Note

 

This documentation supports the 20.18.01 version of BMC Remedyforce.

To view the latest or an earlier version, select the version from the Product version menu.

Getting started with service request management

The following figure shows how you can implement Service Request Management in BMC Remedyforce:

To get started with SRM implementation, configure the following:

Consider the following example of a New Hire Request for the HR department account:

  • HR executive sends an email message to the service desk team requesting to add information about a new employee and configure a laptop for the employee.
  • The service desk team member creates an entry for the new employee in AD and other required applications.
  • The service desk team member configures a laptop for the new employee.
  • The service desk team member notifies the HR executive that the new employee information has been added in the required applications and the laptop is ready.

You can automate this process by creating a service request definition (SRD), New Hire Request, in BMC Remedyforce.

The following table provides you an overview of the steps that you must perform before creating an SRD:

Actions

Description

Create an account, if not already created.

Accounts will help you entitle request definitions to the clients of a particular account only.

Example: Add the HR department as an account.

Reference: Creating accounts

Add business hours.

Business hours are required to inform staff members about the supported business time to fulfill a service request.

Example: For an urgent request, business hours can be 24x7.

Reference: Configuring the default business hours and holidays of your organization

Configure the currency in which you will provide the service.

Example: Dollar, Pounds, Rupees

Reference: Configuring service requests settings

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

Example: Owner of the service can be the IT department or a designated member of the department.

Reference: Creating services

Create a service offering.

A service offering is a type of service that an organization makes available to its users, such as Gold or Silver.

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 SRD.

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 SRD with the New Hire Request service and Platinum service offering and second SRD with New Hire Request service and Gold service offering.

Reference: Creating services

Create the category of the SRD.

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

There are multiple ways to apply category to a service request. Based on which category you want to apply to the service request, you must supply the category correctly. For more information, see Determining the category applied to a service request.

Reference: Managing categories

Investigate and collect the information that you will need from clients to fulfill the service request. Also think about the data type of the information.

To fulfill an SRD, staff members will require information from clients that will help them fulfill the service request. You will create input fields for the information that you want to collect from clients.

Each SRD will require different information from clients. However, some information might be common across all SRDs. You can add such common information as fields to the Incident or Request Detail object.

Example: For the New Hire Request, you will need joining date, designation of the new employee, and so on information from the HR executive.

An example of a common information that you need for all service requests can be the Department or Cost Center number.

Reference: Recording same information in all service requests

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 an SRD. Create an incident template before creating a request detail template, and select the incident template in the request detail template.

Select the required staff member in the Owner ID field of the change request 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.

If the Enable Queue and User Assignment check box on the Remedyforce Administration > Application Settings > Record Assignment page is selected, when you select the Owner ID field in a template, the Select from Queue window is displayed and you can select a queue first and then select a staff member of the queue.

Note: An SRD can have all types of fulfilment templates irrespective of SRD requiring an approval or not. If an SRD requires the approval, the fulfilment process is initiated only after the approval. Otherwise, the fulfilment process starts as soon as an SR is created.

Also, if a Request Detail’s incident template has any task templates linked to it, then those tasks are created irrespective whether the SR requires approval or not.

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. 

Reference: Managing templates

Identify the field mapping of the information that you will collect from clients.

By mapping input fields to change request or task fulfillment template fields, you can pass on the information that you collect from clients directly to staff members who will work on those tasks or change requests. Evaluate if you have all the fields in the Change Request and Task objects to which you can map the user input fields. If you do not have all the required fields, add the required fields to these objects.

Reference: Salesforce Help

Create queues for the Task and Change Request objects.

You can also assign the created tasks and change requests to a 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.

References: Configuring queues and Configuring service requests settings

Activate the Notify the client when a service request is closed workflow.

If you activate the workflow, an email message is sent to the client when the service request is marked as closed.

Reference: Activating or deactivating a workflow

(Optional) Make the service request definitions available in popular or common service requests in Self Service.Reference: Configuring availability of common requests
(Optional) Create an approval process for the Incident object to set up an approval mechanism for the service requests that are created in BMC Remedyforce.Reference: Creating an approval process

Self Service

You can create the Self Service web site for your clients that they can use to:

  • Submit incidents (or tickets) and service requests
  • Search for solution to an issue
  • Read knowledge articles

When you install BMC Remedyforce, you must configure the Self Service site in Salesforce. For more information, see Configuring the Self Service site for clients.

After creating the Self Service site, you can customize the behavior of the site for your users. All the settings are provided in the Configure Self Service tile in the Remedyforce Administration tab. For more information about these settings, see Configuring the Self Service site for clients.

For commonly occurring issues, you can create templates for Incidents and enable these templates to be displayed in Self Service. For more information, see Managing templates.

Use Salesforce Translation Workbench to localize Self Service. For more information, see Localizing Self Service.

Reports

Staff members and system administrators can use the Reports tab to view predefined reports. You can also create reports based on your requirements. However, only the system administrators can create additional report types.

For system administrators, data is also available in the form of charts and tables in the Dashboards tab. To enable staff members with Salesforce or Salesforce Platform license access the Dashboards tab, assign the Manage Dashboard profile-level permission.

Testing your environment

BMC Remedyforce

  • Ensure that you are able to create a request definition in the Remedyforce Administration tab.
  • Ensure that you are able to create a service request in the Remedyforce Console tab.
  • If you have activated workflows, ensure that the workflows are triggered at the configured condition.

Self Service

  • Ensure that you are able to log on to Self Service by using the logon credentials of a client.
  • Ensure that you can submit a service request.

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