Release notes

What's new in Alemba Service Manager Athena 26.10

Version 26.10 Released October 2026
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Athena 26.10 is all about the working day. Service levels respect stop clock statuses and working hours, saved searches keep their settings, busy screens load faster, and the Self Service Portal gets more flexible lookup fields and better accessibility.

Nothing here needs switching on. Upgrade from Athena 26.9 or earlier and every change below applies straight away.

Other Improvements

Self Service Portal Enhanced

Lookup fields on portal forms now size to fit their content, with room for more columns, paging and scrolling, so picking the right item from a long list is quicker for everyone.

Lookup fields support more than three columns and meet WCAG accessibility guidelines, so forms can show customers the detail they need to choose correctly first time.

Also in the portal
  • Linked service actions. Links behave consistently in the catalogue. Removed links stay removed, and edit permissions are respected.
  • Service Orders. Removing or cancelling a Service Order only ever removes items that were never submitted. Submitted calls and requests stay put.
  • Saved for later. Requests saved for later are waiting when the user comes back, even when the same item was added more than once.
  • Special characters. Titles with characters such as & and + display cleanly in tiles, service actions and buttons, and can be found in a portal search.
  • Links and images. Web links in knowledge articles look like links and open when clicked, and embedded images display as they should.

Calls, requests and SLAs Enhanced

Service levels now follow the rules you set. Stop clock statuses pause the SLA clock, and resolve targets for calls suspended more than once land inside working hours.

Breach targets you can trust make for reporting you can trust, and fewer awkward conversations about a weekend deadline nobody could have met.

Smoother day to day
  • Auto close. Calls that meet an auto close rule are closed as configured.
  • Return Calls If Not Actioned By. Returned calls go to the default IPK group of the analyst who set the option.
  • Call History. Each analyst's preferred view of notes, expanded or collapsed and in their chosen sort order, is remembered.
  • Help from anywhere. ASM help opens in a new browser tab, including from the Send Email and Add Note windows.
  • Reminder dates. The Defer screen checks reminder dates as they are entered.

Saved searches Enhanced

Saved searches keep their criteria, columns and colour formatting when they are created, cloned or carried through an upgrade.

A saved search is only worth saving if it comes back the way you left it.

  • Through upgrades. Searches filtering on lookup or numeric fields keep their criteria, and colour formatting on results stays in place.
  • Unsaved searches too. On a Call Search that has not been saved yet, column filters now survive a refresh of the results, just as the sort order already did.
  • Group searches. Calls and requests can be searched by IPK group or workflow group.
  • Long sessions. Menu items and saved searches stay available after a page refresh, however long you have been signed in.

Nano Enhanced

Nano is steadier on every screen, including on an iPad, where tapping a call in a grid selects it and brings up the action toolbar.

  • CMDB and CI details. Both screens load cleanly and stay still while you read them.
  • Forced call ownership. Assigned group and Current group update every time a call or task is reassigned.
  • Time recording. Time added to a call is always a valid value, so the call can be forwarded in Core as normal.

Accessibility Enhanced

More of ASM works with a keyboard and a screen reader, from the rich text

Rich text toolbar

Every toolbar button in the rich text editor on Log a Call can be reached with the keyboard.

Task dependencies

The Nano task dependencies diagram has an accessible alternative, so approval tasks can be opened by keyboard or screen reader.

Firefox landmarks

Screen readers announce the right main landmark as you move between tabs.

WCAG 2.2 AA. We publish an accessibility conformance report for ASM, and every release builds on it.

Performance and upgrades Enhanced

Request and service screens load faster, and a calmer activity log means the entries that matter are easier to find.

Read the documentation

Two sources of background load have gone. Events that cannot complete, and invalid record locks, are no longer retried over and over, which frees up the system and keeps the logs readable. A scheduled purge now clears assets indexed for search on the first pass.

Hotfixes apply in full. Screen and database patches are now applied when a hotfix bundle is installed, or when moving to a later build of the same version, so every environment ends up exactly where it should be.

Athena 26.10 installs with the usual PowerShell script or the offline installer. See the installation notes for details.

Want to see Athena 26.10 in action?

Book a walkthrough with our team and we will show you the features that matter to how you work.

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Looking for an earlier release? See all release notes