Assume a user submits a service request for a laptop and you have a list of laptops populated in a custom field, user chooses the desired laptop and submits the request.

Imagine how the user experience would be when the list of laptops is presented with images and a short description as in the following screenshots.

Administrators can enable cost and image for the resource question. Once enabled, multiple images and a short description can be added against each option available in the resource question.

Note: In case you do not want the cost to be shown to the requester, it can be disabled from Admin > Self-Service Portal settings > General.

Resource question provides the flexibility to manually add the options or simply choose the product type, you will have all products available under chosen product type listed as options. This eliminates the manual process which can be a huge time saver.

Also, when new products are added in the future, you'll have them populated here without any manual intervention.

Assume a user submits a request for laptop, approver reviews the cost and specifications of the laptop, he approves the request. Once approved, the technician can then work further on the request, however, how would the approver know if the technician makes any change on the resource question?

To address this, we brought in the enhancement to reinitiate the approval when a technician makes any changes on the resource question of an approved service request, the approver can review the changes made and take the approval action.

We hope this post helps you understand the benefits of resource questions over custom fields for service requests.

Check our previous article that explains configuring session timeout in ServiceDesk Plus.