Submitting service requests

Types of carts

You can use the following types of carts while requesting for services:

• Your cart—You can add services and bundles in your cart that are processed immediately after you provide the required details. 
• Saved carts—You can add services and bundles to the saved cart to process the items at a later time. 

Before you begin

(Version 23.3.03 and later) Ensure that the administrator has configured the Quantity setting enabled to view the QTY field in service request. For more information, see Adjusting-service-cost-and-quantity.

To request a service

1. Log in to BMC Helix Digital Workplace.
2. From Catalog, search for the service request that you want to submit.

3. Open the required service, fill in the details, and respond to the questionnaire.
   You can upload the attachments wherever asked.

   Important

   (Version 23.3.02 and later) You can see a document in the questionnaire that you are supposed to read. When you click the document name link, the document opens in a new browser tab. If you are accessing the document by using an Android phone, you need to download it first, then open it with a PDF viewer application.

4. Based on when you want to place the request, perform any of the following actions:

   Requirement	Action
   Order a service immediately	Use the Request Now option in a service request to place the request immediately.
   Order a service at a later time from your cart	Use the Add to cart option in a service request to move the service to Your cart.
   (Version 23.3.03 and later) Order an additional quantity	Use the QTY option in a service request to order additional service. Important: When the Quantity toggle key is disabled, the QTY field will not be displayed on the service request.

   (Version 23.3.03 and later) The following image shows the Request Now, Add to Cart and QTY options in a service request:
   

While ordering services by using any of the options, if you save your cart for future checkout, the services are moved to Saved carts. You can order services by using the Move to Cart option, as shown in the following image:

The following video (1:57) describes how end users can add catalog items to a cart to request multiple items at the same time, instead of submitting individual service requests:

 https://youtu.be/J6aOxiDeCrU

To submit service requests from the IT portal

You can request for common IT services from the IT Central page: 

1. Log in to BMC Helix Digital Workplace. 
2. Click IT Central. 
3. From the Popular IT requests section, select the request you want to submit.
   
   
   
4. Click Request Now. 

IDs related to submitted requests

When you submit a service request, the following unique IDs are assigned to the request:

• Request ID—A unique ID assigned to each item in an order.
• Order ID—A unique ID assigned to an order. The same order ID is also assigned to all the items in the order.

You can search for a service request by using a request ID or an order ID.

The following image illustrates how the IDs are associated to your service request:

Following up on service requests

After a service request is submitted, all defined notifications, approval requests, and fulfillment processes are triggered. You can view your requests, approvals, tasks, and calendar items as events on the My Activity page or a studio page that displays events.

When actions taken on requests, calendar events, or tasks move them to a state where no further actions are possible, the following visual indicators let you know that your view is not the latest.

• The Update button expands in width to display the button text and has a blue dot at its top right corner.
• The request is marked with a dark border and a check mark.
   

To update your view, click the Update button or refresh your page. The request moves from the Active events section to the Past events section.

To view fulfillment details

When you request a service, this process might initiate many background activities called fulfillment tickets. Although these activities are not visible to users by default, they are an indispensable part of fulfilling requests. 

To increase the visibility of the request fulfillment process, the administrator has the option to display fulfillment details in the My Activity and Request Details views. For more information, see Configuring-fulfillment-details-display-in-service-requests. 

If the fulfillment details are enabled in My Activity, you can view the ID of a fulfillment ticket on the service request tile. However, no other fulfillment details are displayed on the service request tile in My Activity. 

If the fulfillment details are enabled in Request Details, you can view additional fulfillment details in a window by clicking the Fulfillment Details command from the submitted service request that is in Active Events or Past Events. If no details are available for an enabled fulfillment field, this field is still displayed with a dash indicating an absent value. 

If the fulfillment details are enabled in Request Details, you can also refer to fulfillment tickets in the comments section for active service requests in one of two ways: 

(Version 23.3.02 and later) To view the priority of native Catalog service requests

By default, when you request a native service, the raised service request doesn't display the request priority. However, a catalog administrator has the option to display the priority information in the native service requests. For more information, see Displaying-the-priority-of-native-Catalog-service-requests. After that, you can see the priority of native service requests in the end-user console. 

• The request priority value is displayed as a badge on the service request tile in the My Activity view:  

• The Request priority field is displayed in the Request Details view of a native service request. The priority value is displayed as a badge: 
  

The color and text style of the Request priority badges are consistent with criticality styling used across various BMC products. 

If a service request is linked to a single or multiple fulfillment tickets in BMC Helix ITSM or BMC Helix Business Workflows, the request priority is calculated automatically. You can't manually change the request priority value. For more information about use cases for priority calculation, see Displaying priority of native Catalog service requests.

If a service request is not linked to any fulfillment tickets, and the catalog administrator has created a workflow to manually set the request priority, you can set the priority while submitting the request: 

If a question to collect the priority information allows text or integer inputs, end users can enter only the following values:

(Version 23.3.02 and later) To view active and past events of Approval requests

You can view ongoing requests or activities in the Active and Past Events sections. These sections show requests that are completed or still in progress, and include requests that are Canceled, Rejected, or Closed.

For the approval requests, the status can be categorized into the following types:

• Active events have these statuses: On hold and Waiting.
• Past events have one of the following statuses: Approved, Rejected, and Canceled.

Before you begin

To view the approval requests, you must configure the search.approvals.created.since.months setting in the BMC Helix Digital Workplace admin console. For more information, see Integrating-with-other-applications-by-using-providers.

To view the Active and Past Events, perform the following steps:

1. Navigate to the Console.

2. On the My Activity page, select the required events from the Active events or the Past events.

   Important

   The following image shows an older version of BMC Helix Digital Workplace. Although there might be minor changes in the user interface, the overall functionality remains the same.

   

Filter events by date

Perform the following steps to view the required events, by using the various built-in filters to filter events on the My Activity page:

1. Navigate to the Console.
2. On the My Activity page, select Filters > Filter by date and then click Custom date range.
   The date range has the following values:
   1. Between
   2. On
   3. After
   4. Before

Certain rules apply to the After and Before filter options My Activity page, and how they interact with the search.approvals.created.since.months setting to display both active and inactive approval events within a specified date range. 

In the Filter options, when you select a date by using After filter, the system checks whether the selected date is within the configured parameter value or not. For instance, if the configured parameter value is set to 3 months and you select a date that is 10 months ago, the system will fetch approval results for the latest 3 months only. However, if the selected date is within the limit, say 1 month ago, the system will fetch approvals from today’s date minus one month, rather than the full 3 months.

In the Filter options, when you select a date by using Before filter, if the selected date is in the future, the system will fetch data for the latest three months. However, if the selected date is within the configured parameter value, the system will fetch data from that date up to the last three months as configured.

In the Filter options, when you select a specific date using On filter, the system will fetch data for the entire 24 hours of that particular day.

The inactive and active approval events are displayed based on the configured value, adhering to the search.approvals.created.since.months setting.

In any case, the data beyond the months configured in search.approvals.created.since.months won't appear in Active and Past events. 

Understanding filter options

Let's assume, in the admin console, the configured value is 3 months. The filter options work as follows:

• If no filters are applied, the system fetches data for the last 3 months, based on the value passed by the user.
• If a specific date range is provided, such as after one month, the system fetches data for that specific month.
• If a specific duration within the three months is desired, such as 15 days, the system fetches data for those specific 15 days.

For example, if the current date is April 08, 2024, the system will load approval requests from February 08, 2024, to April 08, 2024. This behavior applies even if the After date is set to November 08, 2023, and the Before date is left blank. However, if the Before date is set to December 08, 2023, which is beyond the configured setting, the system will not find any results.

By default, only the most recent 3 months of data are loaded, providing users with the most relevant and up-to-date information.

To mark a service as your favorite

You can mark a service as a favorite only if your administrator has enabled the functionality. Also, if you have logged in to the product as another user, you cannot mark a service as your favorite.

For more information, see Managing-your-favorite-catalog-items.

This capability is available with BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced.

FAQ

Refer to the following questions and their responses that can help you while you are submitting requests:

• If I leave a checkout process, will the system save my cart?

  Yes. When any of the following situations occur, your cart is automatically saved and you do not have to add the items again:

  • You leave the cart in progress to place individual requests.
  • You log out of BMC Helix Digital Workplace.
  • You are disconnected from the network while the cart request is in progress.
• Can I view the status of items in my cart?

  Yes. After you resume a checkout, you can view the status of items that you initially added to the cart, as shown in the following image:
  

• Do I lose my responses to service questions after I leave a checkout?

  No. The system saves your responses to service questions, and you can resume the checkout from the point of interruption.

• Do I lose my responses if I refresh the browser?

  • If you refresh the browser while answering the questions for the service, your inputs are cleared.
  • If you refresh the browser while answering the questions for the services provisioned through BMC Service Request Management, your inputs are cleared. 
  • If you refresh the browser while answering the questions for the services provisioned through BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog, your inputs are saved.
• Do I lose my responses to service questions if the questions are changed before I resume a checkout?

  In such a scenario, the system retains your responses that are valid for the updated questions. If any of your responses is invalid for an updated question, the system marks the error inline.

• Can I change the position of the favorites section?

  You can contact your administrator who has the permission to move the Your Favorites section elsewhere in the product UI.

• Is the request priority displayed for native service requests submitted before the upgrade to 23.3.02?

  After you upgrade to 23.3.02, historical data is presented as is at first, and the request priorities are not displayed. However, as soon as the fulfillment data is fetched, the request priority value gets shown for native service requests submitted before 23.3.02. 

• Is the request priority recalculated for reopened native service requests?

  (Version 23.3.02 and later) Yes, when end users reopen native service requests, the request priority is recalculated. While calculating the priority of a reopened native service request, fulfillment tickets created for both the original and reopened requests are accounted for. For more information about calculating the priority of a native service request linked to multiple fulfillment tickets, see Displaying priority of native Catalog service requests.