One of the things that new customers to Dell KACE ask for is Service catalog functionality. We can see that the trend in the industry towards ITIL aligned functionality continues to drift gently for the majority and the understanding, in the main, of what a Service Catalog actually is, is being formed around the desire to provide end-users channels, from which they can request services, as opposed to the delivery and measurement of a service eg email or internet browsing.So if we assume that the Service Catalog functionality that is required is purely the ability for the End-user to request services, how can we configure our KACE appliance to make this happen?
If we take the example of the following request types:
- New Starter
- New Software
- New Hardware
In the new 6.4 Enduser console we have the ability to add in, what is termed as helpful links, these are configured within the main admin console in the following area
The links that are defined are then shown on the End-user console home page in the following area
We can now use this are as a pseudo Service Catalog function, going back to our list of request types witin the catalog
- New Starter
- New Software
- New Hardware
Simply create a Service Desk queue on your K1000 for each request type, customizing the ticket to capture mandatory information etc on logging. Once you have the Queues created and set the end-user permissions so that they can log tickets for each queue, simply create Helpful links with a url that will enable the Enduser to create a ticket in each queue as required.
To create a link that will create a new ticket in the End-user console simply create a link made up of the following parts
http://<server name or IP>/UserUI/ticket.php?QUEUE_ID=<id Number>
You will then end up with a list of request types in your Service Catalog from which your end users can create new tickets, which is pretty much the same functionality as most organisations require from a service Catalog.
Not perfect, but good enough for a lot of organisations to work with.
Dell KACE K1000 Service Desk - Definitely worth a second look, in my opinion!
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