vCloud Director + Ticketing System

[bojanski]

Hi all,

is there a kind of traditional Ticketing System (for Service Desk purposes) integration within vCloud Director!?

Any ideas or hints...?

Thank you all

Bojan

[Arjantimvdi2011]

What is the purpose for this kind of ticketing service. What kind of tickets must it produce?

vCloud Director is a relative new product, I think we'll need to wait for the product to become even better, and other companies will jump into it by writing additional software for it. This also means a ticketing service.

Greets,

Arjan

[bojanski]

I would say, just standard Helpdesk Tickets features.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issue_tracking_system

But, I know... vCloud Director is a relative new product...

Thanks

Bojan

[admin]

None that are currently available in vCD itself.  You can send in a Feature Request for this in the System > Home screen in the vCD interface.

[admin]

Hi

VMware's Service Manager (a help desk ticketing system) has a connector that can talk to the vcloud API, if other ITSM tools can talk to the API then they can also be used.

another way of doing it is to have the ticketing systom plug in to vCO and then build a workflow to kick off provisioning in vCD

[ChrisDearden]

Quite a few products will plug into cloud director from that point of view - for example NimSoft do somethign around that - there is also Vmware Service Request Manager.

[pic]

Bojan,

Just curious, could you provide a use case?  What kind of integration, specifically, are you looking for?  I'm just a bit not clear of the model you are hoping to implement.

-Phil

[bojanski]

Hi Phil,

Let's say, you are public Cloud Provider and you are using the vCD as your web-based Control Panel for your customers.

If a customer has a question or any kind of problem, he should be able to quickly create a support ticket within the vCD so the Cloud Provider instantly knows which systems / details belong to the given customer.

Actually, an easy model...

Let me know, if you need more details.

Cheers,
Bojan

[pic]

Agreed...simple model, I just didn't know it until you explained it

So you would be looking to build a 'help' or 'support' button/link right into the interface.  I agree, that would be extremely convenient and useful. 

Just thinking off the cuff for a moment.... I don't have access to a vCD system at the moment to play with and I have not experimented with the custom branding of the portal page yet, but I'm wondering if it might be possible to embed a hyperlink to a web-based ticketing system's 'File A Support Request' function right into a the logo of the logo of the portal. 

Other than that, I'd have to agree with the other commenters that the newness of the product means a lot of what customers want is still unknown.  Others have already contributed good suggestions, but unless you are able to wait for feature requests to be evaluated and implemented by VMware or wait for your vendor of choice to leverage the APIs to build their interfaces to vCD (or build them yourself), then the current solution is to use the products that already do have pluggability into the vCD using the vCloud APIs.

I'd suggest a workaround to continue using the interface of the system you already have in place and just create a ticketing category for vCD issues.  Yes, it might mean having to use a different interface other than the vCD web browser, but it will accomplish the same goal and level of service to the customer and should be pretty standard fare for a service provider anyway.

[Faustina]

Hello Chris,

Thank you for your response.

Do you have any documentation around integrating vCloud with VMware service manager to have a fully functional ticketing system around the Cloud IAAS.

I am also looking for a CMDB database integration with the cloud.

Regards

Faustina 

[pic]

And now that vCD 1.5 has been announced (http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-cloud-infrastructure-071211.html), it will be much easier to integrate vCD with CMDB and ticketing software systems (http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/press-kit/vmw-vcloud-director-cloud-infrastructure.pdf).