Using the Service Catalog and workflows together is a smart way to make the process of ordering items more automated and efficient. Sometimes, though, customers have trouble with service catalog item workflows not starting.
Common symptoms are:
- When you click Show Workflow on the Request Item form, the message "There are no workflow contexts for this document" appears.
- No approvals or catalog tasks are generated for the item.
- Approval email messages are not generated.
To resolve the issue, ensure that the Request Item table is specified in the workflow, check that the correct workflow is listed on the item record, and check that the parent request is approved.
Big shout out to Arron Ubhi for his HI knowledge base article titled Service catalog request item - Unable to start workflow that provided much of the detailed, technical information in this blog post.
Setting the correct table for a workflow associated with a service catalog item
When creating a workflow, you specify the table on which the workflow should run. Many times this is a very straightforward choice, such as an incident workflow that runs on the incident table. A notable exception is a workflow for a specific service catalog item. The table on which the workflow runs should be set to the Requested Item table (sc_req_item), not the Catalog Item (sc_cat_item) table as you might guess.
- Navigate to Workflow > Workflow Editor.
- Do one of the following:
- Click the + icon in the Workflows tab to create a new workflow and type a Name
- Open an existing workflow
- In Table, select Requested Item (sc_req_item). Remember, do not use Catalog Item (sc_cat_item)!
- If you are creating a new workflow, click Submit and then add activities to the workflow. If you are editing an existing workflow, click Update.
Associating a workflow with a service catalog item
For a workflow on a service catalog item to start properly, the correct workflow must be specified on the catalog item record. Administrators and catalog administrators can define new items and update existing items to include a workflow.
- Navigate to Service Catalog > Catalog Definition > Maintain Items.
- Click New or open an existing catalog item.
- In the Workflow field, click the look up icon
and select a workflow for the catalog item.
- Click Submit or Update.
Check that the parent request is approved
The Start Workflow business rule on the Requested Item table has to trigger when the requested item record is updated. The business rule is executed on update instead of insert so the request is approved before the Request Item workflow starts. For more information, see Service catalog request item - Unable to start workflow.
- Navigate to Service Catalog > Requests.
- Click a request Number.
- Check the Approval field.
The value in the Approval field is determined by the workflow running on the parent Request [REQ] table.
Additional tips and information:
- Having an issue with a workflow and a glide record script? Bee Yang did and Ben Love kindly stepped in with good advice.
- Michael Bartkowiak asked a question about the difference between Request Approval and Request Item Approval and started an interesting conversation in the community
- Daniel White had an issue with approvals in a service catalog workflow and several people jumped in with suggestions including Shane Brazeal, Troy Pesola, and Monette Esparcia
- For general information about workflows in ServiceNow, see Service Catalog Workflows and Defining a Service Catalog Workflow in the product documentation
- For a tutorial lab from our Knowledge 15 conference, see Service Catalog and Workflow Overview
- For a video about problematic service catalog workflows, see Troubleshooting Stuck Workflows - Service Catalog Issues.
