Converting a Catalog Item to an Order Guide

[ServiceNowSteve]

I have a lengthy catalog item we made for opening a new store but now there are other pre-built catalog items that need to be included with it as options.

To do this I decided we would use an order guide but it seems like there is no way to simply turn a catalog item into an order guide which I personally believe is a serious lack of foresight on ServiceNow's side if true. I can add the catalog item to a rule base so it shows up when I click Next and go to the Choose Options section but that's not where it should go, instead it should be the first item in the "Describe Needs" section.

The only thing I can see to do is completely rebuild the item as an order guide from scratch but I hope somebody knows a trick to save me from countless hours of needless work.

[Allen Andreas]

Hello,

A catalog item and an order guide are separate processes.

I can understand your frustration, but I don't agree that it's a lack of foresight from ServiceNow. I feel your opinion is a bit biased and of course you'd feel that way considering you're in that situation.

A catalog item that was built with the potential to have numerous options, each with their own workflow, etc. should have been identified as a possible order guide candidate previously.

With that said, there's no easy way to simply convert it over to an order guide and you would have to "rebuild" it as such.

The order guide form itself should consist of a combination of selections that would trigger the automatic addition of catalog item as well as variables that would be consistent to all other catalog items included so that the data can be easily cascaded across them.

Please mark reply as Helpful/Correct, if applicable. Thanks!

[ServiceNowSteve · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your reply.

I was able to do a "fix" on this that got me most of the way there by simply going to the item_option_new table where the catalog item variables are stored and just mass changed the Catalog Item from my old one to the Order Guide. 

There will be a few manual items like client scripts or UI Policies I may need to re-create but this seems to be the fastest way to move the variables.

Thanks for your help

[Allen Andreas]

Hi,

If that works for you, then great.

The issue is that is could break past requests that were submitted for the catalog item as you're now disassociating it from it. Without context from you, this wasn't suggested by me because normally a person wouldn't create a catalog item and put all that effort in and then turn right around and need to make it into an order guide.

So if this didn't break all of your other requested items and everything is fine, then sure, mass changing it "can" work.

I'd still be on the lookout for any possible wonkiness as the ideal outcome would be to recreate it because there may be a need to revert back to the old catalog item (which you could disable for future ordering unless you need it again).

I see you've marked your own reply as Correct, so I'll leave it at this.

Take care! 🙂

[The SN Nerd]

I recently faced this and just did this.

I copied the catalog item, then edited all variables, variable sets and client scripts to point to the order guide.