Basic Service Request Management. BMC Remedyforce Winter 11

Transcription

1 Winter 11 Virginia Leandro 01 March 2012

2 Table of Contents Service Request Management 3 Preparation 4 Accounts (Vendors and Service Providers) 5 Users/Profiles 6 Business Hours (Service Hours) 7 Default Currency 8 Define Your Business Services and Offerings 9 Business Service... 9 Offering Categories 13 Templates 15 Create Incident Template Create Task Template Request Detail Template Creating a Service Request 19 General Information Fulfillment Entitlement Options Approvals 26 Approval Process Approval Steps Testing It Out 32 Self Service Staff View and Activities PAGE 1 OF 39

3 Document Information Version: 0.5 Created by: Virginia Leandro Last Modified on: 1 February 2012 Modified by: Virginia Leandro PAGE 2 OF 39

4 Service Request Management Service Request Management and the Service Catalog allow you to define those Services provided by your team for your company or organization. Services could be items such as providing for the company, providing network connectivity or access to critical systems that run your business. This document aims to walk through setting up a very simple and basic Service. This includes defining all the supporting characters, defining the Service, setting up an approval for the service, requesting the service and finally the completion of the task. This will help you understand the basics and mechanics of how all the various systems work together. PAGE 3 OF 39

5 Preparation There is some necessary preparation that must be done before diving in and defining your Service Requests. We ll walk you through all these parts first before creating your first Service Request. Items that need to be defined are: * Accounts Accounts can be utilized as Service Providers or Vendors or both within defining a Business Service. * Users/Profiles Users (and conversely Profiles) are used to define your service owner. Service Owners must be identified as ServiceDesk Staff. * Business Hours Business Hours can be used to define what hours a particular service or offering is going to be available. * Default Currency Set the default currency by which all pricing will occur. Typically this will be your corporate default currency. * Categories Categories drive which Service Requests can be made available to your clients. * Templates Templates are used to easily pre-populate some data but also to create the necessary support tasks once a request is approved. * Business Services Business Services (and Offerings) are the services your group or groups will provide that your clients can request. * Approvals Approvals are defined within Salesforce to assist with governance of changes. For example, you may not require approvals for someone who needs their password reset, however, you would want approvals for someone who may be committing dollars such as buying hardware. * Service Level Agreements Service Level Agreements can be tied to a given service. This ensures that your team delivers on the services in a timely manner. Also it helps the team understand what services may be more important than others. We ll cover Service Level Agreements under a separate document where we do a deep dive on more complex scenarios. This document will walk through setting up all the supporting information that needs to be defined. Keep in mind that these can really be done in any order and in some cases you can opt to create the supporting information at a later time. PAGE 4 OF 39

6 Accounts (Vendors and Service Providers) Accounts in Salesforce typically equate to companies. An account can be a Service Provider (such as AT&T providing mobile services for a cell phone) or a Vendor (such as Best Buy where a cell phone can be purchased). We ll use AT&T here as an example. They will be both our Service Provider and our Vendor since they are providing the cell service along with the equipment. 1. In Remedyforce navigate to Configuration Accounts. 2. Click New. 3. Provide the Account Name. In our example here, this will be AT&T. 4. Next select if this account is a Vendor or a Service Provider. For our example, we re going to check both. 5. You can now Save the record. You ll want to define all of your Accounts that will be associated with any services you ll be providing. If you have this information in the form of a CSV file this information can easily be imported but that is beyond the scope of this document. PAGE 5 OF 39

7 Users/Profiles Users are utilized for Business Services to define the Service Owner as well as defining who may or may not be entitled to a given Service. A Service Owner may own the company s relationship to the supporting Service Provider and/or Vendor. They will review the service yearly or more often to make sure the service is still adding value to the company and is still valid. They may also participate in analysis to make sure the service is priced correctly. You can also build profiles to dictate who is entitled to request a given service. For example, you may create a profile called HR Group (cloned from the ServiceDesk Client profile) and anyone within that profile may be configured to be entitled to request Oracle HR System access. In order for someone to be a Service Owner, they need to have a User login to Salesforce, be marked as ServiceDesk Staff, belong to a profile with the appropriate object rights and be licensed to use Remedyforce. While this is documented in our online help, we ll offer a quick step through here. For the purpose of this document, we re going to assign our user to an out of the box profile, ServiceDesk Staff. 1. In Salesforce navigate to Setup Administration Setup Manage Users Users. 2. Click New User. 3. Provide at a minimum, First Name, Last Name, Alias, , Username, and Community Nickname. 4. For User License, select Salesforce Platform (your environment may vary and you may select Salesforce if that s the way your org is licensed). 5. Under Profile, select ServiceDesk Staff. 6. Select a Role for the user. Here we use our default simply called HelpDesk Administrators. 7. Finally scroll down to the section called Staff and check the box next to ServiceDesk Staff. This is an important step. If you do not do this, the user will not show up under Service Owner. Note: If you do not see the section called Staff, changes are your User Page Layout hasn t been configured. Configuring the page layout is explained in our Getting Started Guide and online help and is beyond the scope of this document. 8. Save. Finally, the last thing you ll need to do is actually assign a Remedyforce license to the user. When viewing the details of a given user, scroll down to Managed Packages, and click on Assign Licenses. PAGE 6 OF 39

8 Business Hours (Service Hours) Service Hours are used in the definition of your Business Services. Service Hours are based on Business Hours in Salesforce. More than likely you have one set of Business Hours (called Default ) that would have been setup by the system for you. We ll take a quick walk through of setting up Service Hours. 1. In Salesforce, navigate to Setup Administration Setup Company Profile Business Hours. 2. Notice you already have one set of Business Hours configured for you called Default. Default is set for 24 x 7. You can change the default, or you can create a new set of Business Hours for a given service. 3. Once you re in the Business Hours form, the form is pretty straight forward you can set the appropriate Time Zone and business hours. In our below example, our Time Zone is set to Central Standard Time and our hours of operation are 8:00AM 5:00PM Monday through Thursday and 8:00AM 12:00pm Friday. However, if we have services that fit more of a 24 x 7 (such as ), then we may want to create a new set of Business Hours. PAGE 7 OF 39

9 Default Currency Currently for the Winter 11 Release of we are only supporting a single default currency. Typically this should be set to the default currency of your corporate office. The system defaults to USD (United States Dollars), but can be changed to accommodate any 3 letter currency indication. 1. In Remedyforce, navigate to Configuration Application Settings General. 2. Set the Default Currency field. This will be the three letter abbreviation of your default corporate currency. In the example below, we re using USD (United States Dollars). Be sure and click Save if you make a change. Note: The Default Currency is strictly a label used throughout Service Requests. It does not factor into any calculations. Currency codes can be found here: At this point, you have all the pieces in place to proceed with building out your Business Services and Offerings. Later on we ll walk through the other supporting information (Templates and Categories) which will be needed to create the Request Definitions. PAGE 8 OF 39

10 Define Your Business Services and Offerings If you have defined your Service Providers/Vendors, Service Owners, and Service Hours, you re now ready to define your Business Services and Offerings. Business Services and Offerings are services that can be requested by your clients. Business Services can be something as simple as a client wanting to order a company provided iphone or as complex as a client requesting an IT Business System Analyst s time and assistance with evaluating a new tool for a particular group. Business Service In our simple example, we re first going to define the Service. We ll call it Mobile Devices. Under Mobile Devices we ll have a number of offerings such as iphone 4S, Blackberry Story, HTC Android. 1. In Remedyforce navigate to Workspaces Configuration Management Configuration Items. 2. Scroll down to Business Service. PAGE 9 OF 39

11 3. Click on the New icon. 4. In the Instance Editor, provide a name for the Service. In our example, we ll provide an Instance Name of Mobile Services. Click on the Specifications tab. 5. On the Specifications tab, we re going to complete the following information: Service Type: Sub-Service of: Service Owner: Service Hours: Service Provider: Vendor: Start Date: End Date: Service Review Date: Stage: Technical Service [leave blank] Select the Service Owner Select the service hours [Remember this is based on defined Business Hours in Salesforce] This would be an account you created previously. This would be an account you created previously. This can be different from the Service Provider The date that the company begins offering the service. The date that the service will no longer be offered. The future date when the Service should next be reviewed. Allows you to specify the stage of the service. This is useful information if you re in the process of defining and testing the service and want to track its progress. PAGE 10 OF 39

12 Cost Description: Base Customer Price: Base Delivery Cost: Any details around the costing of the service/offering. Dollar amount to be charged to the customer. Cost of delivering the service to the customer. Note: On both Customer Price and Delivery Cost, you ll find two additional fields known as Price Option 1 and Price Option 2. Both of these are picklists and can be modified to fit your needs. While modifying these fields is beyond the scope of this document, the object is called Business Services and the fields are called Price Option 1 and Price Option 2 respectively. You can add or modify as fits your needs. Inactive: You can make the record Inactive which means it cannot be used elsewhere in the system. This is a good option when a service is being retired or is no longer offered but you want to keep its history. Remember, in our example, we re first defining the Business Service that will host the various Offerings so this CI record is going to be pretty lean. Think of this as the top level of the Offerings. Remember once you make your changes, to click Save (circled below). PAGE 11 OF 39

13 Offering Creating an Offering is identical to creating a Business Service but more than likely you re going to provide much more detailed information about the Offering. The other difference is that the Service Type will be set to Offering, and the Sub-Service of field will be filled in with the parent Service. In our example, that parent Service is Mobile Devices. Continuing with our example of an iphone, notice the differences and details below. We have highlighted the fact that this is an Offering (vs. a Service) and that it s a Sub-Service of Mobile Devices. Once you have your services and offerings defined, we ll now get the next pieces of Categories and Templates in place before we create our Service Requests. PAGE 12 OF 39

14 Categories Chances are your current Category Tree already holds many of the categories that can be associated with Service Requests. If not, now would be a great time to review your Categories and determine which ones to associate with a given Service. This is how the Service will be made available to your Clients when they log into Self Service. If you do have an existing Category Tree, be sure and review the categories that need to be made available to Self Service. That s how those services will be made available for your clients! This document assumes you have Self Service currently configured. 1. In Remedyforce navigate to Configuration Category. 2. Click New. 3. Provide a Category name. In our simple example here we re going to create a Category called Mobile Devices. This will later become a parent category. 4. Save. PAGE 13 OF 39

15 5. Click New again. This time we ll create a Category called iphone 42-32GB and the Parent Category will be set to Mobile Devices. Since this category will be used as part of the Services definition, it ll need to be made available to Self Service. Be sure and check Display in Self Service. Also remember to Save the record. PAGE 14 OF 39

16 Templates Templates are created with the idea that for certain situations there are consistent standards that can be applied. For example, an Incident Template could be created that pre-populates fields such as Category, Impact, Urgency and Incident Description. In fact, the Incident Description could be pre-populated with questions or data the staff person is supposed to collect. In turn the Incident Template can be configured to also create multiple tasks that might be associated with the incident. However, for our simple example, we re going to keep our Incident and Task templates separate. As we begin to talk about more complex configurations we ll show you how you can further advance the concept of templates for your use. For Service Request Management, we have added a new template called Request Detail. The Request Detail template will connect/call an Incident Template which in turns does the work of the data population for the Service Request. So continuing to use our iphone 4S example, we ll first create an Incident Template, a separate Task Template and then tie that Incident Template to the Request Detail Template. PAGE 15 OF 39

17 Create Incident Template 1. In Remedyforce navigate to Configuration Templates. 2. Click on New. 3. Set Template For to Incident. 4. Provide a name for the template. In our example, we ll call this Order iphone4s. 5. Next we ll select the fields we want pre-populated: a. Category iphone 4S-32GB b. Impact Medium c. Urgency Medium d. Description Client is requesting we order an iphone 4S-32GB. 6. Save the record. PAGE 16 OF 39

18 Create Task Template 1. Click New. 2. Change Template For to Task. 3. Provide a Name. For our example, our Name is Order iphone 4S-32GB. 4. Select the fields you want prep-populated. In our example: a. Category: iphone 4S b. Impact: MEDIUM c. Urgency: MEDIUM d. Description: Contact AT&T and order equipment from vendor. e. Owner ID: Task Queue Note: On any Task or Change Templates, be sure and specify the Owner ID of the record. Failure to do so could result in records being created and assigned to the logged-on user! 5. Save. PAGE 17 OF 39

19 Request Detail Template 1. Create a new template. 2. Change Template For to Request Detail. 3. Provide a name, in our example we ll call this Request for iphone 4S. 4. Next you must select the associated Incident Template. In our example, this is the one we created called Order iphone 4S. 5. You ll notice there is only one field that can be set here. For our example, we re going to set the field Quantity to 1 since we ll only allow a client to order a single phone at a time. 6. Save the Request Detail template. At this point, all the pieces are in place to now actually define and use the Service Request. PAGE 18 OF 39

20 Creating a Service Request General Information 1. In, navigate to Workspaces Service Request Management Request Definitions. Click the New icon. 2. Provide a Service Request Title and Description. For our example: a. Service Request Title: Service Request for iphone 4S-32GB b. Description: Service Request to order an iphone 4S-32GB 3. Select the Service you created earlier. Working on our example the service is called Mobile Devices. 4. Select the Service Offering. Only those offerings associated with the Service will be eligible to be selected. In our example, we select the Offering iphone 4S-32GB. Notice when you select the offering other fields are automatically populated such as Price, Cost, Start Date, End Date. 5. Select the Category the service is to be associated with. Remember this should be a category that is marked to display in Self Service. For our example, we select the Category iphone 4S-32GB which is under the folder of Mobile Devices in the Category Tree. 6. Select the Service Request Template. Remember when you created the Service Request Template; you associated it with another Incident template. We re only selecting the Service Request Template here so we select Request for iphone 4S. 7. Price and Cost are filled in automatically based on the Offering s information. 8. Select a turnaround time for the service request. We re going to set this for 14 days. 9. Start and End Date fields are filled in automatically based on the Offering s information. 10. If you want, you can associate an image (such as a gif or jpg) to add a visual element to your Service Catalog. We provide one image out of the box. Select the radio button next to Select from Salesforce and click on Select Click on the document name, Service Request Icon. PAGE 19 OF 39

21 11. Set the Status of the Service Request. In a real world environment you may want to follow a process where the Service Request is first setup for Requirements, and then it would move to Draft, then to Waiting Approval and then finally Deployed. This is simply a status that lets you categorize the Service Request. 12. Finally there are two checkboxes that are very important. Online is just that making the service available to your Clients via Self Service. The other checkbox is Automatically Submit for Approval. If you have approvals that will be tied to this service request, you ll definitely want to make sure that this checkbox is checked. We ll cover approvals a little later in this document. 13. At this point, you can save your Service Request. Now that the General Information is saved, we can move on to define Fulfillment, Entitlement, and Options. PAGE 20 OF 39

22 Fulfillment Click on the Fulfillment button. You ll be taken to the fulfillment screen. Fulfillment defines the processes that should occur to support the Service Request. You can also define questions to ask for additional input from the Client to support the Service Request. By default the Service Request Template is added as part of the Process. It cannot be removed. We ll now add the task the task being to have someone actually contact the vendor to order the equipment. But in our scenario, we don t want this task to be created until such time that the Service Request is approved! 1. Click on Add. 2. From the Select From Templates window, select the Task Template, Order iphone 42-32GB. 3. Click on Input. 4. Here you can provide the user some Instructions so that as they fill out the information in Self Service, you can provide guidance to them. PAGE 21 OF 39

23 5. Under Request Input, you can create a series of questions or request additional information to support the Service Request. In our simple example, click on Add. 6. For Input/Prompt, we put Please select a color. 7. For Response Type, we ll select Radio button. 8. For the first Radio Button Value: 9. Click Add. a. Displayed Value Black b. Stored Value Black PAGE 22 OF 39

24 10. For the second Radio Button Value, set: a. Displayed Value White b. Stored Value White 11. Click Add. 12. Under Prompt/Questions Properties, we ll make this question Required. 13. Click Save. 14. Mapping is optional. In some situations you may want to ask for input from a user and copy it to a specific field on the Service Request or the Task. For our example, we are not mapping any fields. PAGE 23 OF 39

25 Entitlement Entitlement allows you to define who can request the defined service. Currently users associated with a given account can be defined as well as users in a given profile. For example, if you have Customer Portal Users (aka Clients) who are identified with the company/account called Acme, you could make the iphone service we have defined only available to them when they log into Self Service. The same goes for Salesforce Profiles. You may have employees belonging to an HR profile and only they can request access to HR Systems which you may offer as a Service. For our example, we re making our service available to everyone so there s nothing to do on this screen. PAGE 24 OF 39

26 Options Options allow you to specify additional information to be provided by the user for the Request such as Phone, , Quantity, or Date Required. You can also specify what information the user sees when viewing a request such as who the request is assigned to or any approvals. 1. Click on Options button. 2. Check the box next to: a. Date Required 3. Under View a Request, select the checkbox next to Assigned To and Approvals. Be sure and click Save. PAGE 25 OF 39

27 Approvals If you have experience with building approvals for Change Requests, the process is exactly the same for building approvals for Service Requests.however, there are a few items worth noting. Approval Process We ll walk through creating a simple approval. 1. In Salesforce navigate to Setup App Setup Create Workflows & Approvals Approval Process. 2. In Manage Approval Process for check the object to Incident. 3. Click on Create New Approval Process and select Use Standard Setup Wizard. 4. Step 1. Enter Name and Description: Provide a name and description for the approval. In our case: Name: Approve iphone Purchase Click Next. 5. Step 2. Specify Entry Criteria: In our case we want the approval to fire off when the Request Definition is Service Request for iphone 42-32GB. Next to Use this approval process if the following, change the drop down to formula evaluates to true: PAGE 26 OF 39

28 6. In the provided formula field, click on Insert Field and navigate to Incident> Request Definition> Request Definition. Click Insert. 7. Add the following: = Service Request for iphone 42-32GB Don t forget to encapsulate the text of your Request Definition in single quotes! You can also click on Check Syntax to make sure the formula is correct. 8. Click Next. 9. For Step 3. Specify Approver Field and Record Editability Properties, accept the defaults and click Next. Be aware that ONLY administrators will be able to edit the Service Request while it is in the approval process based on the default. 10. Click Next. PAGE 27 OF 39

29 11. Step 4. Select Notification Templates: Click on the Approval Assignment Template Lookup icon and type Incident in the search box and click Go! You re specifically looking for a template called Incident: Approval Required . Select that template. Note: Templates can easily be copied and modified. This is a template we provide out of the box. Please note that the template will require a slight modification to use the correct Salesforce instance. This is covered in detail in online help. 12. Click Next. 13. Step 5. Select Fields to Display on Approval Page Layout: Accept the default and click Next. Step 6. Specify Initial Submitters: Pay special attention to this section! If Self Service users (aka Clients) are not configured as initial submitters on the approval process, their service requests will not be automatically submitted for approval. It will require the Service Request owner (aka the person assigned to the Service Request) to review the Service Request and manually submit the Request for approval. By default, the Approval is configured so that the Incident Owner is the only person allowed to submit the approval. If you want to allow Clients who create their Service Requests from Self Service to have their approvals automatically enter the approval process, then for Search change the option to Creator and then select Record Creator for Allowed Submitters. You could also opt to create a public group and add all staff and clients who should be allowed to automatically enter the approval process and select that group in this dialog as an Allowed Submitter. More details can be found by searching the online help for Creating an approval process. In our example, we re limiting the submitters to the Incident Owner and the Record Creator. Click Save. 14. On the What Would You Like To Do Now? page, accept the default of Yes, I d like to create an approval step now and click Go! PAGE 28 OF 39

30 Approval Steps We ll now define the approval steps. During the Step definition process you re not only deciding on who can approve the record but who receives notifications once a record is approved (or rejected) and any other additional actions. 1. Step 1. Enter Name and Description: We ll keep this simple and call this Step 1. Click Next. 2. Step 2. Specify Step Criteria: Here we ll take the default of All records should enter this step. In more complex examples, you may want to put some parameters around what records are evaluated for this step. Accept the default and click Next. 3. Step 3. Select Assigned Approver: We re going to define the approver for this Service Request. Click the radio button next to Automatically assign to approver(s). Keep User as the selected and object and select the user who is the approver. All approvers currently have to have a Salesforce and Remedyforce license. Click Save. 4. Click the radio button next to No, I ll do later. Take me to the approval process detail page to review what I ve just created and click Go! PAGE 29 OF 39

31 5. You should now see all components of your approval process. 6. IMPORTANT: In order to get the Tasks defined in the Service Request process to fire once the Service Request is approved, we need to do a field update to start that process. In the Final Approval Actions section, click Add New and select Field Update. 7. Provide a name such as Update Service Request As Approved. 8. In Field to Update, click the drop down and select Approved. 9. For Checkbox Options, select True. 10. Click Save. Note: You can add other Final Approval Actions or Final Rejection Actions as necessary. But please be aware that the Task option is not valid for as this is the Salesforce object called Task and not the object also called Task. So the only available options are Alert, Field Update, and Outbound Message. PAGE 30 OF 39

32 11. Lastly once your approval process and its associated steps are created, click Activate. You must activate the approval in order for the system to use it and evaluate its criteria PAGE 31 OF 39

33 Testing It Out Next let s look at the Client view requesting a service and then the staff view for fulfilling the request. Self Service When the client logs into Self Service, they re greeted with a screen similar to this One way for the client to find the services you offer is by simply typing a phrase in the Search box and click Find Solution. PAGE 32 OF 39

34 In our example, our Service Request is found and offered as an option for the client to select: Click on the Service Request. The Service Request form is presented with any of the fields you opted to expose to the client along with any input requests you defined for your Service Request. Once the Client provides the necessary information they can click Submit to submit the Service Request immediately. PAGE 33 OF 39

35 The client also has the option to click on Save to Cart if they have multiple services they are requesting. Saving to Cart, adds the multiple services to a Service Cart. The client can then checkout which at that time, any items in the cart are submitted. A client also has the option of browsing for Service Requests. They can click on the Browse button and then traverse the Category Tree to see what Services are available. PAGE 34 OF 39

36 Staff View and Activities When Staff log into, they can either use a Quickview to view the Service Requests that have been submitted, or they can click on Views from the Incident list view and select only Service Requests. Be sure and remember to click Apply when checking any of the boxes on Views. PAGE 35 OF 39

37 In our simple example, we automatically wanted the approval to be submitted. When we access that record created by the client, you ll notice in in Supporting Information that the Approvals tab shows that an approval has been submitted and it s awaiting approval. Notice at this point in time there are no Tasks associated with the Service Request. The task will not be created until the Service Request is approved. Approvals can be approved via notification or there is an option on the navigator bar under Approval Management where pending approvals for a given approver can be found. Also, approvals can be granted via if the system is configured to do so. PAGE 36 OF 39

38 Once the approver has approved the Service Request, we can go back to our Service Request and see that the approver has approved the Service Request. If there were any comments, they would show here as well. Also notice that the task has now been created since the Service Request has been approved and the equipment can now be ordered. There is more to be covered as it relates to Service Requests, but for this document we wanted to introduce the basics to you and get you accustomed to the processes needed to support Service Requests. PAGE 37 OF 39

39 Business runs on IT. IT runs on BMC Software. Business thrives when IT runs smarter, faster, and stronger. That s why the most demanding IT organizations in the world rely on BMC Software across both distributed and mainframe environments. Recognized as the leader in Business Service Management, BMC offers a comprehensive approach and unified platform that helps IT organizations cut cost, reduce risk and drive business profit. For the four fiscal quarters ended September 30, 2008, BMC revenue was approximately $1.83 billion. Visit for more information.