Introduction

This chapter contains the following topics:

Introduction

Cisco Prime Service Catalog is a self-service portal that allows:

  • Users to order new IT services or modify existing services while ensuring compliance with defined IT policies and governance.
  • Organizations to encourage adoption of standardized services and implement lifecycle management with governance across internal services such as private cloud services, collaboration, mobility (BYOD), desktop computing, and external services.
  • Pay-per-use metering using the tracking capabilities and also allows implementing simple show-back or a more complex charge-back approach.

Overview of Service Designer

Service Designer module is a Prime Service Catalog module that enables service designers to design and package services as products, and offer these services for end users to browse through and order.

Using Service Designer, you can:

  • Create categories and keywords that customers may use to search for a particular service
  • Design the look and behavior of service forms, the interactive web page, using which service requisitions are ordered and tracked in Service Catalog.
  • Construct request or service fulfillment plans
  • Configure authorization flows from a service delivery perspective
  • Configure service ordering permissions
  • Link email templates with processes that require email notifications

The below table describes the components of the Service Design module.

Table 1 Service Designer Module Components

Component

Use this component to:

Services

  • Create and modify service groups and service definitions, including the delivery (fulfillment) plan and presentation of the service, as well as the active form components used by the service form.
  • Configure service order permissions.
  • Configure authorization flows from a service delivery perspective.
  • Link email templates with processes that require email notifications.

Dictionaries

Include a group of individual data elements (fields) that allow users and service performers to enter and view data required to fulfill the service request. Dictionaries are a basic building block of a service form. Create and modify the dictionaries that specify the data fields required in a service.

Active Form Components

Create and modify reusable form components, which specify both the service’s look (via the configuration of previously defined dictionaries) and feel (via the definition of rules which can dynamically adjust both the form’s appearance and behavior).

The appearance and behavior of a service form is determined by how the dictionaries and their component fields are configured as part of the active form components that are used in the service definition.

Active form components provide the potential for reusability across service forms. With careful and thoughtful design, a designer may create an active form component from a commonly used dictionary, or set of dictionaries, and configure them only once. Then this form component can be included in as many services as necessary, with no additional configuration.

Scripts

Write JavaScript functions to supplement the rules defined in active form components and maintain JavaScript libraries.

Categories

Specify how services and service categories are displayed in Service Catalog module. Customers may use categories to search for a particular service.

Keywords

Define and manage the keywords used in the service catalog search engine. Customers may use keywords to search for a particular service.

Objectives

Define and manage the measurable service delivery objectives defined in Service Definition Offer tab.

Extensions

Define custom attributes for services and categories and manage the presentation of categories on the landing page of Service Catalog module.

History

Track the service design change history and view the details based on the entity type or filter by the user name.

All of the above may not be visible to all users of Service Designer. The components you see when you choose the Service Designer module correspond with the role you were granted in Organization Designer. For more information, see the Organization Design chapter of the Cisco Prime Service Catalog Administration and Operations Guide

What is a Perfect Service?

A perfect service should clearly communicate what the service is and what the expectations surrounding service delivery are at each stage of the process. Typically, it should answer these:

  • What am I ordering in this service?
  • What is included?
  • Do I need this service? (Or, Is this the right service for me?)
  • How do I order this service?
  • How long will it take to be delivered?
  • How much does it cost?

The service may also include more detailed information such as:

  • Additional task instructions to the service delivery provider
  • A checklist of sequential tasks that must be completed in order to fulfill the service request
  • Safeguards for when services are delivered late, using conditional statements

End users should be able to rely on the information they see in Service Catalog. Likewise, the service definition and expectations should be equally clear to the service team who will receive the service request and deliver the service.