Overview of What's New in CSM 10.4.0
Links to community-suggested features on the Cherwell Ideation Station are provided when available. You must create an account and be logged in to view ideas. Additionally, links to "Learn more ..." about the feature are provided at the bottom of most sections.
Content Manager
The Content Manager is a new administrator's tool used to manage all items within CSM. This includes the creation of Business Objects and the identification of changes and dependencies during the creation and management of Blueprints.
Using the Content Manager, an administrator can gather all of the required content for a business process. For example, all items for the HRSM Onboarding process such as Business Objects for Employee, Financial data, Location, and Emergency Contact.
In contrast to the Object Manager, the Content Manager provides administrators with a comprehensive view of all the system's contents in a single area, as well as being able to see what changes have been made prior to creating a Blueprint.
Improved Theme and Platform Styling
New features enable easier creation and management of themes, and platform styling changes.
- Theme and style capabilities have been updated to make them less complicated.
- A new Universal Theme Editor feature enables quick and easy creation and editing of themes.
- Ability to utilize new theme capabilities as well as maintain previous themes.
- Improved preview mode for themes.
Universal Theme Editor
The Universal Theme Editor simplifies the creation and editing of themes.
- Color palettes can easily be applied to backgrounds, borders and text that exist on a form, dashboard, portal or action catalog.
- Color palettes can be edited, and custom color palettes can be added or deleted.
- A theme font can be selected for the whole theme.
- Individual font types can be quickly configured for all text-based controls, new fonts can be easily added and deleted as required.
- State override colors that apply to dynamic controls can be quickly and easily edited.
- Instantly view changes you make to a theme in the Preview pane.
Classic and Universal Themes
- Classic theme: A theme created with the previous version of the Theme Editor, now known as the Classic Theme Editor. Existing classic themes carried over from a previous version of CSM will only open for editing in the Classic Theme Editor.
- Universal theme: A theme created in the Universal Theme Editor. All new themes are created in the Universal Theme Editor. Universal themes will only open for editing in the Universal Theme Editor.
Enhancements to CMDB
- Select Custom Grid in Related Item Picker
The Related Item Picker Properties dialog has been updated in CSM Administrator to allow users to select a specific Business Object grid to display when viewing the Related Item Picker within a Business Object form. If the default grid is selected, the display behavior remains as it was in prior CSM versions, that is within the CMDB Related Item Picker, the default grid for each individual group object will display when the respective object is selected from the Configuration Items to show drop-down list. This change applies to both CSM Desktop and Browser clients.
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Upstream/Downstream CI Relationship in Reports
New functionality has been added to the Report Designer to allow the user to select a nested relationship from a group member when designing a CMDB report. This change applies to both CSM Desktop and Browser clients.
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"Go to record in new window" in CI Context Menu
A new option for Go to record in new window now allows users to open a CMDB record in a new window from the context menu. This change applies to the CSM Desktop Client only.
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Ability to disable CMDB in ConfigVisualisation and Business Object Forms
In CSM Administrator, there is a new Security Right under Configuration Management called Configuration Management Database. This, alongside the original Business Object rights for a Configuration Item, now determine if a user has access to the CMDB. These security rights control access to viewing the CMDB in the following places (for both CSM clients):
Miscellaneous
- @ Mentions in the Activity Pane
Users can now use the @ symbol to mention other users in notes created from the Activity Pane in the CSM Browser Client. To be mentioned, users must have an email address set in their CSM accounts. You can also opt to send an email to mentioned users. These features can be enabled or disabled on the History page of the Business Object Properties dialog in CSM Administrator.
- JSON Encode Text Modifier
Text modifiers now include JSON Encode (escaping slashes, newlines, quotes) to convert a string into a value to use as JSON.
- Widget Type in Widget Manager
The Widget Manager now has a Type column that displays the type of widget in the grid.
- Time Remaining Duration Calculation
You can now select the Time Remaining checkbox in a Duration expression to calculate the total time between current time and end time.
Installer Updates
The CSM installer has been updated, providing an enhanced UI, the ability to install the Trusted Agent Server via the CSM installer, and a new application called the Cherwell Configuration Manager. The Configuration Manager gathers user input during the installation process.
Overwatch
A new Windows service called CSM Overwatch is now included when installing the CSM server. Overwatch provides a centralized place to manage CSM settings. You can continue to use Cherwell Server Manager to update CSM Services, but those updates will now be stored in Overwatch.
In addition to handling settings changes made through the Cherwell Server Manager, you can access Overwatch via Command-Line Configuration (CLC) to control other settings, like web.config settings, which are not available in Server Manager. You will find this especially useful if your on-premise implementation uses Redis and multiple front-end services, as Overwatch is now the single place to update settings for all servers.
Configure Overwatch itself via the Cherwell Server Manager. If you want to connect to Overwatch running somewhere else, provide the info there. When you update them, restart all services. Restart IIS from an Administrator prompt to ensure services are recycled correctly.
Overwatch now handles setting the base URL for the Cherwell REST API. The value will autopopulate when you install CSM. You can edit the URL using Cherwell Server Manager.
Trusted Agent Auto Update Service
A new Auto Update Service can now check for new versions of the Trusted Agent Server, eliminating the need to manually configure each agent individually after a CSM upgrade. The Auto Update service is delivered through the installer and can be configured in the same way as the Trusted Agent Server. If you do not want Trusted Agent Server automatically updated after each CSM upgrade, you can opt out in the Trusted Agent installer.
Restricted Server Access for Some Tokens and One-Step™ Actions
- Run a Program
- Run a Report
- Write to a File
- Transfer Attachments
- Excel Merge
Use the SaaS One-Step Action Check Health Check rule to determine which Actions need to be configured to work on a hosted environment. See SaaS One-Step Action Check. This rule is only available to systems using a SaaS license.
Deprecated Features
- The following deprecated features have been removed from
CSM:
- Clients installed on x86 machines.
- Service Monitor.
- Cherwell Service/SOAP API.
- Web-Forms.
- RSS Service (used for creating RSS feeds from CSM. The RSS Feed Widget is still available).
- Settings previously configured by directly editing web.config files are now controlled via Overwatch.
For information about feature retirement, see the Retirement Calendar.