Ideas for combining multiple similar record producers into one

[Kevin Schultz]

I'm looking to brainstorm solutions or get suggestions for solutions I may not have thought of. We have a series of record producers that are about 80% similar that create case records in CSM. Because of the 20% difference, each use case is a different record producer, and maintenance is annoying. If something changes in the 80% of fields, we have to update it multiple times. 

I was hoping ServiceNow might have some kind of paginated process or wizard or something that we could use to collect the 80% of similar info on one screen, then go to a different screen for the 20% of information that differs, and then make decisions about what to do with the record based on that 20% of info that differs. 

I have browsed the community and read a bit about what seems to be an old / possibly deprecated Wizards function, but it seems to only be possible when using the catalog to create requests and request items. That won't work, since I need the generated records to be cases. 

Can anyone suggest a method or feature I might look into to begin thinking about how to solve this? I'd like to avoid a really complicated set of conditionals on a single record producer; that's really not any easier to maintain than our current solution and is arduous for the user. 

[SanjivMeher]

I would create a Variable Set in such case, to store all the fields that is common in all the record producer. That way, if there is a new common variable to be added, I can just add it to the variable set. Variable set can have its on UI Catalog Policy and catalog client script which will apply to all variable set.

I dont think there is a wizard functionality or combining record producer functionality. If you combine them, it may become difficult to change anything in future. because one change will have impact of all the record producer. So I would keep them separate and create a variable set which I can change later, if any new variable to be added or any changes to be made to those set of variables.

[DrewW]

I think you are looking to trade one headache for another.  You are going to have to have a variable set for the common vars, then you are going to have to have another set for each set for the 20%.  Then you are going to have to build out a way to decide which set of vars to display and so on.  So your 1 record producer is going to be really complicated.  So how is that going to be any different then having a cat item for each case type that are really simple to maintain?  But then you having a bunch of them.

What we did was just keep the bunch of individual cat items and then built a Q&A wizard for out SP that would present the user with a set of questions.  When they click on the answer to a question it would then either direct them to a catalog item or it would ask them another question and it would keep doing that until it got them to the right cat item.  I think we only have 3 levels of questions at the moment.

[Kevin Schultz]

Your second paragraph there is what I'm looking to do - how did you build out a Q&A wizard? Was that something you built yourself, or was there a platform feature / tool that helped? 

[DrewW · Accepted solution]

I built a SP widget and some custom tables because ServiceNow does not have something for this.

I then for each wizard create a SP page for it and put the widget on it with the options set for the wizard I want to display and then add a content item the had a type of "External Content" and a Target of "Within Catalog" so it would still show up in the Service Catalog, but when you click on the cat item it will open in a new tab/window and load the wizard for them to go thru.