What a service is
Each service has:
| Field | What it is |
|---|---|
| Code and name | VPN, “Customer VPN”. The code is short, unique in the organization, and used in lists and by AI assistants. |
| Type | A business service is what people use and recognize (Email, Payroll); a technical service is what business services run on (Identity, Core network). |
| Status | Planned, Live, Retiring or Retired (below). |
| Tier | From 1 (an outage stops the business) to 4 (it can wait). |
| Owner | One person, accountable for the service and its record, who works in one of its units. |
| Support team | Takes its cases and incidents first; an optional escalation team as well. |
| Units | The units that provide or use it. Everyone who can see one of them sees the service. |
| Service hours and service level | From the organization's business hours and service-level policies. |
| Depends on | What it depends on, and so what depends on it (how dependencies work). |
| Visible to accounts | Whether contacts can pick it on forms and see it on the portal (below). |
| Description and links | A description for agents, and links to runbooks, architecture notes or contracts. |
| Data properties | Data properties of your own, such as a cost centre. |
New business services are visible to accounts and technical services hidden, until you change it (the service page shows Accounts: Visible or Hidden). A hidden service never appears on forms or on the portal's Your services page; the switch is in its history like everything else.
Offerings
A service can have offerings one level below it, for variants such as Email: mailbox, Email: shared mailbox and Email: archive. An offering has its own code and name, and takes the owner, teams, service hours and service level it leaves empty from its service. Where it does, the page says so (“from MAIL”). An offering can't have offerings of its own.
The lifecycle
Planned → Live → Retiring → Retired
Live → Retired: Retire straight away
Retired → Live: Bring back
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Planned | Being set up. Agents see it; it isn't offered on forms or the portal yet. |
| Live | In use, and offered in pickers. |
| Retiring | No new accounts; those using it keep it until it retires. You can note the date. |
| Retired | Gone from pickers. Its history, and everything that named it, stay. |
[!IMPORTANT] A service is retired rather than deleted once anything uses it. Only a service with no offerings, that no other service depends on, can be deleted.