What is the purpose of linking service offering and catalog items?

[Suggy]

Question 1 - What are the benefits when I link the service offerings with catalog items? 

Is it only for reporting (how many offerings are consumed) or anything beyond that?

Question 2 - Here

I see some discussion regarding 1 SO <> N Catalog , 1SO <> 1 Catalog only etc

but its not clear on what is the final recommendation and the rationale behind that. Can anyone clarify?

[palanikumar]

You can tag one Service Offering to multiple Catalog Item.

Refer the below article for more details:

https://www.servicenow.com/community/common-service-data-model/csdm-amp-request-catalog-service-offe...

[Suggy]

Hi @palanikumar In that blog they are talking about 1 SO <> N Catalog , 1SO <> 1 Catalog only etc

but its not clear on what is the final recommendation and the rationale behind that. Can you clarify that if you are aware

[Sarthak Kashyap]

Hi Suggy,

Purpose:

• A Service Offering represents a defined deliverable under a Business Service (e.g., "Email Service" → "Corporate Mailbox", "Shared Mailbox").

• A Catalog Item is the user-facing request option in the Service Catalog (e.g., "Request a new mailbox", "Request a shared mailbox").

• Linking them ties the back-end Service Portfolio with the front-end Service Catalog.

Benefits of linking:

1. Visibility in Service Portfolio – You can trace which catalog items are enabling which service offerings.

2. Reporting & Metrics – Helps in SLA, usage reporting, cost tracking, and demand management.

3. Service Mapping – End users request via catalog items, but IT tracks demand/consumption at the service offering level.

4. Consistency – Keeps the service model (offerings) aligned with what’s available for request.

Please check below URL

https://www.servicenow.com/community/common-service-data-model-forum/how-to-define-our-services-and-...

https://www.servicenow.com/community/incident-management-forum/what-s-the-purpose-of-the-service-ser...

https://www.servicenow.com/community/developer-forum/how-to-relate-a-catalog-item-to-a-service-offer...

Please mark my answer correct and helpful if this works for you

Thanks,

Sarthak

[aruncr0122]

Hi @Suggy ,

Why link services (service offerings) with catalog items?
Because it helps you tie catalog requests back to the business service they belong to. This gives:

Better reporting (which services are being requested most, SLAs, costs, etc.)

Clearer service ownership (you know which team is responsible for a request)

Easier impact analysis (you can see requests tied to a service if that service has issues).

One service offering ↔ catalog items:

It’s normal and recommended for one service offering to have multiple catalog items.
Each catalog item should map to the one service offering it belongs to, not multiple offerings.

✅ In short:

One catalog item → one service offering

One service offering → can have many catalog items

That’s the best practice and gives you clean reporting and ownership.