Using CA Service Catalog for Administrators › Discrete Request Life Cycle › How to Implement Discrete Request Life Cycle

How to Implement Discrete Request Life Cycle

To implement discrete request life cycle, follow this process:

1. Consider the process automation tool you are using for approval and fulfillment–CA Process Automation, CA Workflow, or both–and proceed as follows:
   • The predefined CA Process Automation processes supplied for use with CA Service Catalog require no additional configuration to support the discrete request life cycle. However, verify that they work efficiently with the discrete request life cycle after you implement it.
   • The predefined CA Workflow process definitions supplied for use with CA Service Catalog do require additional configuration to support the discrete request life cycle.

     If you decide to use CA Workflow, use the guidelines to configure the predefined CA Workflow process definitions as required.

2. Decide and follow the best option for introducing the use of discrete life cycle, to minimize impact on requests in progress. Options include the following:
   • If you are upgrading from a previous release of CA Service Catalog, begin using a discrete life cycle in a test system: Verify that the request life cycle works as expected, and move to a production system.
   • Instruct users to stop creating requests in your organization temporarily. As soon as most or all of the requests in progress are completed, begin using a discrete life cycle by setting the related configuration parameters, as explained later in this topic.
   • In-progress requests may become stuck as a result of the configuration changes. If requests become stuck, retry, or override (push-through) the alerts to complete the requests.

     Note: Retries and overrides may be especially required when you use the configuration setting named Allow Discrete Handling of Service Options After.

   • Give special attention to canceled items, rejected items, and items pending fulfillment while others are still in pending approval, when one or both of the following are true:
     • You expect some requests to reach pending fulfillment after all the items are approved.
     • You expect to reject the entire request if one item is rejected.

     In these cases, take special care before changing the configuration to support the discrete request life cycle. Optionally, verify that such requests have completed before you make the configuration changes.

3. Review these important considerations:
   • Overall status of the request

     The service option with the lowest status value determines the overall status of the request. To see the status of a request, click Home, Requests, and, if applicable, use the My Requests drop-down list to display requests. Open the request, and view the status.

     When the request contains services and service options having different status values, the lowest status value appears with asterisk (*) next to it, indicating that at least one service or service option in the same request has a higher status.

     Note: When determining the overall status of the request, the Catalog system ignores services and service options that are rejected, completed, deleted, cancelled, pending cancellation, or on hold.

   • Billing

     If you are using Accounting Component, the invoices you generate do include completed services and service options, even if other services and service options in the same request are not completed. The uncompleted services and service options are not included in the same billing run as the completed ones.

   • Request SLAs

     This point is relevant only if you use request SLAs. The monitoring and recording of request SLA data is not affected when you use a discrete request life cycle. The Catalog system monitors and records the status changes of service options that have request SLAs the same way, regardless of your discrete request life cycle configuration settings.

   • CA Business Service Insight-related metrics

     This point is relevant only if you are integrating CA Service Catalog with CA Business Service Insight. Your discrete request life cycle configuration settings do not affect the monitoring and recording of any CA Business Service Insight contract-related metrics associated with service options in the Catalog system.

   • Sample settings and their meanings
   • Common settings
   • Table of discrete settings and meanings
4. Set the configuration parameters to achieve the results you want, based on the information gained from your review.