Requesting services on behalf of other users

An approved delegate for a particular end user can request services on behalf of that user.

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

Scenarios for enabling on-behalf-of entitlement

The following scenarios describe situations when an end user requests a service for another end user:

• Alison is a manager of a housekeeping department in her company. Brenda is a housekeeper in Alison's department. Brenda is planning a two-week vacation in summer. She does not have a working place and is not provided with a laptop, so she cannot submit vacation requests. Because Brenda is a registered employee, she must submit the vacation request in the company time tracking system, so Brenda asks Alison to submit a PTO request on her behalf in BMC Digital Workplace. 
• Mary is a travel agent in the C-Services company, and she uses a virtual private network to connect to internal company applications. Mary experiences a virtual private network connection issue, and she cannot open a ticket for IT support. She asks Tom, her manager, to open a ticket on her behalf. Tom has the required permissions to submit requests on behalf of Mary.
  
  

The following scenario describes the need to request a service for multiple users:

• Alison wants to order three mops for new housekeepers in her department. She starts a service request, and selects the three employees for whom she is requesting the service. Three services are created, one for each new housekeeper, and Alison is the service requester for all of the service requests. For information about how to request a service on behalf of multiple users, see Request services on behalf of multiple users.

The following scenario describes the need to request a service by impersonating as someone:

• Mary is on vacation. While on vacation, she recalls that she forgot to prolong her sports program benefit. Mary does not have access to BMC Digital Workplace. If she does not prolong the sports benefit service on time, the benefit will be revoked. Mary calls Tom and asks him to impersonate her BMC Digital Workplace view to request the Prolong my sports benefit service action available in the Actions list of  the "Provide me with the sports benefit" service. Mary has previously requested the Provide me with the sports benefit service, and it is available on her My Stuff page.  

Service requester information generated with a service request 

The following details are recorded for each service requested in BMC Digital Workplace:

• Service requester—The user who created a service request.
  The name of the user who requested a service is displayed in the Comments section of a service request.  
• OBO user—The user on behalf of whom a service is requested.
  The OBO user's name is recorded in the Requested for field only when the end user requests a service on behalf of another user. When end users request a service for themselves, the Requested for field is by default prepopulated with the name of the service requester.
  The following example shows details of a service requested for the service requester:

If an end user requests a service for another user, the Requested for field displays the user name for whom the service is requested.  The following example shows details of a service requested for another user:

Users can submit a service request for another end user in one of the following ways:

• Request a service on behalf of another user

• Impersonate as another user to request a service

• Request a service on behalf of multiple users

If a user requests a service on behalf of another user, a single service request is generated. The service request is available to both users, on their My Activity page. 

If a user requests a service for multiple users, multiple instances of the service request are generated. The service requests are displayed on the My Activity page of the service requester and all Requested For users.

Before you begin

• The Remedy system administrator must create on-behalf-of rules as described in the   Creating on-behalf-of definition rules in Service Request Management  documentation.

• To allow end users to place a request on behalf of another user, the BMC Digital Workplace administrator must set the obo.enabled.for.all parameter to true, as described in List of providers.

To request a service on behalf of another user

An end user can request services for another user by changing the Request for field as described in the following sections.

To request a service on behalf of multiple users

End users can request services on behalf of multiple users the same way they request a service on behalf of a single user at the time of a service request and during a service request checkout.

In Request for, the end user must click Edit and add OBO users to the Request for someone else list as follows:

To impersonate as another user to request a service

An end user can temporarily change their own catalog view to impersonate another user. When Request as someone else is enabled, the end user can view only the products and services that the alternate user is entitled to view. Services through providers that are integrated directly with BMC Digital Workplace are not available.

To impersonate a view, the end user must open the user profile, click Request as someone else, and select a user in the Request as someone else dialog box, as shown in the following image.

The impersonated user can view and request services as another user and has access to the following views of another user:

• Catalog—Displays all services that are available to another user.
• My Stuff—Displays services requested by another user and assets available to another user. The user impersonating another user can request service actions that are available for requested services.

For more information about service requests and service actions available on the My Stuff page, see Setting up the My Stuff page.

The following images show the Catalog and My Stuff page views available for Allen when he impersonates his view as Bobby:

When an end user impersonates their view as another user, that end user can still view their own information on the following pages:

• My Activity
• Custom page

The following images show how Allen views his own information when he impersonates his view as Bobby:

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