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Blog » Stepping Stones Towards a Service Catalog
Our latest Beetil release includes making Incident, Problem, Change Types a lot more powerful and useful.
The goal here is to provide stepping stones towards a service catalog. This latest release is the first of those stones. When we boiled the concept of a Service Catalog right down to its utmost basic form, we found that the first step is essentially a level of categorization of an Incident (or Service Request) which both Internal Beetil Users and Customers can control when they first log an Incident.
Incident Types + Incident SubType = Service Catalog Item
What you now see when you view a service in admin is the addition of a new “Beetil Types” tab, this tab is where you go to set up your Incident, Problem and Change Types.
The first thing you’ll notice is that Incidents can now have subtypes. Think of these as your service catalog items.
You’ll also see that the first four types map to their corresponding Customer Portal types. These Incident Types can have sub-types which customers will be able to choose from within the Customer Portal.
Additional incident types underneath the first four will not be shown in the Portal, and are for internal Beetil Users when they create/update Incidents.
Being able to further categorize by using sub-types is especially powerful for the four main Incident types that are currently viewable in the Customer Portal. Your customers can now categorize their Incidents further for you, this has all sorts of wonderful reporting possibilities.
What the service desk see when they log an Incident hasn’t really changed at all, except the Incident Type dropdown is now indented with the subtypes, and once saved the Incident will show both the parent type and sub-type.
In the customer portal, customers will be able to select a sub-type for their Incident to help further categorize any issues, requests, queries or suggestions. This additional field only appears in the customer portal when creating an Incident if there are sub-types to choose, and the title of Incident is pre-populated with the sub-type and the customer’s name when it is selected.
In the examples below, I’ve added the sub-types, New iPhone, New MacBook Pro, New Rackspace Server to my Service Request type for the Internal IT service, and I’m logging a Service Request asking for a new iPhone.
Changes and problems now have their own type
Returning to the admin of a service, underneath all the Incident Types, you’ll see that Problem Types and Change Types can now be configured independently of each other. This allows for Problems and Changes to be accurately categorized and reported on without being clouded by other irrelevant types.
When you create new services, a set of default Beetil Types are applied:
- Incidents Types: Bug, Query, Service Request, Feedback, Feature Request
- Problem Types: Bug and Fault
- Change Types: Minor, Significant, Major, Emergency
Moving forward and where to next?
We’ve already got a bunch of ideas on how we can expand on, and improve what’s currently there to provide the world’s easiest service catalog, our ideas so far include:
- Priorities & SLAs for each incident type and sub-type
- Default owners and assigned users or groups for each type or sub-type
- Pre-populated Symptom Templates, allowing users/customers to essentially fill-in-the-gaps to make request information gathering easier
At this stage we’re very interested to hear what our users want to see in a service catalog, and what’s important to you!
Your feedback and suggestions could very well shape future iterations of our service catalog. Leave a comment, or you can get in touch with us via our usual channels at support@beetil.com, +64 4 8949110, or catch us around the Campfire.
Tags: categorization, changes, incidents, problems, service catalog