Service Catalog - Request Approval vs Requested Item Approval

[thisismichaelb]

Still jumping into Service Catalog.   Not sure I understand the difference between the Request Approval and a Requested Item Approval.

Is the Request record/workflow where you will always capture the approval?   Or can you also capture the approval in the Requested Item record/workflow?

Also, every single Request record appears to go through the same "Service Catalog Request" workflow.   Since a Request record doesn't really have any defining characteristics (ie config item/request item/etc) - what condition would you build to trigger a different Request workflow?   Or you just build one "master" Service Catalog Request workflow?

The wiki is no help (where does it even define requests and what they are?) and I'm not sure this question was asked here yet.

[thisismichaelb]

Thanks for the example.   Helps a lot.

Was getting stuck on a very similar scenario.   Makes a lot more sense now.

[Makosko]

Doug,

say a user has 3 items in their shopping cart, two of them require a manager approval but the last one does not. It is a basically a fully automated request ( once again no approvals required ). These items are from different categories with no logical relationship whatsoever. In a case like that, would it make sense to have any approval on the request level given the fact it could stop my last request ( approval free ) from being fulfilled ?   Any ideas ?

Cheers

[randrews]

if they are all in the same request they are going to have to wait for the request level approval ... any work around would be exceptionally complex and probably not worth it...

I would give serious consideration to creating order guides for the items that require approval, and having the customers fill out two tickets one for the order guide items that do require approval and one for the items that don't require approvals.

I can see where you MIGHT be able to create a table of items that dont' require approvals   or even add it as a checkbox on the item form... then run a BR on the catalog item table that would check for them in a request that is waiting for approvals and start the workflow on them from the BR... but i am not sure what affect that would have when the request is approved and this adds unneeded complexity to the system and puts in a HUGE point of failure .. which is why i said probably not worth it.

[Makosko]

Doug,

thanks for your reply. I get what you are saying..   However, what I am struggling to understand is the logic which determines whether or not to have an approval on the Request Level ( like I said before, 3 unrelated items in a shopping cart - how would i know whether or not to create an approval ?).   Using requester`s department or company ( as suggested by Slava ) will not work in our   environment as each request has its own set of requirements.

At the moment, we have a New Starter Process, which gets initiated through a catalog item with its own workflow but it does not include any approval activity. Instead, there is a parent workflow placed on the Request table, which basically checks whether that Cat Item is included in the current request... If it is, create an approval, otherwise pre-approve it.   Is that how one is supposed to go about it ?   What would be the cons of skipping the request approval completely and letting each individual item decide through its workflow who should approve it ? I would still have a generic workflow which would basically set the approval field to 'Approved', thus allowing its children to start workflow...

Cheers

[randrews]

gotcha makes perfect sense...

our strategy is that anything that requires organizational level approval <direct management> is done at the request level.. .so this would be the approval for the expense of the item and the manager saying yes he does work for me and he does need those items and or access to the files/locations he requested... we do this at the request level so that for each request the manager only has to approve once no matter what....

item level approvals are required for access to specific items and locations that have additional security requirements... as an example you can't get an IPAD unless the CFO for your business unit approves it, or you can't get to the HR files unless HR approves it... these are done at the item level so that even if they are denied it doesn't stop the rest of the requests that are in the cart.

Technically we accomplish this by putting a test in the request approval workflow that tests for v_request_manager_approval is true... if it IS true then the request approval is generated.. if not we skip that step.

each item has a base client script in it that sets this variable to true or false... this way for some items <say a pw reset> the manager won't have to approve but for others they do have to approve.

to facilitate making new items we have two variable sets <employee and employee manager> if the item requires managers approval we put the employee manager variable set in it... if not the employee variable set.

this also allows us a standard location for any client scripts or variables we want in all items.. for example the requested for variables are there as are the approving manager, and policies to lock both down at the task level <so they can't be altered by the fulfillment groups>, we also include an v_order_guide variable that is invisible <this gets loaded by order guides so we know if it came from an order guide and which one>

hope that helped clarify some of it... please let me know if you have other questions