Product Catalog and multitenancy
The Product Catalog includes forms for creating and updating company and site information. Although the Site and Region forms are part of the Product Catalog, they are mostly referred to and used by BMC Helix ITSM. For more information, see the BMC Helix IT Service Management Suite online documentation.
By default, Product Catalog entries are associated with the - Global - company and are available to all companies or organizations. For information about associating Product Catalog entries with specific companies, see Associating-companies-to-Product-Catalog-entries.
Multitenancy scenarios
You can set up multitenancy in your environment in any of the following scenarios:
- When a smaller company is part of another company, and you want to manage access to products separately. Both companies can use the same Product Catalog and access only the products that are approved for their own organizations.
- When you manage the IT environment for various companies but want to track the approved products for each company from the same Product Catalog.
- When you want to manage access to products based on the departments or organizations within the same company. For example, you might want to approve the payroll management application for the finance department only.
Company types
The Product Catalog supports different types of companies, as listed in the following table. You can also define a company as a combination of different types such as Customer and Operating Company.
BMC Helix ITSM supports the following company types:
Company type | Description |
|---|---|
Customer | An external company for which you provide services. |
Generic contact | A company that you want to reference on the People form. It is used to track information about people for informational purposes. You cannot select a generic contact from within the BMC Helix ITSM applications. |
Operating company | An internal company or business unit for which you provide services. In a Hub and Spoke environment, companies that are resident on a spoke server and receive IT Management support from a Service Provider on the hub server must be defined as an Operating company. |
Service Provider company | A company that is contracted to provide IT management services to Operating companies. In a Hub and Spoke environment, a Service Provider company resides on the hub server and provides IT management services to the Operating companies on the spoke servers. |
Supplier company | A third-party supplier of products |
Manufacturer | A company that manufactures a product identified in the Product Catalog. Important: People cannot be associated to a Manufacturer type of company. |
Vendor | A third-party vendor that provides services for you |
You can associate support groups (and relate people to those support groups) only for the following company types:
- Customer
- Operating company
- Service Provider company
- Vendor
Only users who are members of support groups can access core BMC Helix ITSM forms, such as the Incident, Change, Problem, and Asset forms. Even for users who are members of a support group, there are certain exceptions based on the company type. For example, a user who is a member of a vendor company cannot create a change or release, but can be assigned to work on the change either as a change or release coordinator or as a change or release manager.
Customers who request support must belong to either a customer company or an operating company.
Companies can be more than one type. After the company has been created, you can add an additional company type by opening the Company form and selecting the additional company type. When you save your changes, the additional company type is appended to the existing company type.