I had the issue of not being able to get container items to work with a variable set in the Portal. Apparently the ServiceNow trying to make the portal more device agnostic issue.
As re-using variable sets was important to us in creating over 200 catalog items I wanted to find a way to get two column variable sets in the portal other than applying an unsupported update set from ServiceNow.
The fudge I found that does work is to create two variable sets instead of 1 one of the left side variables and one for the right side.
You then add the two variable sets to your form with left order lower than right e.g left order 10 and right order 20. Then on the variable section of the form you add a container start with 2 columns and alternating side with lower order e.g 5 in example above. And of course and end container with larger order than both e.g. 30 in this example. You then get the two columns in the portal.
Things you do need to be careful of is that your UI or scripting logic needs to have all the variables it is acting on in the same side variable set, but it does do the layout trick and I have not found another way to do it in posts, hence adding this to a year old post to help other people.
