New Features in vFire 9.7

This topic relates to vFire 9.7, first released in January 2017. You may also wish to view other new features or the release notes in full.

The key new features in this release include:

  • Virtualization Workflow Automation. We have enhanced the Self Service portal and service requests to deliver a full Cloud Management Portal (CMP) within the portal. This allows us to deliver a self service, auto-provisioning infrastructure cloud that is integrated with your vFire system. See Virtualization Workflow Automation for more details.
  • Matching Panel provides an at-a-glance list of Calls and Knowledge Articles related to the current call. The list of related items is based on values in the call fields and dynamically updates as the Analyst enters or changes data, or changes the filter options within the panel. See Matching Panel for more details.
  • Configurable Labels. You can now use Designer to rename fields and buttons that are displayed in vFire Self Service, making your Self Service portal even more configurable to meet your organization's needs. See Change Labels for more details.
  • The ability to filter CMDB items, including services and service actions in vFire Self Service by stakeholder role as well as subscriber group. You can now set visibility on the portal based on stakeholder role. This includes the ability to review configuration items and order services and service actions from the service catalog. See Filtering by Stakeholder for more details.
  • Styling. We have introduced several new features that improve and enhance the screen display in vFire Core, making it more usable and easier to configure for personal preference and accessibility:
    • A new portal-like menu display. See The vFire Core Window for more details.
    • Additional configurable display settings for your login. See Personal Settings for more details.
    • The gray background on many of the windows has also been replaced with white, to provide a cleaner, fresher working screen.

    • The new styling is installed as standard. As soon as you upgrade, you will see the new menu.

  • A new vFire App allows users of windows phones to access their outstanding calls and requests, and monitor and update them. This is in addition to the existing vFire Officer app, which can be used by analysts to manage calls and requests from mobile devices. It is initially available for users of Windows 8.1 phones, and will be made more widely available in later releases.
  • 64-bit wrapper is now available for download. The default continues to be 32-bit, however, some users who wish to run large reports or have high numbers of tabs open simultaneously may wish to explore this option to improve performance.

Alpha Features

We have two new, exciting features that we are developing for 2017. They are currently at the alpha stage of development and are available for those customers who wish to explore their functionality in a lab environment. We would not recommend that you use them in a production environment, but would love your feedback and comment.

Alemba API - a RESTful API, that offers a more powerful and intuitive way of working with vFire data. See Alemba API for more details.

Nano - a new browser-agnostic interface that does not require plug-ins. This currently has limited functionality but is available for users to investigate, and represents the initial phase of development of our new user interface. See Introducing Nano for more details.

Additional Features

The following features have also been introduced in this release.

You can now... Description
Add Reminders to recipient(s)' Outlook calendar

A new Add to Calendar button has been added to the Call Defer window, which will add the reminder to the recipient(s)' Outlook calendar, using the date and time specified in the Reminder field.

This button is only visible if Add to Calendar is selected in the Messaging window and Outlook must be installed on the local desktop and configured to at least one recipient account.
Configuration Items are now Resources In vFire Self Service, "Configuration Item" labels have been renamed to "Resources" to reflect the wide spectrum of entities that can be ordered from the portal.

To view a PDF version of the 9.7 release notes, select the following link .