We recently set up a similar solution to our own for our parent company, using the xMatters platform. The new Workflows feature made it much more intuitive to set up this time than it was ten years ago, so the initial setup is relatively straightforward.

The solution requires some maintenance but more from a licensing perspective specific to our environment. As we are charged for user licenses, the synchronization between users across the two different systems we have is another layer for us to consider. Sometimes, we end up paying for a license that no one is using, so we have to do some maintenance to fix that. Aside from some licensing maintenance, the workflows and inner functions run themselves.

We did a couple of walkthrough training sessions with xMatters staff. It involved a core group from our side, people who were going to be the admins or the main people using and configuring xMatters. I then did a handful of walkthroughs with different groups in our IT department. Those were about 45 minutes to an hour in length and I showed them the interface and how to add their devices. We did a little bit of documentation, but not much, about our process as it relates to xMatters. We then rolled it out. We did all of the training within a few weeks, once we got close to that "lights out"  deadline at the end of December of 2019.

In terms of our infrastructure, we just added the module for ServiceNow, filled in some details according to the documentation, and hit save. That was it.

As for maintenance, the only thing we've had to do is add users and remove users. It's a set-it-and-forget-it solution.

It was like a formal project. One of the xMatters consultants came over from the US and worked on it with us in the UK for over three weeks. It was basically a major migration from the old world AlarmPoint to xMatters. We had to make sure that all on-call rotas were migrated. We had to make sure that it was there in the user devices, and we also had to configure our Active Directory to set up the groups to manage access to each role and trigger the integration agent for IBM Netcool.

I wasn't around when they started the implementation process. In terms of maintenance, they handle most of their upgrades. I like that if they have a major release, we're getting put on that major release. We aren't 10 releases behind because they manage all of the instances themselves, which is great, and that's one thing off my team's back.

To start using xMatters there was some training needed on the Integration Builder, training that xMatters provided us as part of the rollout. It helped us to better understand how to start thinking about and creating integrations. That helped us to be successful. 

The robust APIs helped a lot too. We went from onboarding people via batch CSV jobs to using a plugin we wrote. We have a front end and a back end and that has a form, and that's how people can get onboarded to xMatters very easily. That back end calls the xMatters API and has a lot of the logic that we want. For example, we want team names in a certain format, and we add metadata into the team description in xMatters. That's how we're able to use xMatters and keep it updated the way we want it to be.

The only maintenance involved is our due diligence to clean users out who are no longer with the company. We query the xMatters API for all the users, and then we check to make sure that they are still there, and if they're not, we delete them, also via API call. We do that for licensing purposes too, since xMatters is licensed by the user. We are very motivated to keep that clean. It's an automated job that runs daily. It takes five minutes every day. It's not something we even think about. We get a little report via email that says, "This was done" or "Nothing needed to be done."

I had the privilege of at least playing around with the tool before I joined this account. With my previous account, when they started using it, I knew the very basics of what it was and what it was for. However, being the admin and configuring everything, that was a first. For a while, I had to really dig deep into using the dev environment and looking at the fields, e.g., what they are. 

I have a knack for figuring things out myself, though It took awhile, but I attended a couple of training courses and sessions also with xMatters last year. That really helped a lot. There were things that I didn't realize were there, and those were the things that helped make it what it is today.

I went through Launchpad, in California, for a week to get a feel for the administrative and onboarding side of things. 

A lot of data needs to be fed into xMatters to make it work. For it to be successful, there is a lot of reference data that needs to be configured within the platform to enable it to communicate with the right people. We've used xMatters for a number of years, and there is a lot of reference data, such as users' contact details, groups, and systems, that xMatters needs for integration with to receive alerts.

Before implementing xMatters, the administrators and supervisors went through training on the company site. We watched some training tutorials and followed along. After that, it was simple to start creating groups and workflows around that. The setup itself was intuitive and straightforward, but the training documents and the videos are excellent. They're much better than what you would typically find, I think.

We went through the training material. It is like learning any other application. For example, if you are going to be doing workflow development, then you need to understand the workflow design and UI. Same as if you are going to set up a group, you need to know how to set up on-call scheduling and learn how to manage your team's roster for the group. 

Overall, it is very intuitive and straightforward. xMatters is one of the applications that does provide a lot of online documentation, in which they do an excellent job.

It is a cloud version, so they do all the updates and maintenance. We didn't have to do any preparation to start using it.

I am an end-user of this solution. We were all given logins to use it, and we just started using it.

In terms of maintenance, it doesn't seem like it needs a lot of maintenance because of the scope of how much we are using it or what we use it for.

In terms of the preparation needed to start using xMatters, we had to do a full security audit.

As this was a new application for us, we were not aware of what might need to be done. The professional services team was engaged at some point and, through them, we got a few ideas about how this would help us, how we could integrate it, how the user profiles are built, how the groups are created, et cetera. 

The process of integrating xMatters with other applications was not too difficult. We already have the GIT files readily available, so it was just a matter of updating the scripts, connecting the dots, and it was really helpful in building the workflows.

I wasn't involved with setting it up from scratch. I've set up new workflows for which you obviously need your users and groups and then you create your workflow with whoever you want to send it to. It's relatively easy. As long as you follow the initial user guide and you have a clear understanding of what you're trying to achieve, you can set up some of the basic functionality easily in order to get going by yourself. The rest is all available in xMatters' knowledge base.

It doesn't require any maintenance. There isn't any maintenance on our side. It's all cloud-based, and we just log in and carry on using it. xMatters does regular updates, and they notify us when there is an update, which is often quite useful. That's it.

The initial setup was complex. The reason for this is that the interface is not as sophisticated as our needs.

The configuration is partly done in the service desk tool, where it gathers the contact information or it reads it dynamically. xMatters stores the method and the parameter for contact. As an example, if the method is to contact via email then the parameter would be the email address. If the method is a phone call then the parameter would be a phone number. You can set up other methods, too, depending on how sophisticated your environment is.

Implementing and deploying the system took six months to complete, including testing to makes sure that it worked.

It was pretty easy. It took a little while because we have a lot of products and a lot of different teams that need to be notified for different products, and a lot of different policies. The implementation wasn't difficult, it just took time.

It predates my time on the team. So, I don't know about the initial setup. 

Its maintenance is practically zero. From our side, we're primarily doing account creations as the talent pool of resolving engineers changes and shifts. We also configure any new workflow or webhook requirements that come through. We set up the groups and support users, but they configure their own rotas because we like to get them to own that side of it so that they can look after their own team going forward. We initially support them through the rota creations to make sure it is all set up in the way they need it to be operational.

This maintenance time varies depending on the demand. We've got a relatively stable take-up at this point. At its busiest, we were spending half a working week on it. At this stage, where we've got things configured and pretty stable, we are down to a very minimal amount of hands-on support that is required from our end, which is great. The system just runs. We're called into it when there's an issue or when there's a new take on of some kind, but for the majority of it, we're able to just let it run and do its thing.

Three people work on xMatters day-to-day. We're support engineers, and this is one of the things that we look after. We support it in addition to numerous other systems we all look after. We don't look after just xMatters. There is not a great deal of work for us to deal with on a day-to-day basis when it comes to xMatters.

On the IT instance side, it required preparation in terms of figuring out the groups of people to whom we wanted to send the notification. It involved defining and building those groups. On the business continuation side, it was primarily importing our user data so that we could properly communicate with specific locations and/or teams of people.

In terms of maintenance, it is a SaaS solution. The only real maintenance required on our side is to make sure that our end-user data that is imported into the solution is correct. We export our user data from one system. We then make sure that it is formatted correctly, and after that, we import it into xMatters. Its maintenance takes about 20 minutes per week.

There were some issues with user-adoption, but those have been mitigated over time.

I was just a user of the tool when it was deployed. I wasn't an admin. To start using the solution, there was training. We had to learn how to use the tool by setting up the workflows, forms, and scenarios. We also had some advanced integration questions for which we had to learn how to use it. We met with the vendor, and they provided us with a high level of support.

In terms of maintenance, because of the lack of a restoration and recovery solution, we do perform a lot of manual backups of components within xMatters. So, we're prepared in case something were to be deleted, and that would be the biggest maintenance activity.

Initial setup was fairly simple. The biggest challenge is that you need to define your process first, which is true of any tool (rules before tools). xMatters is a fairly open sandbox, so it can seem a little overwhelming until you start to dig into it. We started with a simple goal of hosting conference bridge calls through xMatters, then evolved it into targeted conference bridge scenarios based on the priority and system impacted.

Vendor assisted implementation was included, so their presence in the implementation project made for a smoother implementation and migration from the legacy product.

The On-Demand product setup was a breeze. The ServiceNow integration installation and upgrades have been painful.

The SaaS solution was straightforward, but we did have to migrate all of our on-premise data to the cloud (xMatters helped us with this). The integration with ServiceNow required some configuration changes, but they were not too complex. 

We've always used their hosted service, so we've never had to set it up. The only thing we have to do is train our users on how to use it. It's been pretty easy to do so. They've actually made many improvements over the years to make it even easier to train people.

It was complex in that the integration was very basic in order to apply it to real world situations. It had to be significantly customized and we have three integration points right now with our one ticketing tool which only handles for incidents. It does not handle any of our other processes. It is also very complex in that xMatters does not have the ability to clone what I have built in production back to our Dev environment to do any other further testing or development of the tool. It all has to be manually created and manipulated. So, that is a huge miss.

As this is SaaS based, xMatters does the environment setup. Adding users, groups, and on-call rotations is pretty simple. Roles are a little confusing as they seem to have too many. 

The most complex parts are the integrations. For us, this was the integration to ITSM and LDAP, both of which we used their professional services for.