Aldon has released Aldon Community Manager 9, the latest version of its comprehensive service desk management solution used for improving an organization's response to business, technical, and operational issues. Equipped with new and enhanced features that include an integrated ITIL v3-compatible service catalog, increased approval workflow mechanisms, and additional reporting functions like drill-down reporting analytics, Aldon Community Manager 9 helps IT organizations get and stay compliant. A major addition to Aldon Community Manager 9 is the ITIL v3 integrated service catalog, where users will have a "one-stop-shop" for service request management. They can view a catalog of all services provided by the service desk, get detailed information on those services, select the one they need, and then submit the request. Another feature of Community Manager 9 is that it lets IT teams stay aligned with the needs of the business through its approval workflow engine and communication and collaboration functions. And Aldon builds on its reporting capabilities in this release with graph and chart drill-down capabilities. Some new reports include the "N query" report, which lets users customize queries with numerical parameters; and a built-in "Age-in-Status" metric report, which shows how long any specific issue lived in a particular status.

--Rita-Lyn Sanders, Programming & Systems Management editor