End User Visibility to Service Manager Offerings

Q: I created some request offerings and service offerings in System Center Service Manager, but end users can't see them. Why not?

A: Service Manager has a Service Catalog that allows request offerings and service offerings to be published and made available to users. However, as you add new request offerings and service offerings, end users can't see them by default. This is because you need to create catalog groups that contain the various offerings and then grant user roles access to those catalog groups. To create a catalog group, navigate to the Library workspace and select the Groups navigation node. Click the Create Catalog Group action and then follow the wizard to include the desired resources.

If you always want to make all request offerings and all service offerings available, create two catalog groups (one for the request offerings and one for the service offerings) that use the Dynamic Member option and use a criteria of Status equals Published, as the following figure shows.

After you create the catalog groups, the next step is to make them available as part of a user role. Open the Administration workspace, navigate to Security, User Roles, and then create a new user role. Within the new user role, under Catalog Item Groups select the two new catalog groups you created that dynamically included all published request offerings and service offerings. Under the Users area add the users who should have access (e.g., Domain Users to give all domain users access).

User roles combined with catalog groups allows you to control which groups of users can see which request offerings and service offerings. In my example, I'm just publishing all offerings to all users; you can use your own combinations as needed.