Chennai : ManageEngine, the real-time IT management company, today announced the launch of its highly extensible custom application creation platform for ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand, the SaaS version of its ITIL-ready help desk software integrated with asset management. Based on Zoho Creator, the new online platform help IT help desk managers and staff use their web browsers to create online custom applications for automating help desk, general IT and business processes – no programming required.

IT organizations worldwide face a diverse range of challenges. While help desk software can serve most of an organization’s ITSM (IT Service Management) needs, many other business processes linked with IT are often handled using manual or semi-automated practices, including paper and electronic documents, email, and legacy intranet applications. In addition to requiring human intervention, the manual and semi-automated processes have no connection to the help desk or its data, creating more paperwork and workflow challenges for the IT team.

“The scope of services provided by IT teams is expanding rapidly, and traditional service desk applications are not able to keep pace,” said Rajesh Ganesan, Director -Product Management, ManageEngine. “While IT teams can build applications based on their company’s process changes and additions, integrating those apps seamlessly with their central ITSM system has always been a challenge. ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand bridges this gap, letting IT teams rapidly build, launch and manage custom applications as extensions of their service desk.”

Custom App Platform Extends ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand

The new ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand custom application platform supports a variety of use cases. The IT team might be asked to develop a conference room booking application by a member of the facilities department who wants to be able to check for date conflicts and reserve slots in the chosen conference room. The HR department admin might request a leave application that automatically submits each entry to the requester’s manager for approval. Meanwhile, the office manager might ask for a comprehensive procurement application with a tiered approval mechanism.

The custom application platform for ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand give users a drag-and-drop interface for creating and configuring highly flexible user interfaces and UI components on the fly. Users can also define business logic and approval workflows to automate processes with minimum scripting.

The platform includes a drag-and-drop report builder that lets users visualize data in multiple formats and drill down on critical information. The platform also lets help desk staff define fine-grained access permissions to end users of the custom application. All processes related to the custom apps – from creation to launch and management – are performed from a web browser. The resulting custom applications can be made available to end users via the end-user self-service portal which is part of ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand.

To streamline workflows, custom applications built on the new platform can closely interact with help desk tickets in ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand. Data fields in the custom apps can be configured to look up key data in ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand such as technicians, requesters, category, status, level, priority, sites, departments and assets. To keep the help desk and the applications in sync, the platform lets IT teams automate ticket creation, update and closure in ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand every time a record is submitted or updated in the custom application.