Page History

Service catalogs allow you to create an ordered structure of internal and external services provided to consumers. The "out-of-the-box" solution contains at least one service catalog for the Self-Service Portal. Customize it and offer your customers the most relevant products. Provide a way to raise incidents and requests in a standardized, enterprise-wide way.

The Service Catalog architecture implements Record Extended Model principles allowing customizing categories and request templates with minimal effort.

The scheme below illustrates service catalog working principles.

To configure a service catalog, please follow a simple procedure:

1. Create a service catalog.
2. Create service catalog categories.
3. Create catalog request models.
4. Extend request models with record attributes.
5. Make changes to portal configuration (create and configure portal nodes).

All these steps are described below.

Anchor
Service Catalog Service Catalog

Create a service catalog

A service catalog record is the highest-level entity that groups all other elements (categories, subcategories, items).

To create a new service catalog, complete the steps below:

1. Navigate to Request Model Catalog → Catalogs.
2. Create New and fill in the fields.
3. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply the changes.

Service catalog form fields

Anchor
Catalog Category Catalog Category

Create a catalog category

A catalog category is an entity that contains request models of a similar theme like a folder in a file system. For example, you can create a category "IT Assistance" and then create request templates "New Laptop Request", "Equipment replacement" in this category. Thus, this category is a container for these request templates.

The category hierarchy can be multi-level, so you can create an extensive structure by setting up parent-child relationships for categories.

To create a catalog category, complete the steps below:

1. Navigate to the catalog record for which you need to create a category record.
2. In the Related Lists area, select the Categories tab.
3. Click New and fill in the fields.
4. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply the changes.

Catalog category form fieldfields

Anchor
Request Model Request Model

Create a request model

Request models are templates based on which a new request object is created. Request models can be extended with the Record Extended Model functionality.

To create a request model, complete the steps below:

1. Navigate to a category record for which you need to create a request model.
2. In the Related Lists area, select the Request Models tab.
3. Click New and fill in the fields.
4. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply the changes.

Request model form fieldfields

Anchor
Extending request model Extending request model

Extend a request model with record attributes

A request models contain a limited set of predefined attributes. You may need to extend it, depending on the task you need to complete.

For example, you need to add a Comment field to the model so that it should map to the Additional Comments field in the record.

To do this, complete the steps below:

1. Navigate to a request model record which you need to extend with an attribute.
2. In the Related Lists area, select the Attributes tab.
3. Click New and fill in the fields.
4. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply the changes.

Anchor
Configure portal Configure portal

Configure a portal

You can implement more than one service catalog in your company infrastructure. To bind these catalogs on the Self-Service Portal, set up and configure a dedicated portal node for each catalog.

Portal node configuration

Anchor
Multiplicity Multiplicity

Set up multiple catalogs

As mentioned above, it is necessary to configure a dedicated node for each catalog. To do this, complete the steps below:

1. Navigate to Tree Structures → Nodes.
2. Click New and fill in the fields.
3. Click Save and Save and Exit to apply the changes.

Access control

You can configure access tp either a catalog category or a catalog request model using the User Criteria engine. Thus, you can set flexible conditions and vary catalog items displayed to the audience.

How it works

An administrator defines access, as described below, to catalog elements (categories and request models) allowing or denying access for certain audience segments. User criteria are used to separate segments from each other.

When a user navigates to a service catalog, they are processed by the User Criteria engine according to the pattern below to decide whether this user is allowed or denied to display specified catalog elements.

Configure access to a category

To configure category access, complete the steps below:

1. Navigate to the category you need to configure.
2. In the Related Lists area, select the User Criteria tab.
3. Click New and fill in the fields.
4. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply the changes.

Category User Criteria form fields

Configure request model access

To configure request model access, complete the steps below:

1. Navigate to the request model you need to configure access.
2. In the Related Lists area, select the User Criteria tab.
3. Click New and fill in the fields.
4. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply the changes.