PB Newsletter: October 2023

As we move into the last quarter of the year, here is our latest collection of newsworthy updates:

Customer Success Story

Large US Media Company selects Precision Bridge for ServiceNow Migration

Following a successful Proof of Concept, Precision Bridge has been selected as the tool of choice for a large US media company to assist in the migration of their applications to a new greenfield ServiceNow instance. 

From the outset, it was decided that application data needed to be included in the migration particularly as they wanted to be able to continue working tickets on the new instance without interruption. The project will involve the migration of data from Incident, Problem, Change, CMDB, Knowledge and Request applications which currently support over 9000 users… [read more]

New Partner: BDO Solutions

We are delighted to announce that BDO has joined our partner program. BDO Solutions excels in delivering managed IT services globally. Their services are designed with ITIL and ISO 27001 with GDPR acting as guiding principles, to meet global compliance standards. Their team of certified and experienced bilingual experts, coupled with cost-effective and cutting-edge solutions, sets them apart in the industry.

Latest Precision Bridge Version Released

Here is a summary of Precision Bridge version 7.3 August which includes some important new features:

  • Support for CMDB and asset data migration to Jira Service Management

  • Support for filtering of attachments (by creator’s user ID or file type) when archiving

  • Updated and reorganized instance migration templates that are easier and more flexible to use and provide support for newer ServiceNow versions.

  • Support for migrations to and from the new ServiceNow Vancouver release

Please note that with the release of Precision Bridge 7.3, support for versions 6.3 and older has been terminated.

Upcoming Webinars

  • November 8 at 12pm EST - Instance Separation: Separating your Service Management Systems and getting your data into the right place: reserve your spot.

See our Webinars page for a complete list of upcoming webinars. You can also visit the on-demand webinars for access to these past educational exclusives. 

Feature Spotlight: On-Demand Webinars

Our feature spotlight for September is the release our of on-demand Webinars. Due to the popularity and regular requests from our customers, we took the feedback onboard and have now made the majority of our previous Webinars on-demand.
Please visit this link to check it out – On Demand Webinars — Precision Bridge

 

PB Newsletter: September 2023

Where did the time go? It seems like only a few weeks ago we had put away our winter coats, and now it’s almost time to drag them out again. As we head into autumn, let’s have a look at what’s new in the Precision Bridge community:

Latest Precision Bridge Version Released

Another of the monthly incremental releases of Precision Bridge 7.2 became available in August. This release includes the following features and improvements:

  • Support for retrieving links and relationships between objects in Cherwell

  • Support for creating links and relationships between any two objects in Ivanti

  • Precision Bridge Query support for looking up Jira issues and Confluence pages, along with lookup support for Jira users, groups, organizations, request types, and Confluence spaces

  • Support for key mappings for migration of issues and Confluence pages into Jira

In addition, this release of Precision Bridge 7.2 includes new functionality to aid users in raising Precision Bridge support tickets and contacting the Precision Bridge team.

Hints and Tips

What's the best way to map tables and fields when migrating knowledge articles? Should users performing migrations have certain access controls granted to them? The Precision Bridge support page has plenty of tips, tricks and best practices to help your migration go smoothly, and here are a couple of examples:

New Partner: CGI

We are delighted to welcome CGI as our new partner. Founded in 1976, CGI is among the world's largest IT and business consulting services firms. CGI is insights-driven and outcome-based to help accelerate returns on your IT and business investments.

Events We're Attending

We have a busy remainder of the year of events planned, but our highlight is the itSMF Conference (Reading) on the 13th and 14th of November where we are speaking in the breakout session.

If you will be there too, we’d like to connect! Drop us a note so we can coordinate.

Upcoming Webinars

The Precision Bridge webinar series continues with multiple webinars on ITSM best practices and interactive demonstrations. Reserve your spot now, and check back on our Webinars page to see more upcoming events.

Staying Ahead of ServiceNow Migration Challenges

This is the first in a 7-part series that will be updated each week in the Debunk the DIY Data Migration blogs...

By their nature, most IT projects are difficult in many ways: Difficult to plan, difficult to fund, and difficult to execute. For some projects, it’s even hard to define what problem it is that you’re solving or the expected benefits of the project.
Those difficulties, among others, help explain why so many IT projects fall short of expectations or fail altogether… [read more]

Notice of Support Termination

With the release of Precision Bridge 7.3, Support is being withdrawn for Precision Bridge 6.3 and below. Customers still using these versions are advised to upgrade to a later release. Currently, Supported Versions of Precision Bridge are: 7.3, 7.2, 7.1 and 7.0.

If you have any questions, contact us here: Contact Us.

PB Newsletter: August 2023

It’s summertime, in the northern hemisphere anyway, and the living is easy in the Precision Bridge community! Here’s what’s new this month:

 

Latest Precision Bridge Version Released

In the newest monthly incremental release of Precision Bridge 7.2, we’ve added the following features and improvements:

 

  • Support for knowledge article migration into Jira as Confluence pages; this includes a new assignment function for handling embedded images.

  • Enhanced support for migrating foundation data, such as users, groups, organizations, and customers, into Jira.

  • Ability to select from all supported server types when creating a project; the user is directed to the appropriate support article if additional configuration is needed for a specific project type.

 

Contact us if you would like to know more about these updates and how they can help your ITSM needs.

 

New Partner: Silver Tree

Following the success of a complex ITSM migration project that leveraged Precision Bridge technology, Silver Tree Consulting & Services of Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, has elected to become a Precision Bridge technology partner. In this role, Silver Tree will use Precision Bridge technology to support their consulting services and add value for their customers. Precision Bridge enthusiastically welcomes Silver Tree to our partnership family!

 

Customer Success Story: Boston University

Boston University recently completed a major ITSM migration project from an older instance of ServiceNow to a new “greenfield” instance, eliminating customizations and leveraging more native ServiceNow features. Over 10 million records were migrated for ServiceNow modules including Incident, Problem, Change, CMDB, CSM, Knowledge, Releases, Projects, and SDLC. Read more customer success stories from Boston University and other satisfied customers.

 

Upcoming Webinars

The Precision Bridge webinar series continues with multiple webinars on ITSM best practices and interactive demonstrations. Check back on our Webinars page to see the full list of upcoming events.

 

 

  • 23rd August 2023 12pm EST - ITSM Data Archiving: Why, What, When and How? All attendees will receive a copy of our ITSM Archiving Best Practice Guide, which includes multiple tips on addressing specific issues related to  ITSM archiving projects.

 

  • 6th September 2023 12pm EST - Live ITSM Data Archiving Demonstration. All attendees will receive a copy of our ITSM Archiving Best Practice Guide, which covers the advantages, approaches, hints, and tips for archiving your data.

 

 

T4S Partners Partnership Announcement

We are delighted to announce that T4S Partners have joined our new certified partner program. T4S Partners is focused on helping clients achieve their desired outcomes by effectively connecting systems, processes, people and insights to create a competitive advantage creating compelling new customer solutions, optimizing their IT organization and assets, and transforming enterprise service management functions. Learn more about T4S Partners here: www.t4spartners.com

PB Newsletter: Onward and Upward

Here’s what’s going on in the Precision Bridge world this month:

Precision Bridge 7.2

Following quickly on the heels of April’s release of Precision Bridge 7.1, in May we announced the release of Precision Bridge 7.2. This release includes a number of enhancements, including:

  • Expanded multithreading capability for both data retrieval and data insert/update operations for numerous in-platform and cross-platform migrations

  • Connector enhancements for various platforms

  • Template enhancements, including the ability to take advantage of CSV external lookups.

With certain exceptions, any project created in Precision Bridge 7.0 or 7.1 will work in 7.2. We look forward to hearing your feedback and ideas for further enhancements and new features.

Events

The Precision Bridge webinar series continues to generate enthusiastic interest. Recent webinars included a demonstration of automated ITSM data migration and a Precision Bridge product demo. Thanks to all attendees for your participation and excellent feedback.

Check the Precision Bridge website to register for the July 12th webinar, focused on Data Synchronization.

We also recently attended the Service Desk & IT Support (SITS) show in London, UK and were delighted to be able to network with many partners both existing and new!

Feature Highlight: External Lookup Connections

First in an occasional series highlighting features of the Precision Bridge technology.

Many ITSM data migration projects involve not only data from the source system but also external data sources, from spreadsheets to standalone databases to enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and other business applications.  These data are not necessarily part of the migration but are needed to support and complete the project.

Precision Bridge makes it easy to connect to these external data sources, with the powerful External Lookup Server Connection feature.

Once a connection is established, you can configure lookup queries to pull exactly the data you need.

Data More Important than Ever

We are seeing a large increase in the number of organizations wanting to ensure their existing data is migrated to new systems. This is being driven by a number of factors including the focus on customer experience. It is no secret that IT Service Management is playing catchup with other Service Management disciplines. Could you imagine calling your airline about a flight you took with them a few months ago to be told they know nothing about that because they recently migrated to a new system and did not bother taking any historical data about your integrations with them! It is great to see ITSM organizations focusing on customer experience and making sure they keep information on their customers, know them better and improve service as a result.

Partnership News

We are delighted to welcome Neyo as a new Precision Bridge Certified Partner. Neyo is a ServiceNow consultancy that provides cutting-edge solutions for modern business operations specializing in streamlining operations, boosting productivity, and enhancing customer satisfaction while lowering costs and staying ahead of the competition The combination of Neyo's Service Management experience together with Precision Bridge migration tool means fast and cost-effective data migration, archiving, replication and synchronization for customers. Learn more about Neyo here: www.neyoltd.com

Neyo Partnership Announcement

We are delighted to welcome Neyo as a new Precision Bridge Certified Partner.

Neyo is a ServiceNow consultancy that provides cutting-edge solutions for modern business operations specializing in streamlining operations, boosting productivity, and enhancing customer satisfaction while lowering costs and staying ahead of the competition. The combination of Neyo's Service Management experience together with Precision Bridge migration tool means fast and cost effective data migration, archiving, replication and synchronisation for customers. Learn more about Neyo here: www.neyoltd.com

Precision Bridge 7.2 is Here!

Precision Bridge latest version 7.2 is now available. This new release provides numerous enhancements for performance and usability. Here’s a summary of what’s new in this version:

Performance Enhancements

Release 7.2 extends the multithreading capabilities introduced in Version 7.0. Multithreading now significantly accelerates data retrieval from source systems as well as data inserts and updates in target systems for many of the most popular ITSM applications, including ServiceNow, Cherwell, Remedy, SalesForce, Ivanti, and more. The shortened migration cycle means that projects can be completed even faster.

Additional performance enhancements include a streamlined database lookup function that reduces the number of queries to the database for lookups and ID mapping operations, which are now up to 20 times faster than in earlier releases. This enhancement applies to all database servers.

Template Enhancements

On the template side, Precision Bridge templates now support CSV external lookups, which is highly useful for correlating source and target objects where the hierarchies in each might be different.

Furthermore, new templates are now available to support migrations from Cherwell to Ivanti for incidents, service requests, and foundation data.

Connector Enhancements

Also in support of Cherwell-to-Ivanti migrations, Precision Bridge 7.2 introduces support for attachment migration, similar to attachment migration support for other cross-platform migrations.

Compatibility Notes

Any projects created in Precision Bridge 7.1 or 7.0 will work in release 7.2 without modification. (Exception: Precision Bridge 7.0 projects that include the Use Server ID’s key mapping option may create duplicate records when updating an existing data transfer. See the Precision Bridge 7.2 release notes for more information.)

Final Thoughts

We are very pleased to bring these enhancements to our customers and prospects and look forward to hearing your feedback and ideas for further enhancements and new features.



PB Newsletter: A Great Start to 2023

In this newsletter, we cover some of the highlights so far this year.

Welcome Jess Connell

We’re delighted to welcome Jess Connell to the Precision Bridge team. Jess will serve as our business administrator to help drive the expansion of our operations as we continue to grow, with a focus on streamlining and automating processes where possible. Jess will help support activities across sales, marketing, finance and HR.

Precision Bridge 7.1

In April we announced the release of Precision Bridge 7.1. Among other enhancements, this release introduces several new and upgraded features, including:

  • The ability to connect to a Snowflake database and send data to it for archiving purposes.

  • An enhancement to the Zendesk and Manage Engine extraction utilities that increases performance and speed of extraction.

  • Multi-threading of insert and update operations to increase performance when migrating data to ServiceNow.

  • Enhanced validation options to ensure error-free migrations.

  • New and improved templates that enable quicker and easier migration setup.

We continue to welcome feedback and ideas for new features from the user community. Keep them coming!

Customer Success Stories

This month we do a deep dive into two important success stories from our clients.

Leading U.S. University

One of the most important higher-education institutions in the Northeast U.S. recently completed a major project in which they migrated the data from their legacy ServiceNow system to a greenfield system. Over 10 million records were migrated, covering all aspects of IT service management.

As an added bonus, the project team identified customizations in the legacy system that were no longer needed because they are adequately covered by standard ServiceNow functionality. Similarly, a large number of custom reports were considered redundant and left behind. The result was a clean start on a fresh, up-to-date ServiceNow instance with no interruption to IT service management operations.

Silver Tree

Silver Tree Services, a major IT managed services firm based in North Carolina, successfully completed a migration of separate Zendesk and ManageEngine instances to a consolidated ServiceNow instance using Precision Bridge. Over 400,000 records, including attachments, comments, and email correspondence, were migrated with a significant savings in resources and time.

Cliff Strickland, CTO at Silver Tree commented: “The Precision Bridge platform and approach to ServiceNow data migration is top notch, and the team integrated seamlessly into ours to provide an optimal customer experience.  I won’t need any research to figure out who will do my next one – Precision Bridge in a heartbeat!”

Find out more here: https://precisionbridge.net/testimonials

Recent & Upcoming Events

We recently held two new webinars in our ongoing training webinar series. They included our first webinar on the topic of archiving best practices and a webinar on replication best practices. The participants were enthusiastic about what they learned and the Best Practices guides that we provided to all attendees.

Our next two webinars are:

Click the links above to register.

We’ll also be attending these upcoming conferences:

If you are attending either of these, please reach out to us so we can connect and hopefully have the opportunity to meet up!

Final Thoughts

We leave you with this: A trend we are seeing lately is a movement towards consolidating various service-management applications—in IT, HR, facilities, and other areas—into a single, integrated platform. With migration tools from Precision Bridge, this kind of project can be much easier than you might think. Contact us to learn more.

PB Newsletter: Wrapping Up 2022 and Looking Forward to 2023

In this month’s newsletter, we look back on highlights from late 2022 and explore a few trends in ITSM data management going into 2023.

Precision Bridge is Growing!

First, a big thank you to all our partners and customers who have helped us grow our business in FY22 resulting in Q4 being our best quarter ever. The demand for migration, archiving, replication, and synchronisation continues to increase.

November Newsletter: Ernst & Young completes migration of 4 million records from BMC Remedy to ServiceNow in 5 weeks

Ernst & Young recently selected Precision Bridge to support the migration from BMC Remedy to ServiceNow for one of their customers.  The project included the migration of ITSM data from a BMC Remedy 6.3 on-premise application to a ServiceNow instance including over 1.5 million incidents, 2 million change requests, and a large number of problems and service request records. Each set of records included a large number of attachments of various types that needed to be included in the migration.  The project also included migration of the CMDB including CI relationships.
 

One of the reasons for selecting Precision Bridge was that they already had a pre-built adaptor for Remedy to ServiceNow migrations and this was used to accelerate the migration and transformation of data into the correct format for ServiceNow without loss of data integrity.  Precision Bridge connected directly to the source Remedy server and target ServiceNow instance providing a seamless gateway between the two environments without the need to export, format or re-load any records manually.
 

As a result, they were able to complete the project is less than 5 weeks including a significant number of large record attachments.
 

Following the success of this project, Ernst and Young are now considering the use of Precision Bridge to support a range of other migration projects for their customers, including ServiceNow Instance consolidation.
 

Read the full story here.

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