Managing service actions

Service actions are light services associated with completed service requests or assets. End users access service actions from the Actions list of a service or an asset on their My Stuff page. For more details about how items are displayed on the My Stuff page, see Setting up the My Stuff page.

Catalog administrators and internal service suppliers create and manage service actions to associate them with services.

Catalog administrators associate service actions with services, service categories, and asset classes from configured external systems.

As a catalog administrator or internal service supplier, you manage service actions from the Service Actions page, which you can access by selecting Services > Service Actions in BMC Digital Workplace Catalog. Here, you can add, edit, and delete service actions.  

By default, all newly created service actions are inactive and are displayed on the Inactive tab. You can activate service actions to make them available for end users, and deactivate them as needed.

If you have more than one environment with BMC Digital Workplace Catalog, you can share service actions among them by exporting and importing service actions to and from local files.  

Comparison of service actions and services

Service actions are similar to services because they have the following resembling components:

Components of service actions

A service action uses the same UI template as a service. You complete the required details for a service action in the same way as you do when you create or edit a service.

Process of adding service actions

As a catalog administrator, perform the following steps to add and enable a service action:

1. Create a service action.
2. Associate the service action with one or more of the following items available on the My Stuff page:
   
   • Published services—To make the service action available from the Actions list of completed services requests (See To associate a service action with services below.)
   • Service categories—To make it available for all completed services that belong to the selected category (See To associate a service action with services below.)
   • Asset classes—To make it available for all asset classes or specific asset classes retrieved from a connected system and entitled to the end user (See To associate a service action with assets below.)
3. Activate the service action so that the action becomes available for selection in the Actions list of service requests and assets to which it is mapped.

The following screenshot shows a completed service request and a list of actions associated with it:    

To create a service action

1. BMC Digital Workplace Catalog, go to Services > Service Actions.
2. Click Create Action.
3. In the Action Name field, enter a descriptive action name, such as Replace hardware.
4. Click Confirm.
   The Actions Options pane is displayed.
   

5. In the appropriate section of the Action Options pane, complete the required details for the service action components.

6. (Optional) You can publish service actions and their translations for end users in different locales. For more information, see Localizing catalog items.

7. Save the changes.

To make a service action available to end users, you must associate it with services or assets, and then activate it.

To associate a service action with services

1. Open a service action that you want to map to services.

2. In the Action Options panel, click Edit next to Asset Mapping.

   The following example shows the Service Requests section:

   

3. (Optional) Map categories of services to a selected service action:

   1. In the Service Requests section, click Add next to Categories.
   2. From the Service Catalog, select one or more service categories, and click Save.

4. (Optional) Map services to a selected service action:

   1. In the Service Requests section, click Add next to Services.

   2. From the Service Catalog, select one or more services, and click Add.

To associate a service action with assets

You can associate service actions only with those asset classes that are retrieved from connections configured in the Application Settings > Asset Management. For details about how to configure asset connections, see Configuring services and assets to be available on the My Stuff page.

The following example shows the Asset connections sections of a service action:

Perform one or more of the following procedures to associate service actions with assets:

To activate and deactivate a service action

To make the service action available to end users, after you create a service action and map it to services and assets, you must activate it. You might also need to deactivate service actions to make them temporarily unavailable for selection by end users, such as when a service action is undergoing some changes.

To activate or deactivate a service action, perform one of the following steps:

• From the Action Options pane, change the Active toggle to activate or deactivate a service.
  
• Open the Service Actions page and select a service action on the Active or Inactive tab. Click Actions and select one of the following options:

• • Activate—Makes an inactive service action available to end users. This option is available on the Inactive tab.
  • Deactivate —Makes an active service action unavailable to end users. This option is available on the Active tab.

To edit a service action

You might need to edit the details of a service action or its name, or add translations.

1. From the Service Actions page, select a service action that you want to modify, and select Actions > Open.
   The Actions Options pane is displayed.

2. Make the necessary changes to the service action, and click Save.

To delete a service action

You can delete active and inactive service actions at any time.

From the service actions list, select one or more service actions, and click Actions > Delete.

If a service action is associated with a service, service category, or asset class, a message appears to notify you of potential risks.

To export and import a service action

To export a service action to a local zip file, select a service and click Actions > Export.

To import a saved service action, select Actions > Import, and upload the service action zip file.