Migrating 'Category' based User Criteria to Employee Center Portal

Rob M1 · ‎07-04-2023

Hello Community!

I am working on migrating from Service Portal to Employee Center, and I have a question regarding the migration of our User Criteria.

It seems that User Criteria we have applied directly to a catalog item works just fine. If a criteria is added to the 'Available For' related list on a catalog item, we are able to control access to that item on Employee Center.

The issue I am running into is that most of our User Criteria is set at the 'Category' level instead of the 'Catalog Item' level (e.g. we make an entire category of catalog items 'Available For' a certain set of users). It seems that the criteria we have applied at the category-level is not working on Employee Center like it did on Service Portal.

Is there an easy way to make 'Category' level User Criteria apply on the Employee Center portal? If not, is there an easy way to cascade our 'Category' level criteria to the corresponding catalog items?

Thanks a ton!

Rob

jMarshal · ‎07-04-2023

Ahhh - OK...I don't believe the "Add content from a category" feature looks to User Criteria for validation like the Service Catalog does. You would have to also add the User Criteria to the actual catalog items which are in the categories...right now, they are not restricted, just "access to them" is. Which, essentially prevents the ability to use them, unless you bypass that -- which is what you're experiencing, you're bypassing the actual catalog and adding direct links to the items in the category.

Think of it like this...the User Criteria you have on the catalog for the categories puts a locked door at the "hallway" for each category of request item (think of the request item as a "room" in the hallway)...

...no one can get into the room because they need access to the hallway, which is locked by a door at the front (via user criteria on catalog categories). So essentially, you have restricted access to each room...but technically you haven't. Those doors have no locks on them, currently.

However, you're now building a new hallway (via "Add content from a catalog category") and the platform isn't putting the same locked door at the front of the hall, and I assume that's because they figured you'd have locks on the doors, if needed.

...so you can "add locks on those doors" via User Criteria on each item in the category in question...or you can modify the hallway that you created...but I think the former is easier (and better practice), as the "hallway creation" was an OOB feature that may be hard to modify and may have unintended outcomes (it doesn't use "user criteria" itself, you'll be building that into the feature that you're using)...

...it might be worth it to raise this as a feature request with ServiceNow via the Ideation features in Now Support, you may find that someone else has even asked for this and you only need to "upvote" the idea.

In my opinion, this is just an oversight with the oob features that ServiceNow build into Employee Centre and likely that feature will be added...so in the mean-time, adding specific user criteria to the individual items would be "best", as it would be easily reversible once this feature is in place and does not modify any oob behaviour.

--

Another option would be to add the items to Employee Centre in a different way (don't use the "Add via category" feature) - instead build a page with a catalog widget right on it (a specific catalog page in employee centre). This feature (the catalog widget or directly linking the catalog, not the category, in Employee Centre) would be subject to the User Criteria that you already have set up on categories of the catalog.

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jMarshal · ‎07-04-2023

What do you mean by "Category level" User Criteria? Can you provide an example of one of the User Criteria records you are trying to use and for what purpose?

It sounds like you currently restrict the available/visible categories of a certain service catalog based on user criteria (in the Service Portal specifically?)...but those don't apply to a different catalog which is set up in Employee Centre...is that correct?

Rob M1 · ‎07-04-2023

Correct!

Our existing Service Catalog consists of several categories that we have applied User Criteria to to make them visible to only certain users. This works on the Service Portal as well as on the back-end in the fulfiller UI.

I added the categories to several taxonomy topics I created using the 'Add content from a catalog category' related link. I assumed that the existing user criteria on those categories would flow through to the taxonomy as well, but they did not. We have a couple of catalog items with user criteria applied to them directly. These user criteria work just fine.

Is there any way to apply user criteria to taxonomy topics, or do I need to apply user criteria to each catalog item in the taxonomy?

jMarshal · ‎07-04-2023

Ahhh - OK...I don't believe the "Add content from a category" feature looks to User Criteria for validation like the Service Catalog does. You would have to also add the User Criteria to the actual catalog items which are in the categories...right now, they are not restricted, just "access to them" is. Which, essentially prevents the ability to use them, unless you bypass that -- which is what you're experiencing, you're bypassing the actual catalog and adding direct links to the items in the category.

Think of it like this...the User Criteria you have on the catalog for the categories puts a locked door at the "hallway" for each category of request item (think of the request item as a "room" in the hallway)...

...no one can get into the room because they need access to the hallway, which is locked by a door at the front (via user criteria on catalog categories). So essentially, you have restricted access to each room...but technically you haven't. Those doors have no locks on them, currently.

However, you're now building a new hallway (via "Add content from a catalog category") and the platform isn't putting the same locked door at the front of the hall, and I assume that's because they figured you'd have locks on the doors, if needed.

...so you can "add locks on those doors" via User Criteria on each item in the category in question...or you can modify the hallway that you created...but I think the former is easier (and better practice), as the "hallway creation" was an OOB feature that may be hard to modify and may have unintended outcomes (it doesn't use "user criteria" itself, you'll be building that into the feature that you're using)...

...it might be worth it to raise this as a feature request with ServiceNow via the Ideation features in Now Support, you may find that someone else has even asked for this and you only need to "upvote" the idea.

In my opinion, this is just an oversight with the oob features that ServiceNow build into Employee Centre and likely that feature will be added...so in the mean-time, adding specific user criteria to the individual items would be "best", as it would be easily reversible once this feature is in place and does not modify any oob behaviour.

--

Another option would be to add the items to Employee Centre in a different way (don't use the "Add via category" feature) - instead build a page with a catalog widget right on it (a specific catalog page in employee centre). This feature (the catalog widget or directly linking the catalog, not the category, in Employee Centre) would be subject to the User Criteria that you already have set up on categories of the catalog.

Rob M1 · ‎07-04-2023

That explains it!

Pretty much exactly what I suspected. As you suggest, I will work on applying the 'Category' based criteria to the corresponding items (I'm sure I can script it).

Thanks so much for your helpful insight!