advice required Active Catalogs not visible via Service Manager and the Portals

[samwoo]

Hello,

I was wondering if someone could advise... I am just wonder if it's possible to have "Active" Catalogs that are not visible/accessible via Service Manager and any of the Portals. In short these Catalogs would be used when logging requests directly from the BPM.

In one of my example I have a IT Procurement Service and have two different processes for users requesting for a Standard Phone or Smartphone via the Mobile Phones request form (Smartphone requests has to go via Approvers), VS a request that is raised off the back of the New Starter request via the Business Process, which goes straight to the IT Procurement team. As I wanted these as two separate Business Processes to make them easier to manage, I had created 2 x forms for them, but the Catalog that relates to requests being raised off the back of the New Starter Process was visible in the request list on Service Manager. I couldn't choose "None" as a visibility option so Service Desk was the logical choice.

But this wasn't going to work as we run the risk of Users using this form within Service Manager to bypass the Approver process, so I decide to merge the two Business Processes into a single Process... which has caused more headaches that I should've had in the first place and would make it very complicated for someone else to pick up and understand what's going on, as well as managing it going forward within the teams that will own these processes.

 

Back to the point:

Is there a way I could set up this "Pre-Approved Mobile Phones" Catalog that is not visible on the Portals and Service Desk with the current functionality?

If not, please can I request there be a None option to the Catalog Visibility be added that hides the Catalogs from view (but maybe still allow it to be accessible via a direct link? this could be useful in some cases...)

To further clarify, in the above example. we do need the IT Procurement Service itself to be visible on Both Portals and Service Desk, including some of the Catalogs, but we just need one Catalog to not be visible at all.

 

Thanks,

Samuel

[Steve Giller]

17 hours ago, samwoo said:

Is there a way I could set up this "Pre-Approved Mobile Phones" Catalog that is not visible on the Portals and Service Desk with the current functionality?

This is kind of a hacky solution, but:

1. In the Service Portfolio, set the CI to point to a Capture called "Invalid Request"
2. Create the Invalid Request Capture with a Start, Custom Form, and Switch Capture
3. On the Custom Form, display the relevant message (e.g. "Naughty fellow, you know you shouldn't use this!") using labels
4. Set the Switch Capture to trigger the "Invalid Request" capture

Because this is a hack, the User will see the warning:

but they will never be able to progress the Request, and if they complain about the message you find out who's doing it.

There is some discussion about having an "Abort" option in a Capture, which would be better than looping back on itself - if you can find that one and add your support that will help prioritise it.

[samwoo]

Hi @Steve Giller,

I actually found another way - I hadn't had the time to update this thread yet, but it's to utilize the Catalog Visibility options, to make a Catalog not visible to all Subscribers. It looks like it does work, and I can still raise requests to it using the BPM:

I don't know what will happen if anything else is added to subscribers, whether or not they will automatically be excluded or not from the Catalog Visibility... still having a "None" visibility option would still be good.

Thanks,

Samuel

[Steve Giller]

Never even thought of that. Good spot.

[Berto2002]

We do the same as you came-up with @samwoo. We use it for what we call 'spawned' tickets from BPMs. If you uses "exclude all" then new subscribers are also excluded by default.