Detailed work experience of CA Service Desk Maanger

I have worked with CA Service Desk Manager and related CA's products for nearly 10 years and gained technical knowledge comparable to CA's internal engineers. This combined with my wide knowledge and long experience with other technologies like Linux and various programming languages makes me very good choice for CA Service Desk related positions.

To assure my knowledge I have listed in detail my achievements with CA's products, especially CA Service Desk Manager on this document to be read with my CV.

CA Service Desk Manager customizations

I can do pretty much any customization for CA Service Desk Manager which CA's internal experts can do - short of customizations needing source code as they have not been available for me. I know products internals very well - understand how components communicates between themselves and interact with user and the database.

Creating UI changes is normal day to day job for me - including custom Java-servlets integrating neatly with CA's UI. So is schema changes - I can create new tables and attributes of course, but also somehow undocumented LREL/BREL/QREL n-to-n relations and custom factories and utilize them. I can create triggers and program using completely undocumented SPEL language used internally by CA Service Desk Manager and thus create very advanced modifications playing with internals of the product.

Some highlights of my previous work:

• UI multilingualization in Finnish, English and Swedish including forms and DB contents. User can change their language on the fly and each user can use the same system with their selected language.
• Custom login pages with advanced authentication capabilities including Single-Sign-On against Microsoft AD using Tomcat-only installation.
• Shibboleth authentication within Linux-server and Apache based reverse-proxy providing authentication information for custom Tomcat filter.
• Many Java Servlets integrating tightly with CA Service Desk Manager using Web Services API. Most commonly I have created custom E-mailing features having much more features than products internal Manual Notify feature.
• Many custom replacements with more features for product's own daemons. In example, custom E-mail eater (maileater) and custom LDAP synchronization program (pdm_ldap_import).
• Hundreds of SPEL modifications like parallel SLA calculations for reporting purposes, complex data validations and many improvements for products internal logic.
• Work Hour Entering modification which allows to enter Work Hours into CA Service Desk Manager to be reported using reporting tools (CA CleverPath Reporter).
• Billing modification which allows to enter billing data for tickets which then will be transferred to billing system (SAP).

Integrations

I have implemented various integrations between CA's and other software companies products. Most of them I have forgotten long since, but here's some examples:

• CA Service Desk Manager r12.5 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 using Perl program which connects to Web Services APIs in both ends and synchronizes data like organizations and contacts.
• CA Service Desk r11.2, CA CleverPath Reporter and Microsoft Sharepoint. Work hour reports are generated from CA Service Desk's DB and uploaded through Web Services API to Microsoft Sharepoint Server using Perl programs.
• CA Service Desk r11.2 and SAP using Perl program using Web Services API of CASD and XML over FTP API of SAP. Synchronizes projects, CIs, contracts, billing data, etc.
• CA Service Desk r11.2 and TTMi using Perl progam similar with SAP case.
• CA Service Desk r11.2 and Efecte using E-mail APIs. Ticket synchronization.

Reporting

My side duties have been including reporting from the CMDB using reporting software like SAP Business Intelligence and CA CleverPath Reported. I can say I know CMDB's structure very well and can write complex SQL queries fetching all the data needed.

Toolkits

I have created toolkits for easing administrators life with CA Service Desk Manager using Java and Perl. Toolkits do include programs automating various task like updating and deleting DB records, applying localization packages, editing and automatically distributing new configuration files etc.

Debugging

I have had to debug CA Service Desk Manager (mainly for understanding how new customizations should be implemented) so many times that I can boast about debugging skills exceeding CA's technical support. I can tap into internal communication of CA's daemons and find problematic bits and pieces by analyzing traffic between daemons. My wide knowledge of IT technologies like TCP/IP networks have been in great help when debugging is neccessary.