TestDrive SMI Suite

The SMI Suite Test Drive is your chance to try SMI Suite for yourself, build your own reports and even save a pdf copy to your machine

We'd love to have the opportunity to show you, personally, through a no-committment online demo exactly what SMI Suite can do for you, but we understand that your time is at a premium. Maybe you want to know more before you take that step. Either way, please take a look at the SMI Suite TestDrive; it's an online, automated demo version of SMI Suite that you can access anytime.

Log in, create a report using our sample database (don't worry, there's an audio guidebook to talk you through every step), and when you're done save a pdf copy of the report to your own computer so you can show it to your colleagues. It's a stripped down version, so you won't be able to do everything in TestDrive that you can do in your own implementation of SMI Suite, but it will give you a flavor of how easy the tool is to use, and how powerful reporting can be.

If, after taking the TestDrive, you'd like to see more of what SMI Suite can do, please contact us to arrange for a one-to-one webinar session with our pre-sales consultants.

Click here to launch the SMI Suite TestDrive

Click here to launch the audio guidebook

Logon details are:
username - testdriver
password - smi123

System Requirements:
- Java (2 or higher)
- Flash Player (9 or higher)
- soundcard / speakers (for the audio guidebook)

If you don't have the facilities to listen to the audio guidebook, you can read the transcription below.

If you'd like a more in-depth tutorial, why not access the TestDrive and follow one of our in-depth product demo videos:

Part 1: Introduction to Report Building

Part 2: Accountable vs. Non-Accountable

Part 3: Building Layers of Complexity

Part 4: Scheduling & Publishing

Audio guidebook transcription:

Hello, this is Tom Dowler for Westbury. Welcome to the SMI Suite Test Drive, your chance to try out the front end interface of our SMI Suite solution for HP Service Manager. If you would prefer not to follow the audio guidebook, or if you need to rewind, fast forward or change the volume, please use the controls in the top left corner of this window.

I'm going to talk you through the steps of building your very own report, based on our sample database. When we're finished you'll be able to save a pdf copy to your local machine. There are a couple of caveats with the Test Drive: firstly, bear in mind that this is a very scaled down version of the full product - you'll only have access to one of the four universes that come with SMI Suite, and we've restricted access to some of the front end options available to you. Secondly bear in mind that this is just a demonstration of the front end of SMI Suite. So if you're sitting there saying to yourself "this is just Business Objects", then yes, you're right, it is. But the real magic is behind the scenes - it's all the jiggery-pokery that makes it possible for Business Objects to pull data from your Service Manager database so you can create reports.

The first step is to log in, which you will do using the username "testdriver" and the password "smi123" - that's lowercase "sierra", "mike", "india" and the numbers "1", "2" and "3". Once you're in, you'll see that there is a list of existing, pre-created reports that you can open up, refresh the data and play around with. They're examples of what it is possible to do with a little knowledge and training, and you're welcome to look at those in more details, but we're going to focus now on creating a report from scratch.

So to start that process go to the second menu bar, click on "new" and then click on "Web Intelligence Document". This is going to launch the Web Intelligence application, and you do need to make sure you have Java installed on your machine and that your browser is set to enable Java. You may get a prompt asking whether you trust the publisher and you should click "yes".

Once the interface has loaded you will be greeted with the query panel and it's here that we're going to specify what data we want to retrieve from the Service Manager database. And we do that simply by dragging the relevant objects from the list on the left, and dropping them into the "Result Objects" pane or the "Query Filters" pane, depending on what you want to use the data for.

We're going to create a simple report showing the different workgroups and the categories of calls they have been dealing with. So firstly drag the "Number of Incidents" object across and drop it in the "Result Objects" area. Once you've done that, you can expand the "Inc Assignment" Folder, then expand the "Inc Assignments Group" folder. You should now see an object called "Assignment Group Name" - drag and drop that across to the "Result Objects" pane.

Next you need to expand the "Inc Code Tables" folder, and then expand the "Inc Severity" folder. Drag and drop the "Priority" object to the Result Objects pane. You could run the query based only on these objects, but we want to restrict the results so we only see data from 2009, so expand the "Inc Calendar" folder, then the "Inc Open" folder and then the "Inc Open Date" until you can see the object "Open Date (Year)". Instead of dragging and dropping it to the Result Objects pane, however, drag this object and drop it in the "Query Filters" pane. In the white box where it says "type a constant", you can go ahead and type "2009".

Now we're ready to run the query, so move up to the top-right hand corner of the screen and click "Run Query".

It might take a moment or two to return the data, so we have a little time to kill. Um... Let's see... Why did the Yankees fan tip-toe past the medicine cabinet? So he wouldn't wake up the sleeping pills. OK, has that finished running the query yet? OK, so now we have a report in the form of a basic table and we want to do a couple of things to spice it up a little.

Firstly we're going to separate these results out by assignment group, and we can do that with a simple drag and drop. Just highlight the data under the "Assignment Group" column heading - that's everything underneath the heading, not the heading itself - click so it turns to the darker shade of grey, then click and drag that data above the table, next to the report title. You should get a tooltip saying "Drop here to create a section" when you're in the right spot. Release your mouse button and you should now have several tables, each one representing a different Assignment Group, and showing the data about how many incidents each group fielded and of what priority level.

But the data is still a little dry, so we want to convert those tables into a graphical format. On the left hand side, above the list of the objects you used in the query, there's a tab called "templates". Clicking on that reveals a whole host of templates that can be applied to our tables to change their display styles. Expand the "charts" section, and then expand the "bar section". Now drag and drop the "Vertical Grouped" template onto the first of the data tables. This will convert all of those tables into bar charts, representing that data in a much more user friendly format.

Congratulations, you've just created your very own report. I'm sure you probably want to keep a copy to send out with the Christmas cards this year, so go up to the top-left hand corner, and click on the little floppy disk icon, then choose "Save to my computer as", then choose either the Excel or pdf format and Robert is your father's brother.

Now this is a very simple report and there are much much more complicated and interesting things you can do with the data and with the way you present it. To learn more check out the demo videos on our website at Westbury-hyphen-it-dot-com. If you have any problems with any aspect of the Test Drive, please let us know by emailing us at info-at-westbury-hyphen-it-dot-com. See you soon.