Kinetic Request - Delivery Model
Service Request Portal Application - Delivery Model
Kinetic Request enables any functional department within your organization to present its services in an easy-to-use web portal, and fulfill service requests using automated approval and workflow processes. Kinetic Data has developed and refined this delivery model to help you efficiently implement our service request mangement software and begin presenting business services and managing them effectively through actionable service catalogs.
This delivery model includes a number of worksheets, best practices, and examples to assist with your service request portal application implementation process. If needed, these worksheets can be combined into a single functional specification or requirements document for sign offs and developer notes. Much of the process, including form creation, can be done by analysts, while developers are concerned with creating the framework.
The Kick-off
- Getting the project moving means informing, provisioning, and engaging the team: The Kickoff Meeting (ppt)
- Getting the team together (Participants, Contacts): Project Participants Document (doc)
- Starting with a good project plan assures that milestones are met and expectations are realistic—the plan should then be updated and approved after the branding and definition portions of the implementation are complete (Sample Plan: MSProject, PDF)
Training
Training provided by Kinetic Data can help make your team more productive in a shorter amount of time. Classes are offered for both the analysts and technical groups.
- Training Overview (doc)
Branding
How your portal and forms look and feel to your internal and external customers can make a big impact on whether or not they'll use the solution versus calling the service desk.
- Use your organization's existing brand elements, existing web pages, and style sheets to drive the look and feel of your portal: Styling Your Catalog & Forms (doc)
Organizing the Service Portfolio
Defining how your customers will find and interact with your services, helps organize an often diverse portfolio.
Defining Your Service Request Forms
Now that the broad plan is in place, start defining individual service items. These translate to service request forms that a user can access via the catalog.
- Defining the process: Determine who can see the form, who approves it, and how is it fulfilled. A simple diagram helps define the process for each of your forms (Sample Diagram: Visio, PNG)
- Form Definitions: Questions, layout, form behaviors, emails, and mock-ups (doc)
- Service Request Tasks: Tasks make a request form truly process-driven. Tasks include approvals, emails, record creation, and external application calls (doc)
Reporting
Don't leave your report planning until after deployment. Determining up front what your users and managers will want to see reduces the number of changes that need to be made later.
- Reporting Checklist (doc)
Authentication
Kinetic Request supports a number of different authentication schemes from anonymous access to a Single-Sign-On (SSO) approach. Before or during installation, the business should decide how users will be identified and authenticated.
- Users, Groups, SSO, and more (doc)
Installation
Getting the application up and running can be a quick and easy process with a little planning.
Building Your Portal
Once the requirements are defined and the service request portal application is installed, the catalog framework can be built. Often a developer will put together the look and feel of the portal page(s) with direction from the documents created earlier.
- Building a Portal (doc)
Building Your Forms
A developer will likely create form templates and handle some of the more technical details of building a form. However, once this is set up, an analyst or other non-technical staff can create many of the forms needed by an organization. Kinetic Data also offers training to get your staff creating forms quickly using best practices.
- Form Templates: Well designed form templates are key to a responsive Kinetic Request deployment. By creating templates others can clone, implementing a new service can be quick and painless. (doc)
- You've got the requirements, the branding, and the templates. Now go build it: Kinetic Request User Guide (pdf)
Testing & Deployment
Make sure all requirements were met by implementing a test plan for new forms/services as they are finished and ready to go online. In addition, a migration strategy is needed to move new and modified forms from a development environment to a production environment. Kinetic Request includes a migration tool to assist in moving forms when needed.
- Testing & Deployment Strategies (doc)
The download includes all of the documents referenced here (zip - 19MB)
Have a question, comment, or suggestion about our delivery model? Please let us know!