Empower Employees and Customer Self-Service with AssetSonar’s Service Catalog for Zendesk

Introducing an all-new Service Catalog for AssetSonar’s Zendesk customers! Transform your IT service management with AssetSonar’s innovative self-service portal, designed to streamline and automate manual workflows while empowering your organization with enhanced asset intelligence. 

Our Service Catalog isn’t just a new feature—it’s a game-changing module for businesses looking to streamline IT service requests, boost operational efficiency, and enhance employee experience. 

By combining asset intelligence and self-service capabilities, we aim to redefine request and incident management and onboarding/offboarding workflows for IT departments everywhere. You can now say goodbye to inefficiencies and delays in service delivery, unclear SLA monitoring, budget woes, and inefficient resource allocation. 

Excited to get started? For a limited time, we are offering complimentary setup and implementation of Service Catalog, along with a detailed walkthrough of relevant use cases, workflows, and more. You can choose to set up the Service Catalog module on your own by following the steps below or if you prefer hands-on assistance, our Customer Success team is here to support you every step of the way. 

How can Service Catalog benefit your organization? 

If organizations are looking to improve IT operations efficiency and provide exceptional employee experience, then here’s how Service Catalog can add value: 

1. Enhanced self-service 

The service catalog allows end users to quickly resolve issues without assistance, promoting self-service and a better experience through easy-to-use portals and help guides. 

2. Faster service delivery 

A well-structured approach to service delivery for IT teams to swiftly resolve tickets. Automated approvals and fulfillment processes speed up service delivery, enhancing productivity and efficiency. 

3. Real-time visibility and analysis

Employees have real-time visibility into ticket progress and how early the request can be fulfilled. Similarly, service agents can approve or deny tickets based on real-time information. Additionally, they can generate reports on which services are frequently used to analyze asset utilization and make informed decisions. 

4. Enhanced employee experience

An interactive and user-friendly interface allows employees to view, request, and track all service listings in one place, eliminating back and forth with IT teams and relying on the service catalog for all their IT service queries. 

Please note that you need to set up a Service Catalog on both AssetSonar and Zendesk before starting to use it. Now, let’s get started on setting up the Service Catalog builder:

Setting up Service Catalog Builder on AssetSonar

If you are an IT administrator, you can get started with Service Catalog by following this pathway: Settings → Integrations → Zendesk Integration and click on Enabled.

Now, add your Zendesk credentials to set up the integration. Here is a complete guide on integrating Zendesk with AssetSonar. 

Once you have successfully integrated with Zendesk, click on ‘Integrate with Help Center’. Integration with the Help Center is a prerequisite to enabling the Service Catalog.

Now check the ‘Enable Service Catalog’ option before saving the setting.

Please note that integrating with the Zendesk Help Center is a prerequisite to using the Service Catalog. Learn more about integrating with Zendesk Help Center here.

Note: To enable Zendesk, please make sure that:

1. Your Zendesk account is connected.
2. You have access to either Help Center JWTs API Support or Sunshine.

Once you have successfully created the integration, click ‘More’ from the left navigation bar and then go to ‘Service Catalog.’ 

You can view the Service Catalog Builder, where you can create service categories and configure service items. 

In order to create Service Categories and Service Items, we need to set up Service Catalog on Zendesk Help Center beforehand. Here are the steps you can follow to set up the Service Catalog:  

Setting up Service Catalog on Zendesk Help Center

Now, you need to set up the Service Catalog from your Zendesk Help Center. To do so, log in to your Zendesk account by using your Administrator or Agent credentials. 

To start, you’ll need ezoFieldID and ezoServiceItemFieldID. When employees create tickets, the assets and Service Items will be ‘linked’ to their respective fields automatically. This would help the agent instantly know the context of the issue reported. Follow these steps to get values for these fields:

• For ezoFieldid

1. From Zendesk’s main page, go to the Admin Center from the dropdown on the right as shown below:

Now search for ‘Fields’ under the Tickets tab. 

2. Create a new field by clicking on the ‘Add Field’ option and fill out the form as shown below:

Please note that the checkbox for ‘Required to Submit a Request’ should remain unchecked as shown below:

3. Click on Save, and you’ll be able to view the Field ID of the newly created custom field. Save this Field ID for later. 

Now, let’s create another custom field that can be used later as ServiceItemID.

• For ezoServiceItemFieldId

1. From Admin Center, go to the Fields page and click on the ‘Add Field’ button on the top right.

2. An ‘Add Field’ detail page will open up. Click on the ‘Text’ tab.

3. On the new page, enter the name and description of the service field. Please make sure that you don’t select the checkbox ‘Required to resolve a ticket.’ In permissions, select the ‘Customers can edit’ option as shown below:

4. Scroll down the page to finish creating the service field ID. Do not check the option ‘Required to submit a request’. Please note that ‘Title shown to customers’ is a compulsory field so you’ll have fill it to continue. Hit save and you’ll be redirected to the Fields listing page.

Now save this newly created service field ID for later.

Now, hover your cursor over the Zendesk Products icon on the top-right navigation bar and choose the Guide icon as shown below:

A new window will open up. Here is a snippet of the new window.

Click the ‘Guide Admin’ button on the top right to open a new page. Now click the ‘Customize Design’ icon on the left navigation bar. 

Scroll down to view the live theme named ‘Copenhagen Service Catalog’. Now click on ‘Customize’. 

A new window will open up from where you’ll be able to customize this design theme. To do so, click the ‘Edit Code’ button on the bottom-right of the page. 

Now click on ‘Add’ from the menu on the left and then hit the ‘Custom Page’ option.

A new popup will appear to add a new custom page. Add the page name as ‘service_catalog.’ Please note that you name it exactly as given. The URL would already be given. Make no changes to it.
And then click on the button, ‘Add custom page’.

Here is a snippet of the pop-up:

Once the page is created, leave it empty, as shown below:

Choose document_head.hbs from the list of files on the left.  

Now, at the bottom of the code file for document_head.hbs, add the following script:

<script>
  document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function () {
    const timestamp = new Date().toISOString();
    const scriptSrc = `https://cdn.ezassets.com/shared/service_catalog/dist/bundle.min.js?${timestamp}`;
    // Create a script element
    const scriptElement = document.createElement('script');
    scriptElement.src = scriptSrc;
    // Append the script element to the document head
    document.head.appendChild(scriptElement);
    scriptElement.onload = function () {
      const initializationData = {
        timestamp: timestamp,
        ezoFieldId: '<field_id>',
        ezoSubdomain: '<subdomain>.assetsonar.com',
        ezoServiceItemFieldId: '<service_item_field_id>',
        integrationMode: 'custom_objects'
      };
      new ServiceCatalog.min.js.ServiceCatalogManager(initializationData);
    };
  });
</script>

In this script:

• Replace the ezoSubdomain value with that of your own AssetSonar subdomain.
• Update the ezoFieldID and ezoServiceItemFieldID that you created before.
• For integrationMode:
  • Add ‘custom_objects’ if your integration mode is Custom Objects, OR
  • ‘jwt’ if your integration mode is JWT API.

You can view your mode of integration from the Settings page on AssetSonar under Zendesk Integration.

Once you have updated these fields, hit ‘Publish’. 

Additionally, to customize the Copenhagen theme you’ll need to add the following mapping in the main style.css file for it to work. Please note that this step is optional.

:root {
–ez_text_font: $text_font;
–ez_text_color: $text_color;
–ez_link_color: $link_color;
–ez_brand_color: $brand_color;
–ez_heading_font: $heading_font;
–ez_background_color: $background_color;
–ez_brand_text_color: $brand_text_color;
–ez_visited_link_color: $visited_link_color
}

Note: The variables with $ sign are only available in Copenhagen theme. However, you can customize the mapping in other themes as per requirement to reflect changes in Service Catalog.

Click on Help Center on the top right.

Once you click on it, you will be navigated to the main landing page of the Help Center, where you will now see ‘Service Catalog’ on the top right.

You can click on it to see your very own Service Catalog! Learn more about editing and updating the Service Catalog here.