Service chains and operational catalogs

Chains organize how reports move between roles. Catalogs define the options people choose when creating, prioritizing, suspending, or completing work.

Availability: configuration for owners and administrators of a Company organization; general catalogs are also used in Professional with a simplified flow. Level: Advanced.

Purpose

Use a chain when several roles must receive or transfer reports in an ordered way. Keep types, urgencies, and reasons active so forms offer current choices without losing earlier history.

Requirements

• Company mode to configure chains, lines, and routes.
• Active roles to add as lines.
• Owner or administrator to modify chains and catalogs.
• A Company can create reports without a chain, but they have no line and do not participate in line routing or line queues.

Configure chains

1. Open Settings, Service chain, and create or select a chain. Set its name, description, general or report-type scope, status, and whether it is the default.
2. Add L1, L2, and later lines, each linked to a role. A role can appear only once in the same chain.
3. Create routes from an origin line to a destination line.
4. Enable Create to let reports created by the origin role enter the destination; enable Transfer to allow that movement from the origin line.
5. Every route must enable Create, Transfer, or both. Saving a repeated route updates these options instead of creating a duplicate.
6. If a chain has already been used, its name and status remain editable. To remove referenced steps, duplicate it, edit the copy, and activate it. Moving or inserting a step changes only its order; routes keep the identity of their steps.

Catalogs

• Report types: name, description, status, and default option; the identifier is derived.
• Urgencies: name, level from 1 to 9, description, status, and default option; the identifier is derived.
• Suspension reasons: name, description, whether a part is required, and status. Selecting a reason that requires a part offers request creation in the same step.
• Completion signatures: disabled, optional, or required, with configurable declaration and additional data.

Initial choices are created automatically when an organization is created. Report types and urgencies keep exactly one active default per organization; it cannot be deactivated until another is selected or promoted. From a report or suspension, an authorized person can create a minimal option and return with it selected without losing the parent form.

Rules and effects

• Inserting or moving a line changes only its order; routes keep their steps by identity.
• A route can allow Create, Transfer, or both.
• ReportArea resolves chains in this order: default type-specific, active type-specific, default general, active general. Changing a default affects only new records.
• Chains, steps, and routes with historical references are deactivated. Only a structure that has never been used may be physically deleted.
• Chains describe flow between roles, not hierarchy between sectors.
• The current signature policy applies to each new resolution cycle; it does not rewrite earlier evidence.

Required and optional information

Required: chain name; role for every line; origin and destination for a route; name for report types and urgencies; urgency level. Optional: using a chain, adding routes, type and urgency identifiers —generated from the name when omitted—, descriptions, deactivating choices, marking that a reason needs a part, and enabling signatures.

Practical example

The chain places Service Desk in L1 and Technician in L2. A route allows transfers from L1 to L2. Requesters enter through L1; Service Desk classifies and transfers cases that need technical intervention.

Current limits

• Changing a used chain does not move existing reports: they keep their chain and step to protect history.
• Referenced steps are not removed from a used chain; change that path by duplicating and activating a copy.