Use a record producer, or a catalog item?

[dhasselquist]

Greetings all.

In our implementation of Service Now, we went live with very basic end-user functionality. They use the ESS site to either submit an incident or request via record producers (Something Broken/Request Something). We are now going to be offering a true catalog of services, and I have a question regarding when to use record producers vs catalog items.

Clearly, for a user requesting a specific model phone, we will use a catalog item. The request generated will have the requested item; it makes sense. The breakdown for me is whether we should use an item for a generic "request".

For example, someone submitting a request for a classroom technology installation will fill out a few fields (common to all our IT-type requests) like funding information, room, and a brief description of what they desire which the tech will use to create a quote.

My question is, should this be a catalog item? I'm not sure that it makes sense in this situation for a user to add it to their cart, then checkout. I'm anticipating end users comparing it to the current "Make a request", which is only a record producer and doesn't have to proceed through the cart-checkout process.

[Michael Ritchie · Accepted solution]

Honestly its really what works best on the backend fulfillment process.   Record producers are meant to just produce 1 record while catalog items will have a parent request and 1 or many request items that have different fulfillment workflows.   Most organizations don't use the parent request and all the fulfillment is at the individual req item level - think of the parent request as the cart.

If you are just concerned about the cart/checkout process there are some settings on the catalog item (hidden) where you can specify that this catalog item cannot be added to a cart and only an "Order Now" button will appear.   These are fields you can add to the catalog item form and set and are documented here:

Defining Catalog Items - ServiceNow Wiki

[dhasselquist]

Michael, thanks for the information! I suspected that it would just depend, but it makes me feel better to have some validation.