Service Catalog Integration

The Service Catalog is fully integrated with other Service Manager modules, including Service Desk, Change Management, Configuration Management, and Request Management.

Micro Focus Service Manager can automatically generate records to fulfill Service Catalog requests in these other modules. As the request is being fulfilled, status information is passed back to the service request so that the business user can be informed of the progress.

Service Catalog Integration: Request Fulfillment

Service requests are created and approved in the Service Catalog module. The end user, through the Employee Self-Service web interface, can browse the service catalog and submit service requests. The Service Catalog allows users with approval permission to review and approve service requests through the same Employee Self-Service web interface:

• The IT technicians can monitor the service request processing in more depth. They have access to the resulting service request, which is a Service Desk interaction of a specific type, or can monitor the progress of the request through the fulfillment module.
• End users can track the status of their requests through the Service Catalog end-user interface. End users can also review the details of their requests. They can make changes to a request and resubmit it. If a request is held up in the approval process, the requester can see the problem and act on it. Empowering the users helps minimize frustration and prevents more calls to the help desk.
• Service managers can track the status of service delivery through fulfillment records created in Service Manager.

The Service Catalog will automatically synchronize the state of the service request with the state of the underlying fulfillment processes, even when, for some complex requests, the fulfillment is carried out in parallel in different modules.

Service Catalog Integration: CMDB

The Service Catalog documents services at a general level so that they can be requested by business users. Catalog items can be linked to services managed in the Configuration Management database. This is how, when a request is fulfilled, a new subscription can be added to the service CI.

The technical service catalog itself is implemented in the Configuration Management database. The technical services and their components are modeled as CIs in the Service Manager Configuration Management module (the Configuration Management Database (CMDB)). At the top level, each service is also modeled as a CI with links to its related systems and components definition in the CMDB.

Note: Micro Focus Service Manager also defines business services as a CIs.

Service Catalog Integration: Business Agreements

Several business agreements can be managed in the Service Catalog. You can define operational SLAs that apply to the catalog item (service). Or, you can define agreed-upon delivery objectives and the delivery objective options in the catalog item.

Service Catalog Integration: Vendor Performance

Performance is measured against Service Level Objectives (SLOs), which are defined within SLAs and Operational Level Agreements [OLA], and assigned to relevant records. SLOs can be created for Service Catalog requests, as well as the records created in other Service Manager modules to fulfill these requests. Fulfillment records can be assigned to vendors/suppliers, and their performance can be measured against applied SLOs.

Service Catalog Integration: Service Level Management

There are several ways to measure the request fulfillment using Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Monitoring the Service Request

All catalog requests are opened and associated with the requester’s default SLA. This SLA is defined in the requester’s department or at the company record level, or at the system level.

Note: There is a default SLA defined in the Service Manager Service Level Management module.

In the SLA, you can define Response Time Service Level Objectives against catalog requests. These objectives will typically define the agreed-upon time for the request to move from one state to another. In particular, administrators can define a time agreement from request approval to request fulfillment. It is possible to have multiple response time objectives that will each only apply to certain kind of service requests. Service Manager offers flexibility in that area. In particular, it is possible to link the response time to selected delivery objectives. Delivery objectives are delivery options that can be defined as part of the Service Catalog module, which helps define the target delivery date.

Each catalog item or bundle definition record contains a Delivery Targets tab where a catalog manager can add or remove multiple objectives and list dependencies for these objectives.

Delivery Targets can be limited to specific group of users, based on their default SLA. For example, consider a delivery objective of three business days that provides one service level with associated limitations:

Delivery Target	Limit Access to ...
3 Business Days	Sales Gold, Marketing Gold, Executive Gold
6 Business Days	All other users

As defined above, the three-business-day delivery objective is only available to specific requesters with listed Gold SLAs. Everyone else requesting the service is given only one (and thus defaulted) choice: six business days.

Monitoring the Fulfillment Process

It is also possible to monitor directly the fulfillment processes that are spawned from the service requests. The same default user SLA that was used for the service request will be used for the fulfillment request. Any response-time service level objective that applies will help measure the fulfillment process.