Managing service request definitions

Service Request Definition (SRD) is a template that is available to users for requesting services that their organization offers. SRD provides a ready-made form to capture inputs which users must provide so that the service can be delivered to them.

Various departments, such as an IT department, within an organization offer services through SRDs, publish those services in Self Service, and automate service fulfillment. In Self Service, these SRDs are available to clients in the form of service catalog. Clients can view the catalog and request the required service.

The following image shows how SRDs are created, consumed, and fulfilled in Remedyforce.

Video

Watch the following video (42:39) to know how to create, copy, edit, and delete service request definitions:

https://youtu.be/SnjdobCZZWo

Benefits of using service request definition

Following are some benefits of using service request definitions:

• Standardized catalog of requests: 
  Clients can use a web or mobile interface to submit requests, review the available requests to which they are entitled, and see the service request status online. Service providers can set expectations by describing cost of the request and resources and time required to fulfill a request.
• Tracking and management of requests from start to finish:  
  You can define the turnaround time for the delivery of requests. For example, you can specify that a request for a new server will take four days to fulfill. Each milestone in delivering the request is tracked and reported. Tracking enables you to effectively manage customer demands, your resources, and business costs.

Example for creating and configuring an SRD 

In an IT organization, end-users must raise service request such as access requests, requests for issuing devices, replacing or repairing devices, opening ports on servers, and provisioning virtual machines or storage.

Other lines of business, like Facilities and Human Resources, also have service requests such as requests for cleaning office space, new hire approvals, and employment letters. Organizations have standard proven practices of fulfilling service requests. Certain service requests must be approved by one or more authorities before they can be fulfilled. 

A service request definition allows the service desk to accept end-user inputs in a structured way and includes:

• A form 
• A fulfillment process
• An approval process if required

Consider the following scenario:

Harry is the Remedyforce administrator who wants to create a new-hire SRD to onboard any new employee in the organization, for example Frank. 

So, Harry creates an SRD by performing the following steps:

1. He creates the Onboard a New Employee SRD.
2. He configures certain details in the General Information and Input tab such as:
   
   • Category- Employee Onboarding
   • Service- Human Resources
   • Service Request Template- Employee Onboarding - RD
   • Request Inputs- First Name, Last Name, Start Date, Employee Type, Manager Name, Equipment, and so on (for capturing user inputs) 
3. To complete the SRD fulfillment process, he adds required task templates in the Fulfillment tab such as:
   
   • Employee Onboarding- Provision Desktop
   • Employee Onboarding- Provision System Access
   • Employee Onboarding- Provision Mobile Phone
4. For the added task templates, he maps the request input fields to the respective task templates.
5. In the Display Options tab, he selects fields for such as:
   
   • Email
   • Instructions
   • Phone
   • Attachments
6. In the Entitlement tab, he configures entitlement for selected accounts and in them certain profiles or permission sets.
7. In the end, to make this configured SRD available on Self Service, he selects certain settings from the General Information tab:

• • Status- Deployed
  • Make Online

Now, on the Self Service portal one can request the service Onboard a New Employee.This form displays the fields as per Harry's configurations.

Navigating the SRD interface

For creating a new SRD or viewing existing ones, go to Remedyforce Administration > Configure Application > Request Definitions.

The following table describes the actions you can perform on the SRD interface:

Overview of SRD creation 

As an administrator, you create service requsest definitions (SRDs) and make them available in Self Service. The Request Definition wizard guides you through this process. Note that after you create the SRD, additional configurations are required to make the SRD available for use.  

To create an SRD,  go to  Remedyforce Administration > Configure Application > Request Definitions and click New .

Prerequisites 

Before creating an SRD, ensure that all the prerequisites are met. For more information about the prerequisites, see Getting started with service request management.

Step 1: Providing general information for SRD

The General Information tab includes the following sections:

• Request Details 
• Price and Availability Details 
• Other Details .

The following table provides information on the fields to be completed: 

Step 2: Adding inputs for SRD

Consider the following while adding inputs: 

• We recommend that you create less than 400 input fields for each service request definition.
• After you save the field, you cannot edit the value of Response Type. 
• To define the display order of the fields, you must save the SRD after you finish adding and reordering the fields. 
  If you do not save the SRD, the display order reverts to the previous display order when you last saved the SRD.
• If you delete input fields from SRD, those fields (except Header Section) are not removed from the service requests that have already been created by using the SRD. 
  
  

The Input tab includes the following sections: 

• User Instructions

• Request Input
  

The following table provides information on the fields to be completed: 

Step 3: Configuring fulfillment of SRD

The Fulfillment tab includes the following details that describe the fulfillment process:

To link the change request and task templates with the request definition

1. In the Fulfillment Process section, click Create and select Task or Change Request.
   On the Select From Templates window, either select and link existing templates or create a new template.
   By default, the service request template appears in the templates list. This is the template that you selected in the Service Request Template field on the General tab. You cannot delete the service request template.
2. To configure the order in which the task templates are completed, click Execution Order.
3. In the Order Number column of the Execution Order window, select the order number that you want to assign to the tasks.
   You can assign the same execution order number to more than one task fulfillment process. 
   For example, you have four task templates, Task1, Task2, Task3, and Task4. You can assign Task1 and Task2 to be executed first, then Task3, and then Task4. 
   When Task1 and Task2 are running, only these tasks are created and displayed in the Record Details section of the record. 
   After Task1 and Task2 are closed, Task3 is created, and after the closing of Task3, Task4 is created.
4. (Optional) If you do not wish to execute all linked task fulfillment process at the same time, clear the Ignore Execution Order check box.
5. Click Save.

To map request input fields to fields of the selected fulfillment record

1. (Optional) To prefix the prompts with its responses, select the Prefix prompts to user inputs check box. 
   For example, in a request definition, you have mapped the Desk Location (Input field) to the Description (Output field). The value provided by the client for the Desk Location (Input field) is N 23 D Block. If this check box is selected, the value in the Description field is Desk Location: N 23 D Block.
2. Select the required template from the Fulfillment Process section. 
   The fields from Incident, Task, or Change Request for which fulfillment process is created and selected, are only available in the Fields column of the Map Fields section.
3. Click Add.
4. From the Fields drop down, select the required field.
5. From the Mapped Inputs drop down, select the inputs (request inputs) to be mapped. 
6. Click .
   The selected field and mapped inputs are displayed in a row.
   The mapped input names are displayed in a comma separated format along with a  sign to add more inputs. 
   For fields that support single input field mapping, click the mapped input to edit inline and select from the values.
   
   (Optional) 
7. To edit the mapping for Text Area type of fields, click the drop down at the end of the row, and select Edit.
   OR 
   Click the  sign next to mapped input names. 

8. In the Map to Field: Description window, add required Input fields from the Available Inputs section to the Mapped Inputs section.
   You can reorder the inputs by dragging and dropping the rows.

9. Click Save. 

   For more information about valid data types, refer to the following table: 

    Valid data types for Response Types

   The following table describes the valid data types of each Response Type:

   Response type	Valid data types
   Check box	Check box, Text, Text Area, Text Area (Long), Text Area (Rich)
   Date	Date, Date/Time, Text, Text Area, Text Area (Long), Text Area (Rich)
   Date/Time	Date, Date/Time, Text, Text Area, Text Area (Long), Text Area (Rich)
   Hyperlink	Hyperlink
   Lookup	Text, Text Area, Text Area (Long), Text Area (Rich)
   Number	Number, Currency, Text, Text Area, Text Area (Long), Text Area (Rich)
   Picklist	Text, Text Area, Text Area (Long), Text Area (Rich), Picklist
   Picklist (Allow Multiple Selection check box selected)	Text, Text Area, Text Area (Long), Text Area (Rich), Picklist (Allow Multiple Selection check box selected)
   Radio Button	Picklist, Text, Text Area, Text Area (Long), Text Area (Rich)
   Text Area	Text Area, Text Area (Long), Text Area (Rich)
   Text Area (Rich)	Text Area (Long), Text Area (Rich)
   Text Field	Text, Text Area, Text Area (Long), Text Area (Rich)

To add criteria to filter which CIs and assets are shown to staff members

1. In the Fulfillment Criteria - CMDB section, click New.
2. In the Fulfillment Criteria - CMDB window, specify the criteria to filter CIs and assets.
   
   
   
   
3. In the  Filter Logic field, specify the logical operators between conditions.
   By default, AND is specified for all conditions. 
   Criteria must ensure that already assigned CIs and assets are not shown again in the search results. Inform staff members about the action that they must take to follow your condition.
   Example:  Use the following condition in your criteria: CI Status is not equal to In Stock - Available .
4. Click Save.
   To suspend the creation of fulfillment process associated with a service request, see Suspending creation of fulfillment process until service request approval.
   
   

After you complete the Fulfillment tab processes and click Next Step , you are directed to the Display Options tab.

Step 4: Configuring display options for SRD

Consider the following while configuring display options:

• The service request calculates the Date Expected of the service request by adding the turnaround time of the SRD to the current date and time.
  
• The Assigned To field and its value are shown in Self Service only if the service request is assigned to a staff member. If the service request is assigned to a queue, the field is not shown in Self Service. 
  
• If you select the Approvals check box, the Approval Status column in the Ticket and Requests tab in Self Service will show the approval status.  
  The client can view the current status, approvers, and the approval history of the service request. 
  Users with Salesforce Platform license can view the approval history in the Approvals tab of the service request. In this tab, Salesforce Platform license users can view the approver of the service request, the status of the approval, the date when the service request was submitted for approval, and the comments entered in the approval by the approver. 
  The total number of approvals is displayed in the title of the Approvals tab. 
  Users with Customer Portal license can view the approval history of the service request in the Actions Performed tab. These users cannot view the Approvals tab and the approver information. 
  
  

The Display Options tab includes the following sections: 

• Service Request Information
  
• Provide Information 
• Service Request Details for Staff Members
  

The following table provides information on the fields to be completed: 

Step 5: Configuring entitlement of SRD

By default, an SRD is available to all accounts and all users. However, you can configure to show an SRD on Remedyforce Console or Self Service to users of specific accounts and to specific profiles or permission sets in those specific accounts. 

When you configure entitlement for Remedyforce Console, the Service Desk staff users can view the SRD in the Request Definition lookup of Remedyforce Console based on the accounts, profiles, or permission sets assigned to them. Likewise, when the entitlement is configured for Self Service, the clients can view the SRD in Self Service based on the configurations.

Consider the following while configuring the entitlement:

• If you want to see only Remedyforce accounts in the list, enable the setting In accounts lists, display Remedyforce accounts by default from Remedyforce Administration > Application Settings > General Application Settings.
• ( Remedyforce Console and Salesforce Mobile Analyst application) 
  To control the visibility of an existing service request record when the SRD is not entitled to a staff user, you must enable the setting Restrict access of service requests to users who do not have entitlement to the underlying SRDs from the Entitlement tab. 
  Once enabled, when you open the restricted record, an error will be displayed.

• If you are upgrading from any version earlier than 20.19.02 (Summer 19), the default values on the Entitlement form are set to Everyone and All Users for Remedyforce Console entitlement. 
  However, for Self Service, the existing entitlement configuration values will be displayed on the Entitlement form.
• Self Service will be the default selected value in the Configure Entitlement for list.
  

• Any custom lookup created on the Request Definition object will not honor the entitlement.

The following table provides information on the fields to be completed: 

 Visibility of SRD to users

For users who have linked accounts, to understand how an SRD is shown to Self Service users based on the Entitlement tab settings, refer to the following table:

All Accounts	Selected Accounts	All Users	Selected Profiles	Selected permission sets	Visibility of SRD to users to whom an account is assigned	Visibility of SRD to users to whom an account is not assigned
					Visible	Visible
					Visible to users with selected profiles	Visible to users with selected profiles
					Visible to users with selected permission sets	Visible to users with selected permission sets
					Visible to users with selected accounts	Visible
					Visible to users with selected accounts and selected profiles	Visible to users with selected profiles
					Visible to users with selected accounts and selected permission sets	Visible to users with selected permission sets

There are few users who do not have accounts. In that case, the entitlement will be based on the setting Restrict  entitlement for users who do not have a linked account. For more information about this setting, see General settings for Remedyforce. With respect to this setting, the entitlement will be as follows:

• If you upgrade from any version earlier than 20.19.02 (Summer 19), the setting Restrict entitlement for users who do not have a linked account will be available for configuration. It will be unchecked by default.
• When the Restrict entitlement for users who do not have a linked account setting is not enabled, the SRD visibility will be as follows:
  
  • If Show request definition to is set to Everyone, the SRD will be visible to everyone.
  • If Show request definition to is set to Selected Accounts, then among those selected accounts the SRD will be visible to users with linked accounts and users without linked accounts.
• When the Restrict  entitlement for users who do not have a linked account setting is enabled, the SRD visibility will be as follows:
  • If Show request definition to is set to Everyone, the SRD will be visible to everyone.
  • If Show request definition to is set to Selected Accounts, then among those selected accounts the SRD will be visible to users with linked accounts. However, the SRD will not be visible to users without linked accounts.

Step 6: Making SRD available in Self Service

After you complete steps 1 to 5, your SRD has to be made available for the clients on the Self Service portal. 

To make an SRD available in Self Service, perform the following steps: 

1. (Optional) On the General Information tab of a request definition, from the Status list, select Deployed.
2. (Required) Select the Make Online check box.

3. To show the request definition in BMC MyIT and Self Service on the Salesforce Mobile App platform, select the Show in Remedyforce Mobile check box.

4. Click Save.

Creating input fields for an SRD

While configuring an SRD, you add or create input fields. 

Editing, copying, or deleting request definitions

As a system administrator or member of the Change Manager profile, you can edit a service request definition (SRD).  Also, make copies of the SRD for different service offerings of a service. Making copies would help you maintain consistency in the Fulfillment templates that you create for similar service offerings. 

After reviewing an SRD, if you find that the SRD is no longer required because you are not providing the service offering of the SRD, you can delete the SRD.

To edit, copy, or delete a service request definition

1. Click the Remedyforce Administration tab.
2. On the Home page, click the Configure Application tile, and from the menu select Request Definitions.
   Alternatively, you can also navigate to Remedyforce Workspaces > Service Request Management > Request Definition.
3. In the Request Definitions list view, select the SRD that you want to edit, copy, or delete.

4. Perform one of the following actions:

   Goal	Action
   Copy	Click . The Automatically submit for approval check box is cleared when you copy an SRD. You must select this check box if you want to submit the SRD for approval when matching criteria is met.
   Delete	Click . In the confirmation dialog box, click Yes.
   Edit	Click the request definition and make the required changes. Click Save.

Suspending creation of fulfillment process until service request approval 

To suspend the creation of fulfillment process associated with a service request, you must configure the following settings:

• The Automatically Submit for Approval check box under the General Information section of the request definition is selected.
• There is an approval process that is created on the Incident object under Approval Processes in Setup. The approval process must have one of the actions under Final Approval Actions that sets the Approved field to true in the Field Update action type. The following image shows the Final Approval Actions section of the process.
  
  

After setting these configurations, if a service request is submitted by a client, it is automatically submitted for approval.

At this point, any task or change request associated with this service request is not created. When the request is approved, the Final Approval Action setting sets the Approved field value to True and thereafter, tasks and change requests associated with this service request are created.

Configuring service request settings

On the Remedyforce Administration > Application Settings > Service Requests page, all the settings that are applied to all service requests are provided.

The following table lists the settings that are available on the page:

Recording the same information in all service requests

If there is some information that you require clients to enter for all service requests, such as department number of client, use one of the following options:

To add input fields to capture the information to a service request definition (SRD).

1. Add input fields to an SRD.
2. Map the values of these fields to template fields.

The mapping ensures that the values entered by client are recorded with the service request. Note that you need to repeat these steps for each SRD.

To add custom fields to the Incident and Request Detail objects.

1. To capture the information, add custom fields to the Incident and Request Detail objects.
   For more information, see the Salesforce Help.
   Important: For BMC Remedyforce to populate the value of the Request Detail fields in the Incident custom fields, ensure that you use the same Field Name and data type when you add fields to the Request Details and Incident objects. 

2. Add these fields to

    Out-of-the-box Request Details field sets

   BMC Remedyforce provides the following out-of-the-box field sets for the Request Detail object:

   • Service Request Left Panel: To add fields in the left panel of the Service Request form in the Self Service web browser (Remedyforce Self Service tab).
   • Service Request Right Panel: To add fields in the right panel of the Service Request form in the Self Service web browser.
   • Salesforce1 - Service Request Panel: To ensure that clients view the same set of fields in the Self Service web browser and the Salesforce1 mobile application, BMC recommends that the Salesforce1 - Service Request Panel field set contain all fields that are added to the other two field sets.

   By default, no fields are assigned to these field sets. You can customize the Service Request form by adding custom fields to these field sets. When you add custom fields to the field sets, the custom fields are displayed on the Service Request form in the order in which these fields appear in the field sets.

   When you create a custom field, it is available on each of the field sets that are to be added on the custom form.

3. On the Remedyforce Administration > Application Settings > Service Requests page, select the Populate the values of Request Detail custom fields in Incident custom fields check box.

In some cases, BMC Remedyforce does not populate the custom field values in the service request in the Incident custom fields

Note: BMC Remedyforce applies default filter criteria to Lookup type fields in the out-of-the-box field sets in the RequestDetail object. For more information, see Considerations for creating lookup filters for service request definitions.

Determining the category applied to a service request

There are multiple ways to apply category to a service request. Based on your requirements, you can decide where to use the category that must be applied to the service request. The following table provides the actions that you must take to ensure that correct category is applied to the service request:

If a category is available in the request definition and the incident template used in the request definition, which category is applied to the service request, depends upon the Replace form field values with template field value setting check box on the Remedyforce Administration > Application Settings > General Application Settings page, the following table describes which category is applied to the service request:

Related topics

Managing smart practices content

Getting started with service request management

Configuring settings for service requests in Self Service