An IT self-service portal works when people find the answer or the right form faster than they can write an email. SMC Consulting's ITIL v4 certified consultants set up the HaloITSM portal around your most frequent requests: a clear catalogue, short guided forms, knowledge suggested before a ticket is logged, single sign-on and Microsoft Teams, then measure how much it is used.
An IT self-service portal is the front door of the service desk: users request services, report incidents, follow their tickets and find answers without calling or emailing IT. A good one does four things:
The portal is where service request management and incident management meet your users. Both practices are covered in our practical guide to ITSM, and HaloITSM is the tool we recommend most often.
Catalogue requests with forms, approvals and tasks behind them, from access rights to new laptops and onboarding.
Open and closed tickets in one list, with updates, comments and the option to close a simple case themselves.
Your logo, colours and words, with Microsoft Entra single sign-on so nobody needs another password.
Tickets raised and followed from Teams, and a portal that works on a phone browser.
A live demo with your top requests as forms, or a free trial: 30 days, 15 of them guided by SMC Consulting.
A portal nobody opens costs as much as one everybody uses. Adoption is planned, not hoped for.
Start with the requests that make most of your volume; the rest of the catalogue can follow.
Every field must be needed by the person who fulfils the request; everything else goes.
Articles written for users, in their words, suggested on the forms and in the portal search.
A portal reachable from Teams, where people already spend their day.
Automatic replies point to the right form, and agents link to articles instead of retyping answers.
Portal share, deflection and article use reviewed every month, and the catalogue adjusted.
Enough for most service desks: articles for agents and users, suggested on tickets and in the portal, with Halo AI suggestions included.
Worth adding when knowledge goes beyond IT support: richer authoring, versioning, review workflows and several audiences.
Tools do not write articles. Knowledge-centred service (KCS) makes capturing knowledge part of every ticket.
Five steps, in Belgium, Luxembourg and France. To start your knowledge base, our 12 ready-to-copy article templates help.
Not sure where your portal and knowledge base stands today? Book my free ITSM audit: 30 minutes with a senior consultant. Still choosing a tool? Our comparison of the 10 best ITSM tools sets HaloITSM against the alternatives.
Your ticket volumes by type and channel, and the requests that would gain most from the portal.
The first catalogue items, their forms and approvals, and the portal structure, tested with a few real users.
Entra single sign-on, the Teams entry point, notifications and branding configured.
The first articles written, suggestions switched on, the portal announced and email redirected.
The KPIs below reviewed after the first months, and the catalogue and articles adjusted.
Whose agents spend their day on password resets and status questions.
Who want the portal ready on day one, not added later.
Whose users still send email because the portal was never designed for them.
A website, often also available in Microsoft Teams, where employees request IT services, report incidents, follow their tickets and find answers to common questions without calling or emailing the service desk.
Yes. Users can raise tickets from Teams, receive updates there and use a bot to follow and find their tickets; the portal itself can also be reached from Teams. We show the exact setup on your own tenant during the demo.
For most IT service desks, the HaloITSM knowledge base is enough. Document360 is worth it when you publish knowledge for several audiences or products, need richer review and versioning, or want one knowledge platform beyond IT. See Document360.
We count portal sessions where a user opened a suggested article and did not log a ticket afterwards, and compare the portal share of tickets month by month. Without a baseline before launch, deflection cannot be proven, so we measure it first.
It depends on the number of catalogue items, approvals and articles in the first release. Starting with your most frequent requests keeps the first launch small; the catalogue then grows in iterations. The launch date is set together once the first catalogue is chosen.
Yes. Users see their open and closed tickets, add comments and attachments, and can close a simple case themselves once it is solved.
Book a live demo with your own top requests. You can also start a free trial: 30 days, 15 of them guided by SMC Consulting.
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