How to merge Business Application Access and Software Request

VijayaMannapura · ‎10-24-2025

Hello All,

We are looking to merge Business Application Access request with Software Request. We are planning to do this because, we want to improve the customer experience by going to a single item on portal and request for 'GitHub Enterprise' instead of going to 'Application access request' to get access and 'Software Request' to get it provisioned.

Any ideas would be appreciated. Thank you.

Mathew Hillyard · ‎10-27-2025

Hi @VijayaMannapura

I would migrate away from the Business Application catalog item(s) and standardise on software requests. A great example is that MS Office apps are not Business Applications (or should not be, even if some orgs have business app stuff inside an Excel sheet!), but are often requested or provisioned for new users. As you can see, the end user should not need to know whether they're requesting a desktop software package or access to some enterprise SaaS product - they just want to request access to software.

There is an OOTB Record Producer with EA called "Register a Business Application". This is used when someone wants to onboard a new enterprise application to the organisation, so a very different purpose and it is usually restricted (e.g. to service owners or ITAOs).

I hope this helps!

Mat

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AudreyD · 3 weeks ago

Hello,

I'm not sure it's good idea. As an example, when a user ask for SAP is very easy for him to see an item with the SAP logo and name SAP Access request and think it's the good item. If you create a single item then it means you have to manage metadata and I'm not sure with all apps name it will be easy to manage it. And I don't know how the AI Search will be accurate to found it.

If you create an order guide to manage all single software access request, it's the same you will have to manage all the rules.

For me the first thing : check the CSDM and if your users see too many things it's may be because you don't well manage what should be available to whom. I see to many times almost all items of all catalogs open for all the company because :

- New catalog items are requested by wrong people with missing knowledge

- Missing catalog owner to manage his catalog properly

- Missing referential data to do right user criteria

Then attached any items to a service offering (technical or business). All items not attached to a service can be deleted because it means probably it refer to an old services that do not exist anymore. Or it should not be part of the Request management applications and be replaced by other app.

You can see this post : https://www.servicenow.com/community/common-service-data-model-forum/csdm-5-service-offering-definit...

Regards,

Birhanu · 3 weeks ago

Hi there,

Considering you're looking to enhance customer experience by allowing them to go to one Catalog Item, you can do what we've done for a customer. Check out the below screenshot.
This is primarily to optimize UX of Service consumption via the portal. Let me know if you would like to have further discussion on this.

AudreyD · 3 weeks ago

Hi,

Customization it's not the best. Don't forget that : the more you do customization the more you need to pay a team to maintain the tool the more you can't benefits of new features from servicenow.

For example, Item about Application could be automatically created from a software model by the Owner of applications with the native UI action. It could be then put into a catalog by a catalog owner.

For the automatic provisioning you could also use the Client software distribution 2.0 by putting the right flow and variable set into this items.

And then you put your item in the right taxonomy with the owner of the taxonomy.

And it means : you don't need ServiceNow dev to this.

Regards,

MitchPautz · 2 weeks ago

I am curious about all the options (4 buttons). Let me see if I have this right

Get - orders the request (acrobat) in this catalog item

Request something - oops I mean something else in the catalog

Have an issue - oops I mean acrobat is broken

Learn more - no, I just want to read an article on how to use acrobat

Does every form have these 4 buttons?

AudreyD · 2 weeks ago

No need for customization for this.

In OOB there is something called "related item'" as related list of catalog items. When you open an item it displayed related item of your choice at the end of the current form. (Maybe only for Zurich customer, try it on a PDI)