Restricting Visibility of a Particular Service Catalog to certain users

[Mike Hillman]

I've been trying to figure this one out, but I've drawn a bit of a blank

I have a requirement for a Service to be setup which is available to all users (i.e. there are no specific Subscribers listed against the service, it's available to everyone) via the Portal

Within this service there needs to be mulitple Service Catalog items, but I need to restrict some of them so that they are only visible to certain users (I basically need everyone to be able to be set as a customer against any request raised against the catalog item, but only certain people to be able to actually raise the request in the portal - the service desk analysts/BPM workflows will change the customer on the request later as/when needed)

I've noticed that there is a Restrict visibility option available on Service Catalog Items, but only when specific Subscribers are listed against the service, it disappears when the service is available to everyone

Is there any way to do this when the Service is available to everyone (i.e. no specifically listed subscribers?)

 

[Martyn Houghton]

@Mike Hillman

I suspect not at the moment, as the current logic is expecting to retrieve a list of whom is already subscribed to it so it can add the exclusion to the specific Catalog item.

I think this would need an enhancement to generate a list of all objects given an empty subscriber list, but @James Ainsworth should be able to confirm.

Cheers

Martyn

[Steve Giller]

9 minutes ago, Mike Hillman said:

Is there any way to do this when the Service is available to everyone (i.e. no specifically listed subscribers?)

Have a group that contains everyone, and subscribe that group to the Service.

[Martyn Houghton]

@Steve Giller

I am presuming @Mike Hillman is internal service desk customers focused so that would work, but unfortunately that approach does not apply for external customers focused service desks.

Cheers

Martyn

[James Ainsworth]

Hi Mike, 

Thanks for your post.  

As mentioned above, the visibility of a Request Catalog Item depends on the subscriber list having content.  There was also a mention of creating a Group that contains all of your users and subscribe the group to the service.  From there you can start to look at individuals or groups that you want to hide certain Request Catalog Items from.

An alternative to creating a new group containing all users would be to user this feature Enabling Sub Group Subscribers.  From the start it may take a bit more setting up as you will want to plan and create a logical hierarchical company structure.  Once done, you can subscribe the top level group to the service.  This way as you add new users, it doesn't matter what group you add them to, they will become subscribers.

I hope that helps.

Regards,

James

[Mike Hillman]

Thanks all - apologies, I've just realised I'd not replied back!

 

I've managed to figure it out - what I've done is subscribe the overall company to the service, which makes the visibility restriction option available on the Service Catalog items. Within the catalog item though, only the overall company is shown in the visibility Include/Exclude list (rather than the members of the company) so I've hidden the catalog item from the entire company and then added the individual users I need to have access in as separate subscribers to the Service, which then allows me to make the catalog item visible to them

so far, this seems to work!

Many thanks to everyone for your assistance

[James Ainsworth]

That's great news Mike.  Thanks for getting back to us.