Questions regarding the OOTB process for REQ, RITM, sc_task

[Astik Thombare]

Hi Community,

I have a few questions regarding the Service Catalog process in ServiceNow. I would appreciate your insights on the following:

1. Request Creation: How is the request (REQ) generated once a catalog item is submitted? Are there specific business rules or flows responsible for this?

2. RITM Generation: How is the Requested Item (RITM) generated for a request? Is there an OOTB (Out-of-the-Box) flow or business rule that handles this?

3. SC Task Generation: How are Service Catalog Tasks (sc_task) created in the OOTB setup? What triggers their creation?

4. Approval Process: How are approvals triggered in the Service Catalog process? Are they dependent on specific flows, workflows, or configurations?

5. Flow Creation on RITM: Why do we typically create flows or workflows on the RITM level rather than the REQ level? My understanding is that REQ and RITM are generated via some OOTB business rules, and any associated workflow or flow attached to the catalog item is responsible for generating sc_task. Can someone confirm or clarify this?

[Kieran Anson · Accepted solution]

Hi,

For questions 1 and 2 - this is an automatic process which is black-boxed and the code is not accessible to us. You can however use the cartJS API to create requested items programatically.

For question 3 - SC Tasks are generated via the workflow that powers that catalog item. This'll be either a legacy workflow, or a flow created in Workflow Studio. There are older technologies which you make come across, but they are very-old and for the sake of confusion, not referred to here.

For question 4, approvals generally triggered as part of the flow/workflow. Approval rules do also exist, but aren't that commonly used

Question 5 - Requests can contain many Requested Items. Each has it's own process. A Request can be used for tracking approval based on the request items within it. A good example to use is the Request is the "basket" and the request items are the items within that basket. If the total cost of the basket is more than X amount, then you may want to seek approval at the Request level from a financial approver. If the Request is in an awaiting approval state, the requested items won't trigger their workflows/flows.