Getting started with service request definitions

Create an account, if not already created.

Creating a request definition for an account ensures that only the clients of the selected account can access the request definition.

Add business hours. You will need to select business hours for services and service offerings.

For example, for an urgent request, business hours can be 24x7.

Add the service providers of services as accounts in BMC Remedyforce.

For example, the service provider of the New Hire Request is the IT Department of the organization.

Create a service. If the service desk is delivering a service to another department in the same organization, create a service of type BusinessService.

To create a service, collect the following information:

• Owner of the service
• Business hours of the service
• Time to deliver the service

Create a service offering. A service offering is a type of service that an organization makes available to its users.

For example, Silver (service delivered in 5 days), Gold (service delivered in 3 days), and Platinum (service delivered in 1 day).

To create a service offering, collect the following information:

• Time to deliver the service
• Cost of the service

Note: For each service offering, you will create a separate request definition. For example, you create New Hire Request service for the HR department and you want to offer Platinum and Gold service offerings for the service. Create one request definition with the New Hire Request service and Platinum service offering and second request definition with New Hire Request service and Gold service offering.

Create the category of the service request definition. To make the category available in Self Service, ensure that you select the Available for Incidents and Available for Service Requests check boxes.

Note: To apply correct category to the service request, select same category in the Incident template that you select in the Request Detail template and the request definition that you will create.

Investigate and collect the information that you will need from clients to fulfill the service request. For example, for the New Hire Request, you will need joining date, designation of the new employee, and so on information from the HR executive. You will create input fields for the information that you want to collect from clients. Also think about the data type of the fields.

You can map the fields in which clients input data to the fields of the template that you create for the request definition. Configure the field mapping while creating the request definition.

Evaluate if you have all the fields in the Incident object to which you can map the user input fields. If you do not have all the required fields, add the required fields to the Incident object.

Create the following templates:

• Task and change request templates to fulfill the service request.
• Incident template for creating a Request Detail type of template.
• Request Detail type of template where you can define quantity value.

Note: A request detail template is required to create a request definition. Create an incident template before creating a request detail template, and select the incident template in the request detail template.

For example, for the New Hire Request, the following task templates are required:

• A task template to create an account in AD and other applications.
• A task template to get the laptop from the Procurement department.
• A task template to install operating system and required applications on the new laptop. 

Select the required staff member in the Owner ID field of the change or task template. When the service request is approved and the change requests and tasks are created for the service request, these change requests and tasks are assigned to the staff member in the Owner ID field. If the Owner ID field is not populated in the templates, the change requests and tasks are assigned to the logged-on user.

Note: BMC recommends that you create a request definition template that does not have any linked task templates. If the template has linked task templates, the task records from the linked task templates are created even when the submitted service request is not approved.

Create queues for the Task and Change Request objects. You can assign the created tasks and change requests to the required queue by specifying the queue in the Owner ID field of the template.

To assign all the tasks and change requests created by submitting service requests to a default queue, assign the default queue on the Application Settings > Service Requests page.

If you specify a value in the Owner ID field of the template and also assign a value to the default queue, the task or change request is assigned to the owner specified in the template.

• Configuring queues
• Configuring service requests settings

Clients log on to Self Service and submit service requests by using the request definitions that are shown as templates in the Request a Service tile in Self Service.

For example, the HR executive will log on to Self Service, and raise a service request by using the New Hire Request service request template in the Request a Service tile.