Service Portfolio

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Introduction

In Service Manager, a Service is used to manage and define an area of the Service Desk that fulfills a particular business need for a customer. This is achieved using a combination of service levels, business process workflows, request routing, and subscriptions to each of the services. The number of defined services may range from a single service used to define and manage all IT requests, to a collection of categorized services, with each one providing a particular focus.

Administration

To create, view, or edit a Service, you need the Services Manager role associated to your Hornbill User account. Having this role will make the Services menu item visible under the Service Manager application icon.

Services List

The Services List provides a list of the services that are being managed within Service Manager. From here you can

• Create a New Service
• Delete a Service
• View a Service

The Services List is divided into three different sections based on their portfolio status of Pipeline, Catalog, or Retired.

Managing a Service

This section looks at the different elements that makes up a service and how each area is managed.

Service Details

The detail of a service provides some key values and settings to make a service operational.

Request Configuration

Use this tab to configure all the different settings per Request Type for the Service. For example it is possible to configure different forms, action bar options, business processes etc for Incidents raised against the Service, compared when Service Requests, Problem's, Changes.

• Business Processes

It is possible to associate a workflow to each request type. Clicking on the slect box will present you with the available Business Processes that have been configured via Hornbill Administration. Remember, for a Business Process Workflow to be initiated when a request is logged, it must be marked as “Active”. Inactive workflows can be identified and avoided here by looking for the word “inactive” in brackets next to the workflow name.

Associating a Business Process workflow is optional at this stage, and can be done at a later date.

Once you are happy with the details you have entered, click “Create” to complete the configuration of your first Service.

You can learn more about designing and building business processes to underpin the Services you provide here: Building Business Processes

• Email Template

It is possible to define for each request type and for each Service which email template will be used when analysts are manually sending emails from the request forms.

This allows Service owners to have control over the signature and other request variables which are defined in email templates, and they would like included in any manual email communication for requests linked to their Service.

• By default the email template specified in the app.email.template.request.sendMessage app setting in the admin console will be used. It is possible to change which template to use for each request type per service by choosing another available email template from the drop down list.

• Email templates are defined in the Admin console, under the Service Manager and email configuration options

• If no default email template exists, or another email template is not chosen a blank plain email template will be used.

• The Email template specified is only used when emails are manually sent from within a request. All automated emails fired by the business process engine, can be configured when designing your business processes for each request type again via the admin console.

• Form Designer

It is possible for you to define custom fields to use against each request type per service. Using the form designer you can edit which default fields will be displayed in the Details section of each request form, as well as add new fields, set field validation, configure mandatory options and using drag and drop to re-order how the required fields will be displayed.

• Portal Head's Up Display (HUD)

When a business process is defined and supporting either the Incident or Service Request request types, it is possible to define what level of visibility you wish to give to your customers of the processes progress through a graphical head's up

display. It is possible to give no visibility, top level or a granular view per request type and per service via either the Service and Customer Portals.

The default option is Off.

• Off - No graphical representation of the supporting business process will be displayed on the request forms on either the Service or Customer Portal
• Stages Only - Top level visibility of each of the defined stages will be displayed at the top of the request forms on the Service and Customer Portals. This will allow the subscribed customers to see the stages which have been completed and those which are still outstanding.
• Stages and Checkpoints - This will show both the process stages and the defined checkpoints for each stage. This will give the subscribed customers the same level of visibility of the requests progress as the analysts see, and will allow them to see which stages and checkpoints have been completed and what is still outstanding to complete.

• Request Actions

Define which actions are available to analysts working on requests raised against the Service. It is possible to configure which Action Icons will appear on the Action Bar on the different request forms for each Service. It is possible to configure different Actions per request type per Service.

An example being you may choose not to enable the 'Escalation' Action against Service Requests if you are not using Priorities for requests of this type for a particular Service. However you have this available for Incidents and Problems where you have chosen to use priorities for those request types.

• The Default position is all Actions Icons are available for all request types
• Enable or Disable an Action by clicking on the Action Icon for each Request type
• Hover over each Action Icon to see a tooltip with the Actions purpose.

• Request Categories

Define which logging and resolution categories are available per request type per service. It is possible to configure which level of the category tree will be the starting level (exposed) when choosing a category on requests against each Service.

• The default position is to use the root of the category tree for all request types against all Services.
• Configure a different starting level per request type for each service by clicking on either the Category Level or Resolution Category Level options and choosing a different starting level.
• Once configured only child levels of the category tree will be presented when adding a category to a request via Progressive Capture or the Request Details forms.

• Self Service

When defining a service it is possible to decide if the subscribed customers will have the option to raise either an Incident or a Service Request against the service. In most cases it will be one or the other but it is possible to provide both options per service.

• Making the Incident type visible will enable a Get Help button against the service on the Service and Customer portals.
• Making the Service Request type visible will enable a Raise Request button against the service on the Service and Customer portals.

The default setting is to enable both Incidents and Service Requests for each Service, however to improve the customer experience and make it simpler for them to understand what action to perform on the portals, you can turn one or both options on or off.

The default text of the above buttons can be customized via the Portal configuration options in the administration portal, under the configure portals options, and translations options.

• The Request Catalog

Request Catalog Items are used to create a catalog of defined requests which can be used on the Portals or by Support Staff to raise requests to fulfill a specific requirement for that particular Service. Catalog Items can be added to both Incidents and Service Requests. For each Catalog item you can define the following:

• A unique Progressive Capture Script
• A unique Business Process Workflow
• Publish in multiple languages

Read more...

Assets

Link which assets support or underpin the provision of the Service.

• Add one or multiple assets to a Service record.

Associating the assets which support a service helps support quicker Incident and or Problem resolutions by making it quick and easy to understand what infrastructure is directly used to provide each service. Change management can benefit from visualising impact when considering implementing changes to a service, or assets which support a service.

FAQ's

Define Frequently Asked Questions which will be helpful to subscribers of the service on both the Customer and Service Portals.

Creating, Viewing and Managing FAQ's

Bulletins

Define Service specific announcements or news which will be shared with the subscribers of the Service on both the Customer and Service Portals

Creating, Viewing and Managing Service Bulletins

Service Visibility

• Teams

It is possible to define which of your support teams have the rights to view and manage requests raised against each Service. By default if no teams are defined against a service all support Teams will be able to do the following:

• View All requests raised against the Service from the Request list > Filters > All My Services.
• Be Assigned a request raised against the Service from Progressive Capture assignment forms, Request forms, and multi select assignment options on the Request List view.

If teams are added to the Service:

• Only analysts which belong to those teams will be able to view and manage requests made against the Service.
• It will only be possible to assign or reassign a request to another team or analyst in a team which supports the Service
• Using the global search bar, analysts will only see results for requests which are logged against services their teams support, or requests which are assigned to them, their teams or where they have been added as members to the requests.

• Subscribing to a Service

It is possible to subscribe customers to a service based on various organisation groups. The default position for a service is that all customers will be entitled to use the Service.

Through the Administration console, you can define your own organisational groups and once defined these groups and a number of default subscription options will be available through the Subscribers drop down menu.

Subscription option types:

• Company - Use this option to subscribe all internal customers to the Service
• Department - Use this option to subscribe defined Departments to the Service
• Team - Use this option to subscribe defined Teams to the Service
• General - Use this option to subscribe a defined organisational group to the Service
• User - Use this option to subscribe individual internal users to the Service
• Contact Organization - Use this option to subscribe specific external organizations to the Service
• Individual Contacts - Use this option to subscribe individual contacts to the service
• All Contacts - Use this option to subscribe all defined contacts to all supported external organizations to the Service

Note :- Department, Team and General options will only appear in the drop list once they have been defined in the Administration console. These can be defined under the Users, Roles & Organisations menu and the Organisation option.

Service Status

It is possible to set the status of each service, and an accompanying message so that subscribers to the service can see the status and any supporting message when accessing either the Service or the Customer Portals.

• The default position is 'No Status', this will result in no status or message being displayed on the Service or Customer Portals, this is important when Service Status is not relevant to a Service.
• The Three Status options are

* Available - Indicated by a green icon

* Impacted - indicated by an amber icon

* Unavailable - indicated by a red icon

When any of the above status's are chosen a default message will be displayed, and can be edited. Once saved the status and message will be visible to the subscribers of the service on the Service and or Customer Portals.

• To Change the Status of the Service, simple select a different option from the drop down list and save.
• To remove any Status, simply select the 'No Status' option from the drop down list and save.

Managing Services

• Editing an Existing Service

• To Edit an existing service, select it from the list.
• To edit a section of the form, click the Edit button located on the right hand side of the section header:
• Once you are happy with your amendments, click Save.

• Deleting a Service

• To delete a Service, hover over a service on the Service list. The trashcan will appear to the right of service name.
• Click and confirm your action in the pop up that follows.