How-to

How to use and customize the Service Catalog

The Service Catalog represents a list of services that you as a support organization provides to your internal or external customers. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) determine what Services Catalog Items are available to the receivers (i.e., persons, groups, or organizations) of specific services.

INFO: For more information on Service Level Agreements, see Help: Service Management.

Customers can browse the Service Catalog items and submit a request for the required service via the Self Service Portal, Web App, or Desktop App. Service Catalog items are organized in categories, which can be internal or public. SSP customers can access only items from public categories.

When you apply for a service, you are forwarded to the corresponding wizard to specify the request details. When you complete the wizard, the corresponding Service Request is created. The Service Request gets submitted for fulfillment and when it is completed, the service is delivered to you.

To help you understand what steps you need to take to configure the workflow for the Service Catalog, let’s look at the workflow process of requesting a service from Self Service Portal.

To request a service, a Self Service Portal customer opens the Service Catalog and clicks the Submit Request button next to the desired service (i.e. the Service Catalog Item). The system calls the Create Action for Service Requests associated with the selected item and creates a new Service Request.

The link between a particular Service Catalog item and a Create Action for Service Requests is established through the Request Fulfillment classifier.

NOTE: Technicians can submit requests for services via the Web App and the Desktop App from the Service Catalog Items and Service Requests grids.

The default workflow includes a number of pre-configured generic Service Catalog items covering typical services provided by IT departments, such as Account Creation, Password Reset, Hardware Request, etc. The administrator can customize and create additional Service Catalog items as needed.

To customize the Service Catalog, you can employ one of the two scenarios:

  • To customize an exiting item from the Service Catalog, just customize the corresponding Create Action associated with the corresponding Request Fulfillment classifier.

  • To add a new item to the Service Catalog, customize the workflow as follows:

    1. In the Settings App, configure a new Create Action for the new Service Request. For details, see Adding Create Actions for Service Requests.

    2. In Settings, create a new Request Fulfillment for Service Catalog item and link it to the Create Action, which you added at the previous step. For details, see Adding Request Fulfillment records.

    3. In the Desktop App, create a new Service Catalog item corresponding to your new service. For details, see Adding Service Catalog Items.

    4. Optional: In the Desktop App or the Web App, create a new Service Catalog category to organize all newly created records. For details, see Adding Service Catalog Categories.

    In the next sections, these steps are explained in more detail.