How to merge Business Application Access and Software Request

[Mannapuram]

Hello All,

We are looking to merge Business Application Access request with Software Request. We are planning to do this because, we want to improve the customer experience by going to a single item on portal and request for 'GitHub Enterprise' instead of going to 'Application access request' to get access and 'Software Request' to get it provisioned.  

Any ideas would be appreciated. Thank you.

[Mathew Hillyard]

Hi @Mannapuram ,

Are these (bus app access and software access) OOTB catalog items or ones you have created? 

Users shouldn’t be requesting access to a Business Applicarion, but requesting something related to a Service Offering. Every request for service (i.e., a catalog item or record producer) should be backed by a service offering. Business Applications are typically used by enterprise architects in planning technology change and understanding technology risk. 

In terms of provisioning, do you intend to create a single record producer for access to all software to make the user experience easier? It’s not entirely clear from your post.

I hope this helps!

Mat

[Mannapuram]

@Mathew Hillyard  Thank you for your thoughts. The way it's built now is, Access to 'SAP applications or Other Business applications' is driven through a Catalog item, where the business application is selected. I guess, this way was chosen as additional approvals specific to each Business application was easy to be driven from Business application -> related list tab.

Similarly, catalog item is used to request for software request. 

Now, end-user needs to go two different catalog items, to request. Sometimes for the software and sometimes for Business application and end-user is not able to differentiate between them. 

We are looking to merge and make it better experience. Please share your thoughts. 

[Mathew Hillyard · Accepted solution]

Hi @Mannapuram 

I would migrate away from the Business Application catalog item(s) and standardise on software requests. A great example is that MS Office apps are not Business Applications (or should not be, even if some orgs have business app stuff inside an Excel sheet!), but are often requested or provisioned for new users. As you can see, the end user should not need to know whether they're requesting a desktop software package or access to some enterprise SaaS product - they just want to request access to software.

There is an OOTB Record Producer with EA called "Register a Business Application". This is used when someone wants to onboard a new enterprise application to the organisation, so a very different purpose and it is usually restricted (e.g. to service owners or ITAOs).

I hope this helps!

Mat

[Mannapuram]

Thanks for your ideas and appreciate your time.