Service Catalog updates

[MeganCox]

I'm trying to revamp our catalog page to help with self-service. I made a mockup for it with AI to try and see what it looks like based on what I want. But now I don't know if there are native ways to get this done. 

1. A search box that only searches this page (ticket titles/descriptions)
2. The ability to have the 8 main ticket categories on the page, and then when you click it filters to the ones in that category - my supervisor would like it to be one page rather than use the taxonomy to make microsites for each category. 

3.  The ability to click through and easily go back once you're in one category. 

Is this possible with anything natively OOB, or will this definitely require a lot of customization and developing? I'm low code/no code when I can be, so I'd like to keep it simple. 

[Vikram Reddy]

Hey @MeganCox,

Start in the Content Taxonomy application, not Portal Designer. Everything in your mockup, the 8 category tiles, the click-through list, the back button, is what a Topics structure gives you natively once content is tagged, and it lives on one Employee Center page, not eight separate microsites.

Here's the mapping to what you're picturing:

• The 8 category cards (Banking Equipment, Building Access & Security, etc.) become Topics under your Employee taxonomy in Content Taxonomy > Taxonomies. No scripting, just create the topic records, set an order value, and activate them.
• The services under each category (your "Request", "Problem" cards in the second screenshot) get tagged to that topic through Connected Content on the topic record, pointing at the catalog category or individual catalog items. Once a topic has connected content it automatically renders as a drill-in topic page.
• The "← Back to Categories" navigation you mocked up is the standard back/breadcrumb behavior on a topic page, it's built in, you don't build it.
• The scoped search box is the harder one to get exactly "this page only." Employee Center's global search runs through Search Sources (Employee Center Configuration > Search), and the default catalog source searches title and short description across the whole portal. To restrict it to one topic's content, add a filter condition on that Search Source keyed to the topic or category, that's a declarative change in the condition builder, not code.

None of this needs Portal Designer widgets or custom pages unless you want a layout that deviates from the standard topic page template, so it fits your low-code preference well. The one thing to sanity-check before you plan the whole build around it: Topics/taxonomy is an Employee Center Pro feature, not part of base Employee Center. If you're on standard Employee Center, you'd instead be working with plain Service Catalog categories, which gives you category tiles but not the same connected-content curation or topic-page search scoping.

References

• Employee Center vs. Employee Center Pro: what are the differences and what licenses are required?
• How do I add new topic/category in ESC portal
• Enable Search option on Topic pages of Employee Center

Thank you,
Vikram Karety
Octigo Solutions INC

[Tanushree Maiti]

Hi @MeganCox 

If it is service Portal:

Refer: Service Portal, SC Categories widget improvements

If it is ESC oprtal ,

SC Categories and SC Category Page on Topic pages 

Configure search by the topic facets 

[ajmalmuhamm]

Hi @MeganCox ,

Most of what you're describing can be achieved out of the box, depending on whether you're using Employee Center or the classic Service Portal.

• Search: Employee Center includes a catalog search that can be scoped to catalog items. If you need it to search only the items displayed on a specific page, some configuration or a small customization may be required.

• Category filtering: You can display the main catalog categories and allow users to filter items by category on the same page. This is supported more naturally in Employee Center than in the classic Service Portal.

• Navigation: Users can drill into a category and navigate back using the built-in page navigation. If you want a seamless single-page experience where the item list updates without leaving the page, that would require some customization (for example, with UI Builder or custom widgets).

If you're on Employee Center, I'd recommend exploring UI Builder before considering custom development. It provides significantly more flexibility while remaining low-code compared to building custom Service Portal widgets.