Using Service Bridge for bi-directional integration of catalog items/requests

[VanGoghJoe1]

Hi,

We are an MSP who uses Service Bridge to do bi-directional integrations with incidents for clients and the functionality is essentially symmetric, in the sense that an incident can be created on either side, assigned back and forth and seen/worked/resolved from either side.  

Now we are looking to do something similar for catalog items, at least for simple ones that do not have approvals and only have one task.   We know that it can do it in one direction, where the provider makes the items available to the consumer so they can be requested and monitored from their instance but they are worked on in the provider.  

Is there a way to make that work equally in both directions?

[J Rohit]

Hi @VanGoghJoe1 

Service Bridge today supports bi-directional integration for Incidents, Cases, etc. out of the box – incidents, cases, etc.. can be created on either side, assigned back and forth using Remote Task Definition and Transforms.

For catalog items, the model is different. The supported approach is:

• The Provider publishes catalog items or record producers as Remote Catalog Items / Remote Record Producers (RRP).
• The Consumer can request those items, monitor the request, and see fulfilment progress.
• The work and fulfilment always take place on the Provider side.

As you can observe, there is no dedicated module for Remote Catalog Items on the Consumer instance – the functionality is exposed only to Provider.

This design makes catalog item fulfilment provider-centric. The consumer side only submits and tracks, without hosting or managing the catalog items themselves.


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Thank you

Regards
Rohit

[Phillip Godwin]

Hi - Only the provider can create and publish remote catalog items in Service Bridge.   In order for your customer to publish catalog items to you, they would have to be licensed and running the provider application as well.

...phil

[VanGoghJoe1]

Hi @Phillip Godwin,

Thanks for the quick reply!  

Regarding licensing, is Service Bridge for Provider free or would the client need to purchase something like CSM?

Assuming they were licensed, I'm having a little trouble wrapping my mind around it, would you be able to outline roughly how it would work?  Questions that come to mind are things like, given that as an MSP we are on the provider side with multiple clients/accounts, can we be both the provider and consumer with the same client?  Since the goal is for both sides to be able to work the same catalog items, is there a way to just have one version of an item, or would we essentially have to copy each item into each provider's catalog?  Would both sides be able to work the same requests, or we would only be able to work the ones ordered published in our catalog and they in theirs?  Is it a supported solution?