CA Service Management

HI! We have some requests that don't need the opening of a Service Desk request, so we want to show the answer of that request directly in Service Catalog. Something like this:

So the users can solve the problem by their own. Which are the best practices to do something like this? Usually are small answers with quick actions.

Also we would like to disable the "Send" button for this kind of requests.

Regards

Good Morning Sebastian.

Perhaps I do not understand the question correctly.

But isn't this where Service Desk is being build for? Not Service Catalog?

Thanks in advance for your understanding and kind regards, Louis.

Or start using the Knowledge Base, and populate it with Q&A like this. 

Kyle_R.

Hi, thanks for your help! This is our situation: some of the most commons requests have the same solution every time they are opened. So we want to give the users the answer with the solution before the user opens the request. As our users are very lazy to read manuals or to check a knowledge base we thought that in Service Catalog we can show them the steps with the solution for their request. We expect that the user will read the solution, try it and avoid opening the ticket.

Kyle_R is it possible to show the Q&A from the knowledge base inside the offering or the incident category?

Regards

Hi Sebastian,

I guess we're trying to understand why you have "Requests" coming through Service Catalog at all.

Requests such as you describe would seem to be a best fit for CA SDM and Knowledge.

Whereas Service Catalog is more typically used for offerings, such as "Request to buy Mobile Phone Plan A, B or C." There is typically little Q&A in it?

Thanks, Kyle_R.

Aside from the suggestion of SDM or Knowledge (whether this is practical just depends on your environment and users, i.e., whether front-ending all request management in Catalog), you can create an 'informational' service by setting Selection Type to "Not Selectable" in the service offering definition (Catalog > Service Offerings > Offerings > (your service offering). When users access that service offering they'll get the form w/out a submit button (with comment stating "This service cannot be requested"). You can still populate the form, overview, etc. however you like (e.g.; hyperlinks if they need additional help to redirect to another service, or to a Knowledge document, etc.).

Cannot recommend Unified Self Service (centralized UI; hopefully Service Point in v17.2 will be an improvement)...

Another trick I forgot about that may work in your case is putting the URL for the Knowledge doc in the Code field in the offering definition (same place)...this will just redirect to Knowledge when they access the service offering and will not load a request form. Format is:

URL:<your URL>

Example: 

URL:https://www.ca.com

Kyle_R and Louis_van_Amelsfort, I do not understand what you are trying to do here.

Since when business users should be directed to SDM? And Kyle_R, what is wrong with : hav[ing] "Requests" coming through Service Catalog?

Isn't the goal of ITSM and more broadly Enterprise Service Management? Having a single point where every user can REQUEST any service from any part of the organization?

shomer got the right advices here.

Since there is no viable/usable Self-Service solution in CA Service Management, the best approach until Service Point arrives is to use Catalog.

The cons of using an informationnal service is if you have multiple options per option group, all of them will be "maximized". They will not appear when you select the option like the catalog behaves everywhere else.

You may consider to create forms with your informations in them and add an onSubmit javascript that pops a message saying that you cannot submit this option and returns false.

I can assist in the later if needed,

Pier

It's a case of best fit for purpose.

Service Desk was intended from the ground up to serve as the initial contact point for Requests and associate Knowledge to common questions, which is exactly the use case here.

In fact, the CA SDM Employee interface with the Knowledge Search out front would seem to be best fit.

Are there other ways? Yes. Would handling everything through Service Catalog be better? Maybe, maybe not. But that's the point of these discussions!

I'm all up for alternate methods, drawing attention to limitations, workarounds and future functionality.

However, we should at least put it out there, that there exists an out-of-the-box "default" tool for this job, so that sites are aware of the baseline before making a business choice to deviate from it.

Thanks, Kyle_R.

No it is not.

You're deciding from an IT perspective where is the best place to offer a certain type of request.

How will you explain that to end users?

The point here is not about " best fit purpose according to IT administrator".

It's about having a user friendly self-service and auto provisioning system.

Going your way, you will need a help page to explain wich type of request is in wich tools.

Ex : If you need to buy a licence for Software A go to Catalog but if you need help to setup software A go to ServiceDesk to request help or look at knowledge.

It does make sense from an IT administrator pov, but Rita, 56 years old from sales dept, will find it confusing and will not use it. 

Pretty sure you'll have a hard time with user adoption and no wonder why so much ITSM projects fail.

I'm not sure about your experience in implementing ITSM solutions but it is not a scenario that any of my client would have accepted.

In the end, do not take it personnaly, I think that both of you are very knowledgeable in CA Service Management solution but those advices, that have more to do with functionnal architecture, were out of track.