Save a Service Catalog Request as Draft

[jim pisello]

I'm working with a client on requirements for what will be a very complex service catalog request. The request form will have a number of mandatory fields. Unfortunately, the person submitting the request may not know all of the required information at the time they begin filling out the request form. What we'd like to be able to do is to save the SC item in a partially completed form so that the user can return to it one or more times to fill out more information as it becomes available to them.

Of course, you can add an SC item to your shopping cart without submitting the cart, then go back and edit the item at some time in the future. However, doing that presents a couple of problems.
1) Adding the item to the Shopping Cart counts as submitting the form, which means that all of the mandatory variables need to be filled in. I can think of some workarounds (like using a Catalog UI Policy or Client Script to change the mandatory attribute on unfinished fields to false when it's added to the cart), but that seems like kind of a hack that presents its own problems. For instance, how to reset those fields to mandatory when the item is reopened (edited) to complete it.
2) Since each user can have only one shopping cart, if the user needs to request another SC Item before they are ready to complete the first one, both items would be ordered when the cart is submitted. This means the user would either need to (a) complete the first item before submitting the cart, or (b) submit the first SC Item in an incomplete state.

In my perfect world, I'd be able to do the following:
1) Save an in-progress SC Item ("draft"), even if mandatory fields have not yet been completed
1a) If necessary, override any onSubmit Catalog Client Scripts that might prevent saving the "draft"
2) Be able to return to the in-progress Item multiple times, until it is ready for submission
3) Be able to submit other SC requests without needing to submit the in-progress item

So... has anyone done anything like this in your own Service Catalog? Any advice or ideas on how I might proceed?

Thanks in advance...

[jim pisello]

Hi Rajesh,

The client ultimately decided not to implement a draft functionality. If you would like to see a demo I would be happy to put you in contact with our Sales Manager.

[jesusemelendezm]

Hi Jim,

How did you get to implement this requirement? I am looking for something like this. Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Uncle Rob]

Don't think there's anything out there for free.   However, as a one time customer of CrossFuze, I can tell you that their solutions are nicely priced and of impeccable quality.  

[jesusemelendezm]

Yes I know, I was searching on wiki and here but I didn't find any hints. It is not a customer requirement, I actually found this recommendation on the request fulfillment process of ITIL 2011.

It says something like this that I think worth implementing.

Request status tracking

- Draft - a request is created in the draft state. This could be used to record a request without submitting to the request fulfillment process.

[jim pisello]

Hi Jesus,

My client ended up dropping the requirement, so we never pursued it.

As mentioned by others, Crossfuze offers this functionality in a prepackaged turnkey solution. If you're interested I can put you in contact with our business manager so that you can arrange a demo.