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Comment by n0us | Hacker News Reader

If it boggles you then I take it you’ve never used HP Service Manager

Oh wow. I still remember having to create change records in HP Service Center. You had to have split screen, with all text (change description, list of impacted CI’s etc.) besides it in notepad. Then it was quick hand-eye coordination and quick CTRL-C - CTRL-V. Too slow? You’d hit the timeout on the last screen and could start over!

I used it like 7 years ago..

If I remember correctly, that POS had both close and exist on the same screen performing different functions.

Yes! Close would attempt to change the status of a ticket from Open to Closed, but often fail along the way with a cryptic error about the RADstack being 99% full.

Exit would close the window, and also break your workflow if you had HPSM open in two browser tabs

Is that the one that was .net activex app in the browser?

For a very long time, HP Service Manager didn't really have a functioning web client at all. Customizing and distributing the thick client to end users was just part of the fun that came with managing that platform.

As competitors like ServiceNow came onto the scene, they tried to create a better web client, but at least when I was still close to that product, they never quite got there. My two final HPSM projects were:

1) Building a mobile / blackberry compatible web client from scratch (HTTP/SOAP) so management types could see/approve change requests on the go

2) Migrating to ServiceNow :P

It would not surprise me at all if they had some kind of ActiveX thing going on with their web client...

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