AssetSonar’s Service Catalog workflows help you standardize service requests, gain unparalleled visibility and cost tracking, allowing you to make informed decisions and achieve new levels of IT asset management productivity.
This module by AssetSonar is a perfect fit for organizations with well-established IT departments across various industries, including IT, health tech, financial services, and education. Service Catalog is especially beneficial for organizations with a hybrid work model or spread across multiple locations.
How can Service Catalog Workflows benefit your organization?
If an organization is looking to improve IT support, incident management, and self-service capabilities for their employees and IT help desk agents and provide valuable insights for executives to make informed decisions, then here is how Service Catalog can add value:
For employees:
- Provides convenience and ease of access to information, eventually promoting self-service and reduced reliance on IT personnel.
- Enhances visibility on which assets/resources they have custody of, improving accountability. For example, employees must be aware of the beneficial software applications they can access.
- Standardizes workflows, making it easier and quicker to raise IT issues.
- Improves processes and visibility, leading to faster request fulfillment time.
For help desk agents:
- Streamlines IT requests by standardizing the format of requests, resulting in an overall productivity boost and faster resolution time.
- Increases transparency and visibility at different stages of the fulfillment cycle
- Providing access to essential asset management needs through the AssetSonar app within Zendesk, leading to quick resolution of ITAM-related service requests and improved Service Level Agreements.
For administrators and executives:
- Provides reports and insights to ensure continual service improvement
- Reduces maintenance costs and improves procurement decisions, e.g., most reported hardware models that help to make informed decisions like replacing faulty models, vendors, etc.
- Provides reports on SLAs to improve service resolution times.
Now, let’s go over the Service Catalog’s workflows for different types of users in your organization. The workflows are primarily designed for employees, helpdesk agents, and administrators.
1. Service Catalog workflows for IT administrator
AssetSonar allows IT administrators complete control over the Service Catalog through the Service Catalog builder. The builder helps you create different categories that cater to the unique workflows of your organization.
From your AssetSonar application, go to ‘More’ from the left navigation bar and click the ‘Service Catalog’ tab.
Please note that when you access Service Catalog Builder for the first time, it will have just one default category that can be configured, while other categories you create can be edited or updated.
For the existing categories, you can configure service items and forms that you want to show on the ‘My IT assets’ tab in the employee portal of the service catalog. Click on ‘Configure’ to open a new overlay.
Here is a snippet of the new dialog box that opens up:
From here, you can choose the items, fields, and Zendesk forms that you want the employees to view on their portals. The checked out items will include the assets and asset stock, while the software licenses will include all cloud or on-premise software applications that are in the custody of that employee.
Once you have configured these changes, your employees can view all the assigned assets on their Service Catalog. Here is a snapshot of the employee portal after the configuration:
Now, from the builder’s main page, you can also create new service categories or add new items to those categories. Start by clicking on the ‘Create button’ as shown below:
A new dialog box will open. Provide the category name and a short description of the service category you want to create, and then click on ‘Create.’
A new service category will be successfully created. To add service items to the new category, click Service Item → Create Service Item.
A new tab will open up, prompting you to enter details of the new service item to be created.
Once you have entered the relevant information, click on ‘Done’ to finish creating a new service item. You’ll see this service item on the relevant service category’s detail page. Click on the ‘Save’ button to ensure this service item is reflected on the employee portal for the Service Catalog.
Now, enable the service category to finish setting up the new service.
Now, let’s take a look at the employee portal to see how this new service category can be utilized by the employees.
2. Service Catalog for employees
In large organizations, the process of requesting IT services for employees can be a major challenge. The lack of a streamlined process and channel can cause delays and errors, leading to operational bottlenecks.
In addition, employees have to rely on their IT teams to provide information regarding critical requests and complaints. With the Service Catalog, employees can browse and view the assets and IT services available to them.
The items they can view and request are already filtered by department, team, role, and access controls. Employees can view these items under the service categories as shown below:
From the main service catalog page, go to the newly created service category, which is ‘Request a new device’ in this case. You can also see the new service item in the tab.
The employee can click on the service item to initiate a request. A new form would be created. Here is a screenshot of the new request form.
Once a request has been successfully submitted, a new ticket is created, and the employee is shown a message.
3. Service Catalog for help desk agents
Once an employee has submitted the request, it is picked up by a help desk agent in Zendesk Support.
This new ticket would land in the help desk agent’s inbox as shown below:
From here, the help desk agent can take actions on the ticket, double-check the information, and assign the requested hardware, eventually marking the ticket as done in little time.
Let’s see how the help desk agent can resolve the ticket:
The type of request tab is updated automatically, and the agent can review all the relevant information.
Through Zendesk Support, the agent will be able to view all the available items in AssetSonar that match the information on the request. Here is a preview of the request ticket on the agent’s window:
The agent can then choose the preferred device and fulfill the request easily, saving themselves time.
Organizations can utilize AssetSonar and Zendesk’s Service Catalog for different IT workflows, including onboarding and offboarding, break-fix, hardware replacements, software renewals, and more.
