Using CA Service Catalog for Administrators › PDA Approval › Introduction and Benefits

Introduction and Benefits

When traveling, administrators, managers, and other key personnel in most organizations use a mobile device named a personal digital assistant (PDA), to communicate, using telephone calls and emails and also to connect to the internet, using a special small-screen web browser. In this way, these employees continue to keep business processes moving, despite being out of the office.

As a CA Service Catalog administrator, you can optionally configure your CA Service Catalog implementation and its services to enables users to approve and rejects requests using a PDA. Such users receive an automatic email notification on their PDAs that a request is pending approval (a request approval email).

Depending on how you set up PDA approval, PDA users can optionally use the links you supply in the request approval email to do one or more of the following actions:

• Log in to CA Service Catalog, view the request details, and approve or reject the request
• Approve or reject the request, service, or service option without viewing its details

  Users must enter their login credentials manually

• Approve or reject the request, service, or service option without logging in to CA Service Catalog; this action is direct email approval

By using PDAs in this manner, these employees keep the request life cycle component of your business moving, despite being out of the office.

Approving and rejecting requests using a PDA (PDA approval) is similar to the same process using a laptop or desktop computer. However, PDA approval includes some additional setup work and includes some limitations to consider, when compared to the traditional process using a laptop or desktop in the office.