Providing direct links for Self Service components

As a system administrator, you can provide direct links for the various components in Self Service. You can embed these direct links on your intranet or send the links via email and instant messengers.

For example, if you have a service request definition to request for an iPhone, you can provide a link to that service request definition on your intranet or send the link via email. Users can request an iPhone by using this link. Similarly, you can also provide direct links to self-help articles, tiles, and templates.

Note

When users do not have access to a particular account for an SRD, as a system administrator you can provide access using the Self Service Link. For more information on SRD permissions, refer to the table provided in Procedure 2 of Creating and configuring an SRD.
The direct links for the Self Service components are generated by using URL entered in the Site URL of Self Service field (Remedyforce Administration > Configure Self Service > General Self Service Settings).
If you do not configure the Site URL of Self Service field, then the direct links are generated using the login.salesforce.com or test.salesforce.com based on whether the organization is production or sandbox.
To generate the direct links based on the My Domain feature, you must configure the Site URL of Self Service field with the same URL as configured for My Domain under Setup > Domain Management > My Domain.

The following topics are provided:

Considerations for Customer Portal license users and Salesforce Platform license users

Based on the user license types, the behavior of the embedded Self Service components and direct links differs. Following are the considerations for the Customer Portal license users and the Salesforce Platform license users when they click on the embedded components or direct links:

If the users are not logged on, they need to log on to the application. The Customer Portal license users are redirected to the Self Service site login page and the Salesforce Platform license users are redirected to the Salesforce.com login page.
If the users are not authenticated and they try to access component or direct link, they are redirected to the login page based on their license type.
If the users switch browsers to access a component or direct link, they must log on to the application again. For example, if a user is logged on to the application in the Internet Explorer and tries to access the component or direct link in the Chrome browser, the user must log on to the application again in the Chrome browser.

Note

The Salesforce Platform license users must log on to the Self Service site each time they access a direct link to a component. To resolve this issue, you must update the Self Service Site URL field (Remedyforce Administration > Configure Self Service > General Self Service settings ) in this format https://BMCServiceDesk.<Salesforce.com-instance>.visual.force.com.

List of Self Service components

The following table lists the Self Service components for which you can provide direct links:

Directly navigate to specific category in Self Service 3.0

If you want to provide direct navigation links to Request Definitions associated with specific category in Self Service 3.0, you can provide the link as follows:

https://<salesforce end point>/apex/BMCServiceDesk__ssredirect?type=tile&id=newsr&categoryId=<category_record_id>

<salesforce end point> to be replaced as per your organization.
<category_record_id> to be replaced with Salesforce ID of category record.

Example of a direct navigation link

https://mydomain--bmcservicedesk.visualforce.com/apex/BMCServiceDesk__ssredirect?type=tile&id=newsr&categoryId=a282x000000CqvO

When users launch the specific category URL, the following actions take place:

If a user is already logged in to self service, the user is directly navigated to Self Service > Category > Category of the request definition, and request definitions of this category are listed.
If a user is not logged in to self service, the user is asked to enter login credentials. After logging in, the user is directly navigated to Self Service > Category > Category of the request definition, and request definitions of this category are listed.

Troubleshooting directs links for Self Service

Based on how you have configured the various settings for these components (tiles, knowledge articles, service request definition, and incident templates), a set of error messages is displayed to the clients. The following table lists the scenarios and reasons for the error messages.