Best practice for variables on HR Cases/HR Tasks

[Ethan Metcalf]

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for what is the best practice regarding record producer variables on HR Cases and HR Tasks. 

Currently, we are writing the variable values to the case description field. As our HR team has been maturing their processes, they want to start creating reports using some of the variable values. If I understand the accepted answer in this post correctly Display variables from record producer on HR case (scoped) I should create custom fields on the COE and map the record producer variable to the field on the COE. That makes sense for one record, but if you scale that up, there will eventually be a lot of custom fields across all different COEs.

Now, throw in Lifecycles where they want 1 Parent HR Case with several child HR Tasks. The HR Tasks would go to different teams to provide information. Ideally, it would be the best user experience for the owner of the HR Case to see all the information entered across all the HR Tasks in the HR Case and not have to go into each HR Task to get the information.

So my questions are:

• Is creating custom fields for all the variables the best practice? If so, is there any guidance for governance around all the data and fields, especially when they are no longer needed?
• What is the best way we can accomplish my Lifecycle scenario? 

[Max Dore]

Hi, have you looked into Variable Editor?

https://www.servicenow.com/community/service-management-forum/variable-editor-view-on-hr-records/m-p....

[Ethan Metcalf]

Hey Max,

I was thinking about that, but according to the accepted answer found in Display variables from record producer on HR case (scoped), ServiceNow decided to remove the Variable Editor from HR in Istanbul. I want to try my best and avoid making that customization if possible.

I think I have to come to terms with adding those custom fields to HR tables, as described in Configure the HR case form for an HR service. I'm just so used to ITSM and RITM/SCTASKS using variables that I was trying to apply the same solutions to HR.

Any other recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

[Bhavesh Bijagar]

Hi @Ethan Metcalf 

Not sure if you implemented custom fields solution.

Adding custom fields is also customization only.  Moreover number of fields will depend on each service.

Consider there are 10 fields for each HR Service that you will be bringing on case form. You will have to write UI policies as well to hide HR Service specific fields. If you have already built the record producers then you have to rework and map record producer variables to these custom fields.

Instead adding variable editor as one of the section in Agent Workspace and making it readonly, will be an easier and cleaner customization. saving you a lot of real estate.

Have done similar solutioning for one of my projects and was well recived and appreciated by customer.

Moreover you can create report also on record producer variables.

Note: If you are using MRVS, then just be cautious of using it, it will not be possible to report on MRVS variables in proper format.

[Ethan Metcalf]

Hey Bhavesh,

You are right, which is why I am trying to avoid adding all the custom fields to prevent the headache of maintaining all the UI Policies.

I know we can add it back, but ServiceNow specifically removed the Variable Editor from the HR Application back in Istanbul, which means that adding it back would require me to maintain that customization. At this point, I guess we just have to accept using the HR Services functionality and only add fields when absolutely necessary.

If you have any other suggestions, I'd greatly appreciate it.