Service Orders and Service Catalogs

The service catalog extends service request management to model and publish IT services in a catalog. Service designers create service components to define complex services and organize them in the service catalog. Service orders are assigned to item categories that determine how the service orders will be processed. For example, upon approval, the system creates a service request.

The service catalog is the interface from which end users order their services. That is, using the service order process, users create service orders from the service catalog.

Service Catalog and Service Request Fulfillment

Users order services from the service catalog. The system triggers the service fulfillment process in service request management that are assigned to the responsible support team or processors. To process the service orders, processors use service requests that provide, for example, guided procedures or operations tasks.

In addition, processors can schedule guided procedures to process operations tasks that must be repeated regularly.

Integration

To process service orders, IT Service Management uses the service request transaction type.

Prerequisites

The service catalog is configured in SAP Solution Manager Configuration, in the IT Service Management scenario, Start of the navigation path Perform Optional Configuration Next navigation step Configure Service Catalog and Request End of the navigation path step.

Features

Using service request management when processing service orders, you can do the following:

Involve different processors
Prepare procedures that processors can execute regularly or when ordered
Create follow-up service requests
Record efforts
Document the execution of the procedure in detail

Structure of a Service Order

A service order consists of the header details, which are organized in individual groups, and additional assignment blocks. You can customize which assignment blocks are displayed according to your requirements.

Header Level

In the header details, you specify the general data that is valid for the entire service order. This includes, for example, the following data:

General Data: The title and the creator of a service order
Notes: The description or comments that are relevant for the task
Processing Data: For example, the priority and the status
Dates: The requested start and end dates

Assignment Blocks

In the assignment blocks, you specify additional data, for example:

The Items assignment block lists the actions that belong to the service order.

Service Catalog

As a processor, you can configure the service catalog as follows:

Create service products that are displayed in the service catalog for ordering.
Mark services as top services. They appear at the top of the list.
Mark services as directly orderable from the service catalog. As a follow-up transaction, a service request is created.
Temporarily remove an item from the service catalog by setting its user status to Locked.

As an end-user, in the service catalog, you can do the following:

From the service catalog home screen, order services.
From the service catalog home screen, display all service orders and service requests that you created and check their processing status.
Use the category of a service product to filter and sort the service catalog.

Example

Service request management for the New Employee service:

The service catalog contains several service components, for example, New Employee.
An end user orders a service component from the service catalog by creating a service order. The service order can contain a questionnaire to provide more information, such as what software the new employee requires.
The New Employee service component contains products from several categories, for example, hardware (Material product category), or notebook setup (Service product category).
For the notebook setup, the system creates service requests for service fulfillment, for example, for installing the software.
A service request contains operations tasks (SMOT transaction type). Operations tasks are automatically created based on a guided procedure that is related to the service request. Examples of operations tasks are installing the operating system, installing special software, and setting up the workstation.