Configuring the Service Catalog [Agent Guide]

The Service Catalog is a centralized list of IT services offered by an organization. It provides users with information on costs, availability, and how to request services. Using the Service catalog feature, you can streamline service management and facilitate easy access to IT offerings.

Creating an effective IT service catalog involves understanding user needs, assembling the right team, designing a user-friendly catalog, testing and publishing it, and continuously improving it. The catalog may include categories like email and calendar, permissions and access, hardware, apps and software, support resources, training, and business and finance.

Article Overview:

• Adding Service Categories
• Adding Service Items to the Service Catalog
  • Customizing Fields in the Service Catalog
  • Adding Additional Items to a Service Item
  • Setting the fulfillment options, visibility, and customizing service request

Adding Service Categories

Service categories in Freshservice offer a way to organize and group related service items together. It helps to classify and categorize services based on their nature or purpose. By creating service categories, you can provide a structured and organized Service Catalog for your users, making navigating and finding the services they need easier.

Every workspace can maintain its own list of service items. The order of workspace service categories displayed in the support portal follows the order in which workspaces are created. The order of service categories and items within a workspace can be configured at a workspace level. 

Follow the steps below to add a Service Category.

1. Go to Admin > Service Request Management > Service Management > Service Catalog. If your account has more than one workspace, navigate to Admin > {Worskpace Name} >  Service Request Management > Service Management > Service Catalog.

2. From the Add New drop-down, select Service Category.
3. Enter the name for the category, provide a brief description, and click Save.

   
   

   

Adding Service Items to the Service Catalog

Follow the steps below to add a Service Item in Freshservice,

1. Go to Admin > Service Request Management > Service Management > Service Catalog. If your account has more than one workspace, navigate to Admin > {Worskpace Name} > Service Request Management > Service Management > Service Catalog.
   
2. Click the Add New button and choose the  Service item option from the dropdown.
   
3. Under the General details section, provide the details such as the 
   1. name of the service item, 
   2. choose the service category from one of the default categories, or add new service categories, 
   3. a short description - include images as thumbnails, provide external links, and much more, 
   4. cost - choose to make the cost visible on the portal,
   5. estimated delivery - choose to make the delivery time visible on the portal,
   6. and enable users to raise service request on behalf of others using the Requested for field.

      
      

      
      

4. Customizing Fields in the Service Catalog:
   Under the Custom Fields section, you can find a range of custom fields like text, paragraph text, checkbox, and so on.

   1. Drag and drop the required custom fields on the Request Form for the service item. 
   2. For instance, select a text field and define the relevant field properties.
   3. You can also select the access and behavior for this custom field - make it mandatory, enable requesters to view/edit the field etc.
   4. Creating Dynamic Sections: You can also add lookup fields that will populate appropriate field properties and create relevant hierarchical relationships when your end-users fill out their forms.
      They can use the dropdowns to navigate through data and pick from different options you’ve configured for them.
   5. Adding Content Fields:  You can add a rich-text section to all your incident and service item forms in Freshservice. 
      You can create sections in your forms with content headers, and you can also add relevant links.
      
      

5. Adding Additional Items to a Service Item: 
   Within the Additional Items section, you can search and include related service items that can be requested alongside the main service, enhancing the efficiency of service requests by providing the ability to select and request supplementary items. This eliminates the need for your customers to create multiple requests for different service items.
   
   For example, in the New Employee Hire service item, you can specify additional items such as MacBook Pro, Adobe Photoshop, Access to Google Analytics, etc. Your company’s HR executive can simply select these additional items when creating the service request for a new employee if their job requires it.
   
   

   Note: The additional items must first be added individually in the Service Catalog. This option is not available for loaner service items.
   
   
   You can also mark certain additional items as Mandatory by selecting the checkbox next to them. If you'd like to Delete an item, click on the minus sign to its right.

   
   

   Select the checkbox against the option Create Child Requests for each of the items above if you want individual child tickets to be created for each additional item. Enabling this option will link the added child tickets (for eg. Payroll Setup) to the parent ticket New Employee Hire. The child tickets will then be handled by agents in the respective departments, and the items must be delivered within the timeframe under the corresponding SLAs.

   
   
   If this box is left unchecked, all the items get requested under a single service request that can be assigned to just one agent.
   
   Check this article on how Service Requests with multiple items and child service requests are handled in Freshservice.
   
   

6. Setting the fulfillment options, visibility, and customizing service request:
   Under the Service Item settings section, choose fulfillment options according to the Service item.

   1. Select the asset type & product, or software, to enable agents to fulfill hardware, consumable, and software service requests seamlessly.
   2. If you wish to show the quantity while the user raises a service request, turn on the toggle bar. 
   3. Set up the visibility options to restrict the visibility to specific requester groups.
   4. Under the Compose service request subject section, you can customize the subject of the service request raised for this item.
7. Click Save & Publish to save the service item or Save as Draft to revisit it later.
   
   You can also see a preview of the item by clicking Preview.
   
   
   Once an item is added, it can be requested from the Service Catalog tab on the portal. Agents can also request items on requesters' behalf by going to the Tickets tab and clicking on Request Items. 

Here's a video demo of the Freshservice Service Catalog:

Faq:

1. The requester is unable to view the time information while raising the ticket for the service request, how to resolve it?

If the "Request time information" is not selected in the catalog item field this issue will be faced, this configuration cannot be modified in the existing catalog item field and you will be required to create a new date field.

Navigate to the respective workspace Admin if you have more than one workspace > Select the catalog item > Create a new date field with the "Request time information" checked to make it visible to the users.

2. The content field is not visible in the section of the requested item once the ticket is created.

By default, the content field will be visible only while submitting the request and not in the requested item section of the ticket.