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Welcome to Octopus, Summer 2011 ! The Summer 2011 version contains a lot of additions, but nearly no changes modifying the way you use the application. The coming of this version in your team will only have a minor impact and does not require planification. This page presents the most important additions to this version.

Table of Contents [Hide/Show] Tasks in Problems Adding activities in Octopus now works the same in all modules Requests and activities now displaying carbon copy recipients Better license management with the "Product Name" concept Attached files in Events New contextual menu for your lists Password policy has been modified Others changes in this version

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Tasks in Problems

You can add tasks in a Problem the same way you would do it in an SR or a Change.

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Adding activities in Octopus now works the same in all modules

For quite a while, activities in Incidents and Service Requests (SR) offered more options than in other modules. We have harmonized the features in all modules where activities can be added (Incident/SR, Tasks, Changes, Problems and Events):

• Sending activities and attached files via email messages
• Selection of an Activity Type
• On-site visit acknowledgment

Exemple: A task has been assigned to you and you want to communicate with the user or a supplier. From the task, you can add an activity and send it by email; the response of the user or the supplier (the reply) will automatically be added to the activity journal directly in the task! Obviously, you could be notified that a new activity has been added to a task assigned to you.

Note: We have taken this opportunity to slightly improve the interface. The addition of a "Supplier" activity is now done through a contextual menu, under the Activity button.

Before Summer 2011 version

After Summer 2011 version

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Requests and activities now displaying carbon copy recipients

Using the following rules, the recipients in CC will be displayed in Octopus in different ways:

• When a user creates a request via email that contains at least one (1) recipient in carbon copy, the system will write the recipients' address at the end of the "Detailed Description" request field.

• When a user replies to an activity sent by an assignee, via email, and that the email message contains at least one (1) recipient in carbon copy (CC), the system will write these addresses at the end of the activity field "Work breakdown" .

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Better license management with the "Product Name" concept

The 'Product Name' concept allows you to better control the number of licenses for a product, no matter the version.

As an example, if you deployed more than one version of the "Antidote" software, Octopus will display more than one software CI: "Antidote HD (7.2.7001)", " Antidote HD (7.5.7000)" and " Antidote RX". Each CI has its own installation counter and license number. Le The concept 'Product name' allows to see all of them as one product, "Antidote" and to manage product licenses instead of version licenses.

To use this feature, simply assign the same value to the "Product name" value of the CI Type "Software" for all the ones you want to regroup. Right away, the "Licenses control" list (accessible from the "Configurations" module) will show only one product instead of several versions of the same software.

• Configure software by adding product name to the same software, of different versions.
  
  

• From the "Configurations" module, select the list 'License control' to obtain the total number of bought and installed licenses for the same software, whichever version it is.
  
  

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Attached files in Events

Octopus now allows to add 'attached files' in Events.

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New contextual menu for your lists

The previous Octopus version gave you new options in your lists menu, which also made the menu less intuitive. In the Summer 2011 version, we made it better by grouping the menu items by theme and by keeping the most useful ones at the first level.

'Display' sub-menu

'Layout' sub-menu

Furthermore, we have added a new action that will be very useful to rapidly navigate to the User or CI file of an Incident/SR. Depending on the selected columns in your lists, the contextual menu will offer different choices according to the concerned data.



See this video to understand this new feature:



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Password policy has been modified

The password required by Octopus has now a new password policy, to reflect the requirements of the IT industry standards.

See the image below to understand the changes:



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Others changes in this version

• The network folder hosting the attached files can be configured differently for each team.
• The Web tech interface allows seeing attached files in requests.
• MailIntegration created incidents can now be automaticaly assigned to a specific group.
• DataImporter supports importing CIs attached files and incidents/SRs activities.
• Tasks and Events now support attached files.

To view the complete list of other minor changes made in this version, please see Change History.