Create Multiple Instances of Same Catalog Item in Order Guide Request

[jmiskey]

So we have a very involved Order Guide that people are going to be using in Service Portal.  Based on the selections that they make in the Order Guide, a handful out of a possible 30 Catalog Items will be presented for them to complete.  The issue is that they may need to fill out multiple copies of the same Catalog Item, and I am not sure how to set this up to allow them to do this.

For example, we have a Catalog Item that is a Form to request a new product.  It asks all the questions pertinent to setting up that new product.  However, they may want/need to request more than one new product.  The thought is to maybe have a question at the very bottom of the New Product Catalog Item Form that says something like "Do you have another product that you would like to set-up?", and if they answer "Yes", it creates another blank copy of the New Product Catalog Item Form for them to complete.

Is something like this possible?  If so, how do I do this?

Is this is not possible, has anyone come up with any good alternatives?

Thanks.

[Mark Stanger]

It's not possible unfortunately.  See this post for details.

https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_question&sys_id=de670b69db1cdbc01dcaf3231f961970

When I've seen this type of need before, it was generally approached either by using the 'Add to cart' button, then going back to the item and adding again or by trying to include multiple sets of variables on a single item form to allow a user to fill out details for multiple items within a single item form.  Both are a bit messy in their own ways, but that's about all you can do with the current setup.

[jmiskey]

Thanks Mark.  I was afraid of that.

Can you explain a little more of that the "Add to Cart" button option is?  I am not quite sure I follow how that would work.

The other option we thought of was to have an Excel attachment that they could download, populate, and re-upload.  However, they would lose some functionality, as there are many drop-down boxes that are dynamically populated from tables that are updated from an Oracle database.

[Mark Stanger]

The 'Add to Cart' option would simply be adding some sort of message to the item form where you need them to have multiple items to tell them to hit the 'Checkout' button to add the items to their cart, then to click the 'Continue shopping' button to select another catalog item.  They can then hit the 'Add to cart' button and go back as many times as they want to until they've got all of the items included.  The obvious strength of this solution is that you get the full catalog item form experience for each and every item.  The downside is that unless your instructions are completely clear and you can count on your users to follow them, it's not going to work very well.

You're right about the excel attachment option.  ServiceNow has just introduced a table variable (in the London release) that would probably be very helpful for this.

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/london-it-service-management/page/product/service-catalog-management/concept/c_ServiceCatalogVariableSets.html

There are also some 3rd-party table variables for service catalog, but I've seen some reports of these breaking in recent releases so you'll want to be careful if you pursue this route.

https://share.servicenow.com/app.do#/detailV2/9a1c883b2b100a00bddaff70f8da153f/overview

[jmiskey]

Mark,

I am intrigued by this "Add to Cart" option, and would like to investigate it further.  However, I am having issues in getting it set up correctly to allow that.  On the Catalog Items themselves, I have the "Use Cart Layout" box checked.  However, I do not see the "Add to Cart" option when testing it out on the Service Portal.  I just see the "Submit" button on the main Order Guide (and nothing on each Catalog Item).

Is there some trick to getting it to appear correctly in using Catalog Items within an Order Guide that uses a Rule Base?