Administer > Service Request Catalog Customization Guide > Service Manager configuration for Service Request Catalog > Tailoring check-out panels

Tailoring check-out panels

If you are using Service Request Catalog to submit a catalog or support request, you may want to customize Service Request Catalog to your specific business requirements. You can use a simple Service Manager wizard to add new custom checkout panels, define custom fields and labels that appear on the Service Request Catalog checkout panels when you submit a request. You can also completely modify all out-of-box checkout panels in the Service Request Catalog user interface.

Checkout panels

In Service Request Catalog, users can submit different types of requests through various navigation paths. Each of these paths brings users to a specific request panel, which is called a checkout panel.  The following are the default checkout panels in an out-of-box implementation of Service Request Catalog:

Panel name in user interface

Description
Service Catalog This checkout panel is used to request for an item that is in the Service Catalog. To access this panel, click the Services tab on the Service Request Catalog home page, click Browse Catalog, and then browse to a service catalog item/bundle.
Support Catalog This checkout panel is used to request for an item that is in the Service Catalog. To access this panel, click the Support tab on theService Request Catalog home page, click Browse Catalog, and then browse to a Support Catalog item/bundle.
General Support

This checkout panel is used to request for an item or service that is not listed in the in the regular Service Catalog or Support Catalog. To access this panel, click the Support tab on the Service Request Catalog home page, click Create, and then create a custom Support Request.

Note

You can add custom fields for the three checkout panels. However, for each company, you can create only one configuration for each checkout panel.

If you upgraded from an earlier version of Service Request Catalog by using the Migration Tool, you should note that only a limited migration is performed upon the checkout panel. Therefore, you should verify your checkout panel configuration after the migration, and adjustment as necessary. If you have also corresponding configurations for this company, these configurations are used. If there are no corresponding configurations for this company, the default configuration are used.

Configurations

A checkout panel is defined by a configuration in the Service Request Catalog Tailoring section of Service Manager. A configuration is associated with one or more sections, and each section can contain one or more custom fields that will be added to a Service Request Catalog checkout panel. You must specify a label for each section and field, which will display on the relevant checkout panel in the Service Request Catalog user interface.

Sections

A new section in the checkout panel can have a title and a combination of these objects:

  • Fields that exist in a Service Manager table
  • Labels that exist in a Service Manager form or a user-defined label
  • Radio buttons
  • Check boxes
  • Lines of text for a user description text box
  • Service Manager lookup fields
  • Combo boxes
  • Date fields
  • Number fields
  • Time fields*

*Time is usually specified by taking the system from the Service Manager server and adjusting for the clients location by using the GMT adjustment in the user's browser.

Custom fields

Custom fields are useful when you need to gather more information for a certain type of catalog request. Custom fields appear as a new accordion section in the checkout panel after the standard accordion sections for the request type. The data collected from the user with the custom fields is stored in the appropriate Service Manager table that contains each field. New fields and labels appear in Service Request Catalog as a new section in the checkout panel. You can use this feature to collect additional information from the user that is relevant to the item or service fulfillment business logic.

Notes on creating custom fields

To create a custom field, you must specify the following:

  • The checkout panel to which the field belongs
  • The section of the checkout panel to which the field belongs
  • A label for the field
  • User restrictions on the field
  • The field type
  • Default values for the field, if any
  • Mandatory requirements for the field, if any

You can specify the data type for a custom field and Service Manager will validate the user input against that data type and return an error message if there is a mis-match. In this case, the user can try again to provide data that is consistent with the assigned data type.

You must have the SysAdmin capability word in your user profile to access the Service Request Catalog tailoring wizard.

If a custom field was optional, and the user does provide a response or a value, the custom field does not appear in the status view.

Lookup tables and lookup fields

Some fields have a lookup table associated to them because of the business logic in Service Manager. For example, if you want to add a custom field named City to a checkout panel, users should not be allowed to type a city name in this field. Instead, users should select a value retrieved from the list of city field values in the location table. To achieve this, specify the location table as the lookup table, and the city field in this table as the lookup field for the custom field.

Note To use a lookup table and a field, you must specify the Display Type of the custom field as Text.

You must also specify restrictions on the custom fields to limit the user's ability to change the content of the custom field.

Custom field restrictions
Restriction: Restriction description:
Read Only Setting a custom field as read-only means that the user will not be able to modify this field. If no default value is specified, this field will not appear on the checkout panel.
Create Only Specifying a custom field as create only means that the user can only add the field and its associated information when creating the request. This field will be disabled if the user is viewing their requests.
Create and Update Create and Update means that user can add the field to their service request, and that this field can also be updated from the Service Request Catalog.

When the user checks the status of a request that contains a custom field, the field is read-only information until the user resubmits that request. At that point, the user can edit the custom field value and any other fields to be updated.

To make custom fields visible in the Service Request Catalog checkout panel, your Service Request Catalog applicationContext.properties file must point to the same Service Manager server that you used to create the custom fields.

Custom fields and the cache

It is possible that an Administrator adds new fields to a Service Catalog item at the same time that an user is attempting to order that item. If the Administrator implements a new custom field before the user submits a request, an inconsistency may be introduced to the system. To prevent this, user data is cached on the server side. Therefore, if an administrator modifies a panel or item while a user is actively using Service Request Catalog, the user’s data will be preserved and repopulated.

Note We recommend that the Administrator avoids modifying custom fields while users are actively engaged in using the system.

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