How to Sort Catalog Items by Popularity/Usage Within a Selected Category in Service Portal?

Abhilasha Gowda · yesterday

Hi Community,

I have a requirement in ServiceNow Service Portal where, when a user selects a catalog category or filter section, the catalog items displayed within that category should be sorted based on popularity or usage, with the most frequently requested items appearing first.

I would like to understand the recommended approach to implement this functionality.

Requirements:

When a user selects a catalog category, display the catalog items associated with that category.
Provide an option to sort the catalog items by popularity/usage.
Display the most frequently requested items first.
Ensure the sorting works within the selected category rather than across the entire catalog.
Keep the existing portal functionality and catalog item visibility rules unchanged.

Questions:

Is there any out-of-the-box ServiceNow functionality or widget that supports sorting catalog items by popularity within a selected category?
Can this be achieved by configuring or extending the existing Service Catalog category widget, or is a custom widget required?
Which table or API should be used to determine catalog item popularity based on request counts?
What is the recommended approach to implement this efficiently without affecting portal performance?

If anyone has implemented a similar requirement, I would appreciate your guidance, recommended approach, or sample implementation.

Thank you

Kieran3 · yesterday

Hi ,

In Employee Center, you're able to sort by Popularity or A-Z out of the box using the Topic Content OOB widget. Popularity is usage based so they can't be separate sorting options. My screenshot below shows this in the Employee Center portal with the.

Picture from my PDI

Upon checking the Catalog in Service Portal, it has configuration for Popularity my default. If you hold 'Ctrl' and right-click on the catalog, you'll get the widget options.

If you then go into Instance Options, you'll be able to set the Popular Items timespan.

However, it looks like the Service Portal widgets only support Popularity sorting OOB.

Hope this helps! If you found it useful, feel free to leave a 👍 Kudos. If it answered your question, accepting it as a solution helps others find the answer too.

Abhilasha Gowda · yesterday

Hi @Kieran3 ,

Thank you for the clarification.

I have five catalog items belonging to different categories, and I want to display these specific items in the Popular Items section.

Is it possible to configure the OOB widget to include these five selected catalog items manually through Instance Options, regardless of their actual request frequency? Or would this require cloning and customizing the existing widget?

I would appreciate any suggestions for achieving this without impacting the existing functionality.

My second question is regarding sorting catalog items by usage/popularity within each category.

When a user selects a category or applies a category filter in the Service Catalog, I want the catalog items within that selected category to be sorted by popularity or usage, with the most frequently requested items displayed first.

For example:

Hardware: Sort Hardware catalog items by request frequency.
Software: Sort Software catalog items by request frequency.
Other categories: Apply the same sorting logic within each selected category.

Is this possible using the OOB SC Category Page widget or its Instance Options? If not, what is the recommended approach to implement category-specific popularity sorting without affecting the existing catalog functionality?

Thank you for your guidance.

Kieran3 · 3 hours ago

Hi @Abhilasha Gowda,

For requirement one, you’d need to clone the widget and customise it as it’s linked to the current category. One way could be to make a category just containing those items and then you wouldn’t need to clone/customise.

With the second part, usage and popularity are the same thing. A catalog item being popular just means it’s used more. This sorting is an OOB configuration so you shouldn’t need to change anything. I hope that clears it up?

Hope this helps! If you found it useful, feel free to leave a 👍Kudos. If it answered your question, accepting it as a solution helps others find the answer too.