CMDBuild Newsletter nr. 98

As foreseen in our work plan, we have released the new CMDBuild 3.4.2 version at the beginning of this month.

Among the innovations, we mention: new user functions (“Favorites” menu, search in the menu, improvements in the History TAB and in the Attachments TAB), new configuration possibilities for administrators (renewal of the initial dashboard, limited administrators, email templates with reports), and new basic mechanisms (push notifications on the Mobile APP, webhooks, tasks for executing waterWAY gates, custom behaviors during authentication, etc.).

The new version also resolves some bugs reported on previous versions. You can find here the detailed list of the new features available.

As always, Tecnoteca will proceed at its own expenses in the next few days to update all the instances of the customers who have an active Subscription.
The online demos of CMDBuild, CMDBuild READY2USE and openMAINT have been already updated to the new core version.

To review the CMDBuild 3.4.2 presentation webinar, please refer to the latest news of this newsletter here below.
For an anticipation of how the development of the project will continue, please refer to the following news.

Once the 3.4.2 release has been completed, the CMDBuild Development Team has now started the process for a further qualitative leap for the project, starting the design of the new 4.0 version.

It is still too early to enter into the merits of the contents under study. What we can anticipate is that, in addition to new configuration mechanisms and new data management functionalities, there will be an even greater attention to best practices on security by design, scalability and modularity through the introduction of plugin-type mechanisms.
The CMDBuild GUI Framework, on which the CMDBuild READY2USE and openMAINT Self-Service Portals are developed, will also be rewritten, and the APP working in off-line mode will finally be available.
It is an ambitious project that will take some time.
We can currently hypothesize a preview for the end of next year, and then the completion of the project in the following semester.

In the meantime, we will obviously not interrupt the release schedule for such a long time.
We expect a new 3.4.3 minor release later this year, which will include improvements to the view configuration function and bug fixes, and, if needed, there may be another 3.4.4 minor bug fix release in the middle of next year.

In the next newsletters we will keep you updated on the progress of the 4.0 project and we will begin to insert technical insights dedicated to the major innovations under development.

To increase its diffusion, let's take a look at some case histories of the last CMDBuild Day.
Here below there is a summary of the Valsoia case history, you can find here the complete intervention.

Valsoia is a food & beverage Company, born in 1990, with a project that was and still is to offer a complete range of plant-based products.
With the growing demand for IT services by business users, it has become necessary to look for an ITSM tool to support the provision of these services, in order to normalize the channels for sending requests and then manage these organically.
Valsoia focused -like many others- on the ITIL standards, thinking about the processes of Incident Management, Request Fulfillment and Change Management and how to apply these to their specific internal organization.
After that, a market analysis was carried out which led to the choice of CMDBuild READY2USE, liked in particular for the characteristic of having already implemented a pre-configured functional proposal, but being also easily customizable to adapt it to the specificities of each company.

The implementation project then began during the Covid lockdown, and this highlighted even more the advantages of having centralized, updated and available information for everyone, for example with the progress of tickets for users and with the knowledge base to support their resolution for IT operators.
This has led to better organization, knowledge sharing and faster responses to users.
Obviously, it also required internal growth of people, to whom it was explained how the above positive effects also require the willingness to work in a more structured way (use of a tool rather than direct phone calls to individual people, etc.).

In any case, the result was satisfactory for everyone, each user accesses his CMDBuild dashboard from which he can immediately know which are his open requests, what are the progress in management and the expected resolution times.

However, the project did not end with these results. For Valsoia, CMDBuild is a “living system”, in the sense that once the business support processes were fully operational, they focused on new activities that would help the internal management of the Information Systems, including:

• management of self-generated recurring tickets for the management of repetitive activities (software updates on clients and servers, GDPR compliance, audits, etc.);
• integration with dedicated tools for managing mobile devices (AirWatch MDM);
•  populating of data relating to the mobile fees associated with the SIMs, the expiry dates of PC maintenance (useful for thinking about revamping plans), etc.

Ultimately Valsoia is fully satisfied with having chosen CMDBuild READYUSE and with how its own operators and end users are now working with it.

A presentation webinar of the new CMDBuild 3.4.2 version was held on July 13^th. The video is available here.

The recordings of the webinars already held remain available to interested people, here you will find the links to access.