InformationWeek

September 22, 1997

Help Via Java

Remedy adds a Java client to Flashboards 2.0 reporting tool

emedy Corp. this week will roll out Flashboards 2.0-a new version of its help-desk reporting tool that includes a Java client. The tool lets IT administrators create customized reports based on information gathered from Remedy's flagship help-desk product, the Action Request System.

Flashboards' Java client lets anyone within the corporate enterprise access AR System information through a Web browser. Emma Short, Flashboards product manager, says this will help provide better communication between the help desk and the end users in keeping up service-level agreements.

Jack Gold, prog ram director at the Meta Group in Stamford, Conn., suggests the new Java capabilities, for example, will let end users gauge how quickly the help desk might be able to react to a problem by seeing how busy the administrators are. "We fully recommend that any support organization let the end-user community know how they're doing," Gold says.

Indeed, the real benefit will be to the organization's "casual supervisors"-or, supervisors that need to know what's going on yet don't need a complete version at their desktop, says Kent Johnson, senior adviser at Hoechst Marion & Roussel Inc., a pharmaceutical company in Kansas City, Mo., that has been testing the new version. "This saves us from having to install yet another client application," he says.

Flashboards 2.0 will be available next month. It will be priced at $16,500 for the Flashboards server, five user licenses, proxy server, and Java applet.

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