'Release' ticket not visible from customer portal

[Claire Holtham]

We're starting to use 'Release Management' , and I notice that those tickets are not visible on the customer facing portal.

Am I missing something? I'm guessing it's because there is no catalogue items for Release Management.

Also it's possible that basic users would want to be able to initiate a Release request (e.g. if the head of HR wanted to put in a request to have the latest release applied to our HR system) - how would I do that?

Thanks

Claire

[Adrian Simpkins]

Hi Claire

From my understanding Release Management would normally be internal and not something that you would offer out on the Customer portal so it would normally be accessed by an Analyst with the required role directly in the Request List view from Raise New. As you correctly noted there is no + Catalog Item option on the Service management screen for configuring Release as a Service / Catalog offering.

So I think the only way you could get Customers like your HR Head to be able to use the Release process would be to either issue them a full user licence and then they would raise the request direct, or you would raise it internally and add them as a connection (adding as a connection would be dependent on the input you require from them so it sounds like a full user licence might be the way forward).

I have not yet setup Release functions as such myself, but it appears to be similar to Known Errors and Problems which are also internal, so I am just surmising this, if anyone else can confirm that would be great

[Victor]

8 minutes ago, Adrian Simpkins said:

From my understanding Release Management would normally be internal and not something that you would offer out on the Customer portal

Yep, this  

8 minutes ago, Adrian Simpkins said:

I have not yet setup Release functions as such myself, but it appears to be similar to Known Errors and Problems which are also internal

Problems/KE are visible on the customer portal. However they need to be published first and they will appear in their own tab on portal, separate to requests. They will also be visible for all contacts that have access to the portal (once published)

[Claire Holtham]

Thanks @Adrian Simpkins, thanks @Victor - it's good to have that clarified (though that is a shame)

Claire

[Patrick Bolger]

@Claire Holtham If we're using ITIL as guidance, a customer wouldn't raise a release request. Typically they'd log a service request to ask for the software to be updated (this could of course also come from incidents, or a problem records if the update was being applied to fix something), and a change request would be raised off the back of this.

Once the change request had been authorised (or it was a pre-authorised standard change), then the release request would be raised and the change associated with it. For something like a software update, you might have multiple associated incidents, problems and changes associated, which could all be closed if the release was deployed successfully.

In essence, release requests are outputs from your change management process, and wouldn't be raised by customers.