk analysts often spend most of their time in the Service Desk console, they may not see the broadcasts that are intended for them. Also, when they are assisting someone, it would help...
After a request has been declined, it is automatically reassigned. The request is returned to the team coordinator when it was declined by a specialist who works for a team that has an active coordinator....
There are some notes that 4me adds automatically to requests. For example, when a change is successfully completed, a note is added to each request that is linked to the change to inform the requesters...
End users will see a different icon for the request templates in their Self Service search results. The intent of the new icon is to signal more clearly that selecting a request template from the...
When 4me presents a list of suggestions, this list is limited to 40 records. When more than 40 records match the value in the Search box, 4me now shows the total number of matches. Continue reading
Change managers are going to appreciate this usability improvement. When someone starts to register a new change and selects a change template, 4me is now going to remember this selection. The benefit is that the...
When you open a change or project in View mode and you click on a task within the small Gantt chart that is presented at the bottom of the screen, this task is presented in...
To ensure that change managers do not unintentionally affect a change template when they update a task template, they are now warned when this could happen. A warning is displayed when a change manager opens...
Change managers have provided some useful feedback that has helped us perfect the Gantt Chart interface they use to plan their changes. The results are the following 3 usability improvements: Continue reading