Best practice to copy Catalog Item Owner to Requested Item (RITM) for approvals in FLow Designer

[barbaratosetto]

Hi everyone,

I’d like to validate an approach I used to handle approvals and dynamic assignments for a Catalog Item in the Service Portal.

Scenario:

• I have a Catalog Item with an specific Owner (not me, but one of to-be approvers of the RITM).

• When an end user submits a request, the Requested Item (RITM) needs to be approved first by the Requested For’s Manager, and then by the Catalog Item Owner.

• Later, a fulfillment task will be created if both approvals are granted.

In Flow Designer, I could not directly pull the Owner field from the Catalog Item (sc_cat_item) because only variables and current RITM fields are available.

Solution I implemented:
I created a custom field in the RITM (u_catalog_item_owner, Reference → sys_user).
I created a Business Rule (Before Insert) to copy the sc_cat_item.owner to this new RITM field as soon as the RITM is created.
In my Flow, I use this new field as the Approver and (optionally) for an Assignment Rule.

Screenshots attached for clarity:

• Custom Dictionary Entry for the field

• Business Rule config and script

• Example of populated RITM

Question:
Does anyone know a more efficient or recommended way to achieve this same goal?
Is there a simpler best practice to reference the Catalog Item Owner directly in Flow Designer without adding a custom field?
Or would you suggest using a Script Action, Script Include, or Flow Action instead?

Appreciate any suggestions!

Business Rule Script:

(function executeRule(current, previous) {

  var catItem = new GlideRecord('sc_cat_item');

  if (catItem.get(current.cat_item)) {

    gs.info('BR Debug: Found Catalog Item: ' + catItem.getDisplayValue('name'));

    gs.info('BR Debug: Owner sys_id: ' + catItem.owner);

    current.u_catalog_item_owner = catItem.owner;

    gs.info('BR Debug: Set u_catalog_item_owner = ' + current.u_catalog_item_owner);

  } else {

    gs.info('BR Debug: Catalog Item NOT found for cat_item: ' + current.cat_item);

  }

})(current, previous);

[J Siva · Accepted solution]

Hi @barbaratosetto 

You can directly get the item owner by dot walking as below.

Regards,

Siva

[barbaratosetto]

I found a simple solution. Just dragged "Trigger - Service Catalog > Requested Item Record > Item > Owner

I tested and it worked fine.