CA Service Management

Hi,

I installed and configured CA Service Catalog (14.1). Now I have to integrate it to an existing instance of Service Desk Manager (12.9).

Some questions:

1. The use of CA Process Automation is mandatory to propagate new request from Service Catalog to SDM?

2. If not, where I can find documents about direct integration?

3. If PAM is mandatory, I have to install:

    - PAM

    - Catalyst Server

    - Catalyst Container?

    - SDM Connector

Where can I download latest versions of Catalyst and SDM Connector?

Best regards,

Sutot

Check the following:

Service Catalog and Service Desk Integration

Hi Salvatore.

In answering your questions:
1. The use of CA Process Automation is mandatory to propagate new request from Service Catalog to SDM?
2. If not, where I can find documents about direct integration?

1. Whether you need PAM to create SDM-entities while processing SC-Requests, depends on what you plan to do.
1a.
E.G. when in the SC-UI and you open a request from the ootb delivered 'Report an Issue' offering, an SDM-ticket will be created through java based, ootb coding.
Which means that you do not need PAM for this.

1b.
Do you plan and/or do you need to get e.g. an SDM-ChangeOrder(CO) being created while processing an SC-Request, then yes, you need PAM.

2. There are several CA Service Management wiki pages available.
E.G.
https://docops.ca.com/ca-service-management/14-1/en/using/service-catalog-management/use-ca-service-catalog-content-packs
and
https://cawiki.ca.com/display/CASupport/SDM-Catalog+Integration

This information is to get you started.

It is not meant as the 'complete and full integration documentation'.

That's for you to check while installing and working with the products.

A suggestion: Start on the CA Service Management - 14.1 landing page:

https://docops.ca.com/ca-service-management/14-1/en

And go from there for your further questions.

3. Should you decide to make(need to) use of PAM, you can find the files to download in the CA Support Online pages.

For PAM as well as for the SDM Connector.

Thanks and kind regards, Louis.

Hi Louis,

thank you for your answer.

So:

- to open Incident/Request from SC to SDM, Process Automation is not needed;

- to propagate Notes adn Attachments from SC to SDM, PAM is needed;

- what to propagate updates (status changes, solution) from SDM to SC? PAM is needed or not?

(I cannot access to https://cawiki.ca.com : how can I activate an account?)

Best regards,

Sutot

Hi Salvatore.

In response to this 'https://cawiki.ca.com/display/CASupport/SDM-Catalog+Integration" page I referred to
and with my apology (since this is an internal CA Support Page), I add the below information, taken from that page:

Catalog-SDM integration using Self Service integration option:
- Report an Issue offering in 14.1.
- It uses native integration between Catalog – SDM.
- No PAM is needed here.

Here’s what we know about this over couple of cases that we ran into:
1) Any request in Catalog (against this offering) would create a ticket in SDM automatically, through Events/Rules/Actions in CA Service Catalog(SC).
a. SC/Catalog/Offerings/IT Support Services/Service Management > 'Report an Issue' service invokes 'Java actions' to create the SDM ticket.
b. SC/Administration > Events-Rules-Actions > Request/Subscription Item Change > When Category is Service Management Content and Status is Pending Fulfillment > Create Incident
c. This is based on the service option category (i.e. Catalog > Service Offerings > Option Groups > Report an Issue > Definition > <Edit> > Category) set to 'Service Management Content'.

2) Associated SDM’s ticket contains a reference to Catalog request via: external_system_ticket attribute in SDM. It’s of the format: casc-<catalog_item_id>-<catalog_request_id>

3) From now one, SDM’s Catalog Sync Daemon (see further below on this page) is supposed to keep:
a. activity log updates synced to Catalog (SDM has new options for CA SC, see further below on this page).
b. attachments in SDM should sync to Catalog as a link.
c. status of SDM tickets should be synced to Catalog too. (one of them is – if SDM ticket is closed, then Catalog request should be set to Fulfilled).

Note: In SDM: itsm_msg_queue trigger on alg object does this magic apart from catalog_sync_daemon’s java code.

To debug the messages being sent from SDM To Catalog, with in SDM check Debugging section below:

4) SDM’s catalog sync daemon uses some internal messages of the format “123456@@@@@"Comments from SDM"@@@@@CASMAdmin” (Catalog request#, followed by comment in SDM, followed by userid separator is @@@@@)

5) This message is inserted into itsm_msg_queue table and then the message is processed by SDM’s Catalog sync daemon.
a. If it is successful, the record is deleted from the table.
b. If not, we keep retrying until retry count/interval is reached

If the message format was changed for some reason the integration will stop functioning.
In a similar way, if the user, updating the SDM request, doesn’t have the appropriate privileges on a Catalog Request, the sync won’t happen.

Thanks and kind regards, Louis.

Hi Salvatore.

After further researching for this, it appears that for some parts of the SC<>SDM integration, PAM is not needed and for other parts, it does.

So, in general, to setup and have a full-integrated SC<>SDM environment, it is best practice to install PAM too.

And integrate both SC and SDM with PAM there after.

And yes, for SDM<>PAM you need to install the PAM-SDM Connector.

Kind regards, Louis.