Service Catalog - Creating Reports based on Requested Items

[jshatney]

We've been working through a Service Now implementation for roughly 4 months. All of the core/foundation configuration is complete. We have built over 75 Service Catalog items. Everything seems to be moving in the right direction.

Now that I have been able to correct all of our bugs and defects, I decided to spend some time building reports.

Incident Related Reports - Check
Service Catalog Related Reports - ?!@ What huh?!@ I can't report on Variables within a requested item?

Being a sensible person, I didn't expect there to be any trouble creating reports. Instead, I find out that reporting on the variables within a Requested Items is nearly impossible WITHIN the Service Now platform.

Can someone please explain to me if there is a way to get this done? This isn't a difficult request. This is a common process that pretty much every company using Service Now needs to be able implement. The Service Catalog itself is somewhat defunct without being able to report, run metrics, and get good data OUT of the tool.

So far, the implementation partners that we are using have not given us any helpful information. They have recommended the following:

"You need to create tables with the variables as the fields…..
Then write business rules to populate the fields…You'll have to create a table per form (only way unfortunately). Then populate the value in the variables to the fields on the table. Also, on that table you need to have a reference to the request and the requested items…
(This could be a lot of hours of work depending on how many forms you have)
Also it could be hundreds of scripts."

This is unacceptable that a Enterprise Solution that costs as much as Service Now to not have the ability to easily create (I want my end users to be able to do this if they want) reports based on Requested Item variables.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

[HugoFirst]

We ran into the same problem. We put custom variables into the forms and used them extensively instead of cramming everything into a "Description" field.

I'll start by giving you a link to a Wiki article and then give you a summary of what we did.
First, the link: http://wiki.servicenow.com/index.php?title=Reporting_on_Service_Catalog_Variables

Now, instead of making the report on the Requested Item table ( or whatever table you think you should use ),
make a report on the "Variable Ownership" table ( sc_item_option_mtom).

The pertinent columns to display are
Parent Item
Parent Item.Item
Dependent Item.Question
Dependent Item.Value

The Dependent Item.Question is the label you use in the form for the variable you are interested in.
The Dependent Item.Value is the value for that enter.

Next, you will filter the report to get just those variables associated with your Catalog Item and Variable Name.
You can filter it for your item that you're interested in using:
"Parent Item.Item" is "name of your form".
Continue the filter with something like
"Dependent Item.Question" is "label used for your variable"

One example is:
Parent Item.Item is "New Server Request"
Dependent Item.Question is "File System"

Now run the report and yoyu should get a list with 4 columns showing

1. The RITM ( under Parent Item )
2. The Item Name (ie. New Server Request )
3. File System ( under Question )
4. A value for the File System ( under Value )

Like I said, this is not perfect, but it's what we have at the moment. I'm hoping we'll get some new functionality with an upcoming release.

[jshatney]

I was just on a call with Service Now and was told this is a "PAIN POINT" with Service Now and this functionality is limited/unavailable.

THANK YOU FOR LETTING US KNOW THIS 4 WEEKS BEFORE IMPLEMENTATION..

[nikita_mironov]

We are capturing variable names and values to a large text field in sc_req_item table on RITM creation (optionally can be executed on variable value change after the submission). We also placed it on the form so users see it. This allows easy way to report on variable values using "CONTAINS" filter. We also evaluated the above mentioned method with database views but considered that "not easy to understand" by end users.

[jshatney]

Since I cannot get to the data I need to create these reports inside of Service Now, I'm forced to try and build reports outside using an ODBC connection.

Crystal reports is our flavor of choice.

I so far, am still NOT able to get more than 1 variable to display in a report.

Does anyone have any experience pulling Requested Item reports using an ODBC?