One of the core pieces to Service Manager is the Service Catalog. This is the website where end users can go to submit incidents or service requests. The website is built from a SharePoint site and runs a Silverlight plugin, so there are a lot of possibilities for customization. There are two parts to adding items to the service catalog – Request Offerings and Service Offerings.
Request Offerings
Request offerings are the individual items that a user can submit. These are created, then added to a Service Offering. An example of a request offering could be “Computer will not log in”. This is a specific issue that could go in the larger Service Offering of Active Directory.
To create a request offering, go to the “Library” node and expand Service Catalog. Next, expand Request Offerings and select “Draft Request Offerings”. Now, in the right pane, click “Create Request Offering”. Give you offering a name and a description. Next, select a template. It is important that you click the down arrow so that you get the option for incident or service request. Select the appropriate template – I am just going to select “Default Incident Template”.
Next, we can define the information that we require from the user. I am going to set a title, a box for the affected account, where the lockout is occurring, and a phone number.
We can configure the prompts on the next screen. My first three fields will remain as strings, but I will change the phone number field to be phone number. The “Prompt Output” does not change because the system still reads it as a string.
Next, we must map our fields to fields in the incident template. You created fields in the “Templates” section of Service Manager if there isn’t a field here that fits your needs. I am going to map the Title input field to the Title SM field, user account to description, service affected to a custom field I created called “Service Affected”, and phone number to “Alternate Contact Method”.
Next, you can define a knowledge article. I will not do that. Finally, we can publish the offering. Simply change the “Offering Status” to “Published”. In order for the offering to show up on the website, we must create a Service Offering.
Service Offering
To create a Service Offering, select “Service Offering”, and then “Create Service Offering” in the right pane. Give your offering a title and assign it a category. Categories, in this since, are a collection of Service Offerings. The web portal is grouped based on these categories. Fill in any detailed information, related services, or knowledge articles that you have.
On the “Request Offering” page, add the offering that we just created. This list is always editable later if you created additional offerings.
Finally, we can publish the offering, making it available in the web portal.
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