Establishing Support Structure › Models › Combined Model

Combined Model

Some companies need to operate both internal and external service desk models. In this case, you can do either of the following:

• Separate internal and external service desk models with separate service desk installations.
• Set up CA SDM to support both models.

  This setup is convenient if your service desk analysts are cross-trained to support both employees and customers and if the distinction between internal and external support is not always clear. For example, you may have employees who purchase products from your company or customers who have problems and questions with the infrastructure of your company.

As the administrator, you must set up the support structure for a combined internal/external service desk that consists of issues, requests, and change orders, and their underlying supporting features. If you decide to use a combined internal and external service desk, do the following before setting up a structure:

• Review the customer and employee access types using the administrative function of the web interface to see that it meets your needs. If most of your contacts are customers, you might want to set "customer" as the default access type. If most of your contacts are employees using the service desk for support, you might want to set "employee" as the default access type.
• Review the customer and employee contact types using the administrative function of the web interface to see if it meets your needs.
• Verify that your contacts are set to have the appropriate access type and contact type. For example, if you set customer as the default access type, you also need to set the analyst contacts to the analyst access type, and the employee contacts to the employee access type.

  The contact type is usually assigned automatically based on how you create the contact as follows, but in some cases the contact type might not be defined.

  • Customers who use your service desk for support should have a contact type of customer.
  • Employees who use the service desk for support should have a contact type of employee.
  • Employees who work as support desk analysts should have a contact type of analyst.

  You can work with contacts using the administrative function of the web interface.

More information:

Contact Types

How Access Types Work