Important to know before getting started
The shop works on every device with a SCCM Client installed. When a user goes to the shop, the device name and username is used to determine which packages and items are available.
The device name is found using a WMI call to the requesting IP address. If this WMI call does not work, you can use the SoftwareCentral Client. See the guide “Use the shop without DNS lookup” for more information.
The default shop is device based and not user based. Ordered packages, will be assigned to the device the user is making the order from. You can enable user based shopping from the Settings menu. See under Settings -> SoftwareCentral -> Shop and find the setting "Install applications for users".
When an order is placed, the packages will be installed immediately, if no approval is required. If approval is required, the appropriate approvers will be notified by e-mail.
The shop can send out order confirmations, reminder mails and status mails. All mails can be configured from the “Settings/Mail Template Editor”-interface.
Note that the SMTP server is configured from the “Settings/Settings” menu.
The shop is not bound by the normal security roles in SoftwareCentral. Instead it is based on Package Security Groups, which are bound to AD-Groups.
If a Package Security Groups name starts with “SHOPPING - “, it will only affect the shop.
With the Shop Setup Guide interface, you can bind one or more AD-Groups or User Collections to a Package Security Group and add packages and custom shop items to the Package Security Group.
Users will only be able to see items based on their AD-Group and collection memberships.
Note that for packages to show up, they must also have the “install allowed” property set in Software Administration.
SoftwareCentral supports 4 types of approval flows:
1. None – approval is not required.
2. Single – you can add multiple approvers, but only one needs to approve or reject the order.
3. Multiple – all approvers must approve the order.
4. Sequential – all approvers must approve the order in the given sequence.
Approval flows can be configured from the Software Administration page and the Custom Shop Items page.
From the “Settings/Settings”-interface, you can set up the more general settings for the shop. Here you can configure the shopping interface, currency, company logo and much more.
SoftwareCentral can automatically create tickets in ServiceNow when an item is ordered from the shop.
You can read more about the ServiceNow integration here.
You can also use Custom Actions to create orders in other management tools such as Remedy.
Create a script that can create a ticket / order in your other service management tool.
You can use the Web Service API to approve / decline orders from other tools.
You can also use the shop for your cloud devices. See Shop for MEM (Intune) for more details.