Collaborating with users on service requests

As a BMC Digital Workplace administrator, you can globally enable collaboration on service requests to allow all users in your organization to add collaborators to their service requests.

The user who submits a service request can add other users as collaborators to the request, so they can view and comment on the initial request. Collaborators can also cancel the service request if required.

Collaboration on service requests is useful when an end user creates a request that impacts other users or if the user will not be available when the request is fulfilled.

For more information about this feature, watch the following video guide:

Setting up service requests through BMC Service Request Management

Supported types of service requests

Collaboration on service requests is supported only for enhanced catalog services.

Collaboration is not supported for service request actions.

Scenarios for enabling collaboration on service requests

Allen is an analyst at his company. Allen and five colleagues from his department work in the office room where an office printer is installed and connected to the corporate network.

One day, Allen wants to print a document, and he realizes that the quality of the printing has diminished. Allen opens BMC Digital Workplace and creates a service request about the printer that needs to be fixed. He adds two colleagues from his office room as collaborators to this service request. If Allen is out of the office when the IT department starts processing the request, the colleagues who are added as collaborators to the service request can answer questions from the support team to help process the ticket.
When Allen created the ticket, he did not know that Jane who works in the same office room, had already requested the printer service in BMC Digital Workplace. When Jane created the service request, she did not add collaborators to her request. After Allen added Jane as a collaborator to his request, she canceled his request with the comment that she had already created another request.

Collaborator rights and permissions

The following table describes the actions available to a service requester, OBO users, and collaborators at different stages of a service lifecycle.

Service request lifecycle stage	Actions available for service request users			Notes
Service request lifecycle stage	Service requester	OBO users	Collaborators	Notes
Service request checkout	Add to Cart Request Now Add OBO user	Not applicable	Not applicable	Collaborators cannot be manually added during the service request checkout.
Service request in progress	Cancel request Add comments Manage collaborators Request again	Cancel request Add comments Manage collaborators Request again	Cancel request Add comment View collaborators list in read-only mode	The OBO users cannot be added as collaborators to the service request.
Service request is completed or cancelled	Request again Manage collaborators	Request again Manage collaborators	View collaborators list in read-only mode	Not applicable

A service requester, OBO users, and all collaborators receive in-app notifications about all changes of the service request. Service request approvers can view the list of collaborators in the details of the service request.

To enable collaboration on service requests

Log in to the BMC Digital Workplace Admin console.
Navigate to Configuration > Application Features.
Select the Collaborators check box.

Options for adding collaborators to a service request

Note

A service requester can add a maximum of 20 collaborators to their service requests.

There are two options for adding collaborators to a service request:

Adding collaborators to a service request manually
Automatically sharing all new service requests with the default collaborators group

Adding collaborators to a service request manually

Service requesters can manually add collaborators to their service requests one at a time as it is shown in the following image:

Service requesters can also add collaborators from the default group:

For details about end users can create the default group, see Collaborator settings. After they load the collaborators group, they can edit the collaborators list if required.

The service request is shared with the collaborators group right after the default group is loaded or when the Add collaborators dialog box is closed.

Automatically sharing all new service requests with the default collaborators group

All new service requests are automatically shared with the default group of collaborators if the end user has added users to the default group, and has enabled automatic sharing of service requests with the default group. For details about how to enable auto-share option, see Collaborator settings.

Collaborator settings

End users can configure the Collaborator settings in the user profile preferences.

End users can configure collaboration on their service requests by:

Managing the default group
Automatically sharing all new service requests with the default group

Managing the default group

End users can load the collaborators default group when they manually add collaborators.

Task	Description	Image
To add the default group	Click Add People, and then add users to the collaborators default group.
To delete a user from the default group	Select a user from the Currently selected list, and click Remove.
To edit the default group	Click the pencil icon, and then add or remove users from the collaborators default group.
To delete the default group	Click the trash button next to the default group, and confirm deletion of the default group.

Automatically sharing all new service requests with the default group

To automatically share all new requests with the default group, the end user must turn the Auto-share toggle to ON.