Service Category

Service Category

Service Category is a list of IT Services and the Business Services provided to the end-users. Each service category has a group of service templates which are exposed to user and support groups who are approved to access them.

You can add, edit, and delete a service category from this page. Under each category, request templates are listed under the Service Templates and Incident Templates tabs based on their type.

To configure service categories, go to Setup > Templates & Forms > Service Category.
Info
Service category is common for all customers while its templates are customer specific.

Add Service Category 

Role Required: SDAdmin

To add a service category,
  1. Go to Setup > Templates & Forms > Service Category. 
  2. Click New Service Category.
  3. Provide a Name and Description.
  4. Set an Icon for the service category. You can choose the icon from the icons available or upload an icon. To upload an icon, click Upload.
  5. Click Save.

 
To edit or delete a service category, click the settings icon beside your preferred service category, and choose the respective action.
Info
If the service category is grey instead of getting deleted, then the service category is being used by a module. This indicates that the service category will not be available for further usage. To bring a service category back to usage, select the settings icon and click Enable.

Create Service Templates 

Service templates are used to build forms with pre-populated data that can be utilized to raise service requests quickly. Templates save time and effort by effectively capturing necessary information.
Role Required: SDAdmin and HelpdeskConfig

Benefits:
  1. Collect necessary information to understand the service requested by adding relevant default/additional fields to the template.
  2. Pre-populate category, impact, urgency, priority, and other vital details. This will help users log the service request with accurate details.
  3. Avoid back-and-forth conversations by capturing contextual information using additional fields.
  4. Add resource sections to collect resource info. You can display the total cost of requested resources to users while they are raising the request.
  5. Get approvals from stakeholders before providing the service by configuring approvals in the template.
  6. Collaborate with multiple agents to provide service by dividing the work involved into tasks.
  7. Add checklists within the template to assist technicians working on the service request.
  8. Build automated actions within each template.
To create a service template,
  1. Go to Setup > Templates & Forms > Service Category.
  2. Select the respective customer from the filter in the header.
  3. Click a service category to view the service and incident templates associated with the service category.
  4. Under Service Templates, click New Service Template.
By default, you will be redirected to the Technician View of the service template.
 

Technician View  

The displayed form contains three main sections: Header, Field List, and Canvas.
 
Header
Provide basic details of the template.
  1. Icon: Add an icon to the template. You can choose from the available library, upload a new icon, or attach an icon from the Cloud.
  2. Template Name* - Enter a name unique to the customer for the template.
  3. Comments - Briefly describe the usage of the template.
  4. Workflow/Life cycle: Select the workflow or life cycle to be associated with the template.
Template names can be the same between customers but are unique within the customer. Two templates cannot have the same name in one customer.
Field List
The field list in the right pane contains two tabs: Available Fields and New Fields.
  1. Available Fields - Contains default and additional fields configured in the application that are not used in the canvas. Drag any field from this list to the canvas.
  2. New Fields - Contains various field types that you can use to create additional fields instantly for the service template. To create a new field, drag a field type to the template canvas and add the required details.
    1. Based on the selected field type, the field properties vary.
    2. You can also create additional fields under Setup > Customization > Additional Fields > Request. Learn more.
You can also add sections to the template from the right pane. Use the New Section element to add sections to the template and group the fields within the section.
To understand the usage of default fields, refer to the service request creation page.
Canvas
The canvas contains various fields that are vital in capturing information about the service needed. Some fields are system-defined.
To customize sections added to the canvas,
  1. By default, sections are untitled. Click on the left corner of the section header to name the section.
  2. Hover over a section and click to set the following section properties:
    1. Number of Columns - Choose if you want the section to have one or two columns.
    2. Label Orientation - Choose if you want the field labels to be aligned on the left, top, or right to the input boxes.
    3. Collapsed State - You can choose to collapse sections automatically while loading the form. This property can be defined only if the section is named.
    4. Click Delete Section to remove the section from the template. The fields in the section will be moved to the field list on the right pane.
  3. Click on the section header to drag the section anywhere in the canvas.
To customize fields added to the canvas,
  1. Hover over a field to define the field properties.
    1. Click to mandate the field and allow requesters to view/set the field value.
    2. Click to remove a field from the template.
    3. Click or on the either sides of the field to adjust the field width.
  2. Use to move the field within or across sections.
  3. Specify values in the field to set default values.

Info
Mandating Item field will also mandate Sub-category and Category fields.  
Mandating Impact Details field will mandate Impact field as well.
For the Requester Name field, you can configure sub-fields as field properties. Hover over the field and click . Select the sub-fields to be displayed beneath the field. When a requester is selected, the details will be auto-populated in the sub-fields.
The Editor field can be used to assign an Editor for the particular service template
Hard-coded fields or sections containing hard-coded fields cannot be removed from the template. However, you can move these fields to other sections before deleting a section.
Add Resolution - Add steps to resolve the service request. The resolution will be added to the service request upon creation.
Cost Details - Display the service cost to approvers and requesters to help them assess requests with clarity.
  1. Enable Cost Details checkbox.
  2. Enter the service cost in the configured default currency.
  3. Provide any extra information under Cost Comments.
Info
Under Setup > General Settings > Requester Portal > Requester Portal Settings, you can choose if you want requesters/approvers to view service cost and the resource cost in the request form.
Cost details must be enabled to add resource cost.
Set Template Accessibility - You can limit the template accessibility to technicians, requesters, or specific technician groups/ user groups.
  1. By default, the template is accessible to all technicians.
  2. You can associate the template with specific technician groups. The template will be accessible only to the technicians in the associated groups.
  3. Enable Show to Requester to allow requesters to create requests using the template.
  4. If the template is enabled for requesters, you can associate the template with specific user groups.
Form Customization - Customize the Help card content of the service template and add reference documents for requesters and technicians separately. Enable the checkboxes to show the help card in the request form and request details page.

Click Save or Save and Configure Requester. You can see how the template is displayed to technicians using the Preview button on the top of the template.
Use the Actions button to copy the template, add tasks, and to copy the help card content to requester view.


The form will reload as Edit Service Template form and the Requester View, Resource Info, Approvals, Tasks, Checklist, and Form Rules tabs will be displayed. Associated SLAs tab will be shown for service templates when user selects Use SLA selected by the user or Use both user selected and condition based SLAs from Advanced Portal Settings.
 

Requester View    

If the template is enabled for requesters, go to Requester View tab to configure the template layout for requesters by adding fields and sections as explained above.
Use the Preview button at the top of the template to see it is displayed to requesters.

Resource Info
Using resource questions, you can gather the necessary information about the requested service. For example, you can allow users to choose the assets and software they require through resource questions. You can also specify the cost of each resource for the user to see.

To add cost of resources, enable the Cost Details checkbox in the service template.

Under the Resource Info section, click Add Resource.


On the displayed page, provide a title, description, and click Create a Question. You can also select from the existing questions, as shown below:

 
While selecting from existing questions, you can view the complete details of each question by expanding the question. To add multiple questions to the resource, select the required questions and click Add Questions.

When you add a new question, select the type of question, enter the question, and enable cost and images per your requirements. Images in the template make it easy for your employees to select the exact resource they need. Note that Advanced Layout option must be enabled to add images for the resource questions.
 
Choose whether you are going to add the options manually or use the assets in ServiceDesk Plus MSP Cloud. If the question may store any personal details of the user, mark the question as personally identifiable information (PII) as shown below:

When you add a new option, provide the option name, a short description, cost, upload images, and click Add.

To preview an image, simply hover over the image.
 
You can add upto 5 images per option from cloud or computer. You can add JPEG, JPG, PNG, and GIF images that are not more than 1 MB in size. The first image in the queue will be automatically marked as the default image, which will be available as a thumbnail in the request form. Other images will be displayed only upon clicking View More in the request form. To change the default image, hover over the required image and click Make Default.

Add more options to the image by clicking the Plus icon. Reorder the options based on priority by using a simple Drag tool (only options in Check Box and Select Box questions can be reordered).If you're using the assets in the application, you can simply choose the assets from the drop-down and then edit the asset to add more details.

 
Click Save after configuring the question.
You can add more questions to the resource per your requirements.

 
Reorder the questions based on priority using . To modify a question, click the Edit icon displayed beside the question. To remove a question from the resource, click the Delete icon.

Click Expand All/Collapse All to view the added resources.

 

Info
A service template is limited to 15 resources with a maximum of 20 questions in each resource.
Questions used in one resource can be reused in other resources. Any change to a question will impact all the resources using that question. Similarly, any change to a resource will affect all service requests using that resource.

Approvals  

Approvals enables you to send e-mail notifications to the concerned approvers to approve the request. For instance, service requests for phones, new assets, or software have to be approved by various stakeholders within a company. You can build an approval process within service request templates using organization roles.

While incident requests do not require an approval process, service requests have to go through multiple stages of approval.


Info
The Approvers may be technicians or requesters with permission to approve service requests and should possess a valid e-mail address in the application.
You can configure up to 5 stages of approvals for a service request. Each stage may have one or more approvers.
The Approver(s) field can be used to assign approvers for the approvals configured in the particular service template.
The Stage 1 approvers list will be pre-selected whenever a new request is created using this service template.

To configure approvals,
  1. Go to the Approvals tab.
  2. Use appropriate toggles to enable the following options:
    1. Automatically send approval notification for service request.
    2. Assign technician only to an approved service request.
    3. Show approval status to requesters
  3. Approval condition: Select an option from the following:
    1. Anyone to Approve: The level will be approved if any one of the approvers has approved it.
    2. Everyone to Approve: The level will be approved only if all of the approvers have approved it.
    3. First Response Action: The level will be approved or rejected based on the action of the first-ever approver.
    4. Majority to Approve: The level will be approved only if the majority of the approvers have approved it.
    5. % to Approve: The level will be approved based on a custom percentage of the approvers that have approved it.
  4. Click Manage Approval.
  1. When selecting region, site, department, group, or user level roles, enter whether the role must be in association with request's/requester's/technician's entity value* from the configured options as shown in the following screenshots.
Notes
The term Entity denotes Region/Site/Department/Group/User; whereas Entity Value denotes the various regions, sites, departments, groups, or user names.
 
 

For instance, if you choose Department Incharge of Technician, then the approval will be sent to the Incharge of the technician's department. As for the organization level role, there is no such thing as entity value selection. Users who have Request Approver permission will be displayed in Approver Users tab. You can also select individual users as approvers as follows:
 

  1. Click Add Stage to add more approval stages. You can add upto 5 stages.
  2. Click Save.
Info
When you delete a role in the Organization Roles page, it will also be removed as approver (if the role has been previously added) in service requests.
The stage I approvers are the default approvers. This means when you remove the stage I approvers the approvers in the subsequent stage are automatically inherited as the stage I approvers.
Approval will be sent immediately if "Send Approval notification automatically" is enabled under Approvals > One Time Configuration.

Associated SLAs  


Notes
You can associate or create SLAs from the service template.
To view Associated SLAs tab, go to Setup > General Settings > Advanced Portal Settings. Enable Use SLA selected by the user or Use both user selected and condition based SLAs and save the settings.

Associate Preconfigured SLAs

  1. Click the Associate button.
  2. Select the SLA to be associated.
  3. Add a description to explain the SLA terms.
  4. You can select the SLA to be applied by default to the template. For non-default SLAs, you can limit the SLA visibility to certain user groups.
  5. Click Save or Save and Associate More.

To create new SLAs, click beside Associate button.

After associating SLAs with the service template, you can perform the following actions:
  1. You can edit, set SLA as default, or disable SLA for a service template by clicking .
  2. To remove SLA association from the template, click . You can bulk-remove associations by selecting the SLAs and clicking Dissociate.
 

Tasks    

The work involved in providing a service can be broken down into tasks. You can assign technicians to the tasks and set the tasks to be triggered when needed.
You can define task settings and add tasks for the template from the Tasks tab.

Define Task Settings
Requester Permissions - Enable permissions to allow requesters to track tasks in a service request as follows:
  1. Requesters can select the tasks to be added to the request and triggered while they are creating the request.
  2. All tasks associated with the template are added to the request. Requesters can view the tasks and track their progress from the request details page.
Trigger Options - The tasks that are marked to technicians/groups can be triggered manually or set to auto-trigger when the service request is created or approved.

Add Tasks
  1. Use the Add Task button to create a task for the service template.
  2. Populate the Add Task form fields as explained here.
  3. Click Save.
 

Alternatively, click Add Tasks from Template to associate tasks with predefined details. Select the task templates to be associated with the template and click Add Tasks.
After adding tasks to the service template, you can perform the following actions on the tasks:
  1. Edit/Delete Tasks - Click beside the task title to edit or delete a task. To bulk-delete tasks, select the tasks and use the Delete button.
  2. Organize Tasks - Set the order of task execution using the Organize button.
  3. Mark Dependency among Tasks - You can mark dependencies among parent and child tasks by clicking Manage Tasks Dependency.
  4. Search Tasks - Click to search through tasks based on a criteria. Add the criteria and value and click Enter. After the results are displayed, you can add multiple search criteria using the icon or click on the existing criteria to edit it.
  5. Define Table Settings - Click to select the number of records displayed on the tasks page and sort the tasks by the column values.
 

 

Checklists    

Checklists allow you to add reminders or to-do lists to the template. Technicians can refer to checklists to ensure that all vital activities are completed before closing a request.
Info
You can associate up to 5 checklists in a service template.
  1. Click New Checklist to create and associate new checklists to the template.
  2. To add existing checklists to the template, click the New Checklist drop-down and select Associate Checklists.
  3. Click beside a checklist name to expand the checklist and preview items added.
  4. Click beside a checklist and select Dissociate to remove the checklist from the template.

 

Form Rules    

Form rules allow you to create request forms that load based on the data provided by users while creating/editing a service request. You can define field restrictions and execute predefined actions when the user input matches certain conditions. Form rules enable the usage of the same template for different purposes.
Info
Creating form rules from the Edit Service Template Page automatically populates the template's customer and disables the customer field in the form.
Create Form Rules
  1. Go to Form Rules tab. By default, global form rules configured for the template under Setup > Templates and Forms > Form rules > Service Request will be reflected here.
  2. Click New to set up template-specific form rules.
  3. Define the form rule as explained here.
  4. Click Save.

 
After creating form rules for the service template, you can perform the following actions:
  1. Edit/Delete Rules - Click to edit or delete a form rule. To bulk-delete, select the rules and go to Actions > Delete Rules.
  2. Enable/Disable Rules - Click to enable/disable a rule. To enable/disable rules in bulk, select the rules and go to the Actions menu.
  3. Preview Rule Configurations - Click to expand the rule and preview the criteria and actions configured.
  4. Customize Layout - Click to select the number of records displayed on the list view page and sort the rules by the column values.
 

List View Operations 

On the service category page, click a service category to expand it. You can view the service templates and incident service templates associated with the service category under the relevant tabs.

You can perform the following actions on the service templates in a service category:
  1. Edit, Delete, Enable/Disable Templates - Click   beside a service template name to icon to edit, delete, enable/disable a template.
  2. Copy Templates - Select templates and click the Copy Template button on the toolbar. Alternatively, you can also go to Actions > Copy Template in the Edit Service Template form.
 

  1. Organize - Sequence service categories and the templates in each service category per your requirements.
  2. Search Templates - Use the icon to search through templates based on a criteria. Add the criteria, value, and click Enter. After the results are displayed, you can add multiple search criteria using the icon or click on the existing criteria to edit it.
  3. Customize List View - Click to limit the number of templates displayed in the list view. You can also choose the view option - Grid View or Template View. In grid view, you can define the columns to be displayed using the Column Chooser drop-down.
 

Copy Service Templates 

You can copy templates from the Service List to the Incident List and vice versa.

To copy a Service template,
  1. Go to Setup > Templates & Forms > Service Category. 
  2. Select the respective customer from the filter in the header.
  3. Click Copy Template.
  4. Copy Template from: Choose your preferred service or incident template that you want to be copied from the drop-down.
  5. Choose the Template Type. Choose Service Template if you want to copy the template within the Service Category itself. To copy the template to the Incident template section, choose Incident Template.If the Service Template is chosen, select the Service Category within which you want the template to be copied.
  6. Provide the name of the copied template in the Copy as field.
  7. Choose the Number of Copies required. The maximum limit is 5.
  8. Click Copy. If you want to edit the template after copying, click Copy and Edit.


Alert
When copied from Service to Incident Workflow, resource(s) will be discarded. Form Rules of a template will be copied only if the template is copied into the same type - service to service template.
You can follow the same procedure from the Incident Template page to copy templates from Incident List to Service category List.

Customize Service Catalog 

Service Catalog is where you can portrait the wide range of services offered by your IT department to the end-users. Some of the most common day-to-day IT services required by the users are installation, relocation, internet access, email access, virus protection, provision of hardware and software, mail server, account management, and so on. ServiceDesk Plus MSP Cloud allows users to browse through the services easily, raise requests instantly, and monitor their status.

Role Required: SDAdmin, HelpDeskConfig

To customize the service catalog layout,
  1. Go to Setup > Templates & Forms > Service Category and click Customize.
  2. Select the respective customer from the filter in the header.
  3. Select the service catalog view: Panel, Card, or List layouts.

  1. Use the icon beside each template to rearrange the sequence of service categories and templates, or use the icon on the right to organize them.

  1. You can also sort the service categories and templates in ascending or descending order.

  1. Choose to display the service category and template descriptions either by default or on hover.

  1. Click Expand All to reveal all service categories and their templates in Card and List views.
  2. Click icon at the top right to save your customizations.
Info
The Expand All option is limited to customers with less than 300 active service categories and templates.  

    • Related Articles

    • Service Request Editor

      The Editor feature allows a configured user to edit a service request before the request resumes its workflow. Configuring the Editor Role Required: SDAdmin; Technicians with access to templates Go to Setup > Templates and Forms > Service Category. ...

    • Category

      ServiceDesk Plus Cloud MSP offers a three-level classification for requests. The classification aids in decision-making and automation. The three levels of classification are: category, subcategory, and item. Category is the topmost level in ...

    • Service

      Add services provided or availed by the organization. You can categorize services having similar functionalities or purposes under the service type. After creating a service, you can associate vendors who provide or avail the service. Role Required: ...

    • Raise an Incident/Service Request

      A request is anything that is raised by an employee in the organization to the support or IT team, and in this case, the Manage Service Provider (MSP). A request is typically raised in order to solve an issue, require assistance, or request ...

    • Software Category

      Group software under a specific category. By default, ServiceDesk Plus Cloud MSP provides nine software categories. Default categories cannot be edited or deleted. Role Required: AssetConfig Create Software Categories Go to Setup > Customization > ...