Evaluation of Approaches for Building Service Catalog in ServiceNow from Workflow to Flow Designer

[VLM]

Request: Please provide guidance on which approach is best suited for our needs and any additional considerations we should take into account. We are evaluating two approaches for building service catalog items in ServiceNow for easy maintenance. Below is a detailed comparison of the two approaches:

Approach 1: One Standard Flow Per Process

Flows: 

Flow 1 - REQ > RITM > SCTASK

Flow 2 - REQ > RITM > Approval > SCTASK

Flow 3 - REQ > RITM > SCTASK1 > SCTASK2

Eg : CTask - setting the below in flow (See attached Approach 1)

Short description - " Fulfill Task - <item name>

Description - This is an IT request to fulfill - <item name>

Assignment group - <fulfiller group>

Approach 2: One Generic flow with System Property Configuration

Description:

• Define one generic catalog item flow for all the catalog items 
• 'N' catalog item will have 'N' system properties. 

Eg : System property: See attached Approach 2 

[
{ "table":"sc_request",
"fields":"short_description= Exception - Request^description=Template used to request a temporary exception from the requirement of 'offshore users in identified delivery center countries must work from a delivery center'^requested_for=<<VARIABLE$requested_for>>"
},
{ "table":"sc_req_item",
"fields":"state=2^opened_by=<<VARIABLE$opened_by>>^requested_for=<<VARIABLE$requested_for>>^assignment_group=f687ff281bd237009dd1fc031d4bcba7^short_description=<<REQ$short_description>>^description=<<REQ$description>>"
},
{ "table":"sc_task",
"short_description":"<<RITM$short_description>>",
"fields":"short_description=<<RITM$short_description>>^opened_by=<<VARIABLE$opened_by>>^assignment_group=<<RITM$assignment_group.sys_id>>^description=<<RITM$description>>",
"catalogVariables":"ALL"
}
]

Also, we already have 5000 system properties and adding more system properties (1 per each catalog item) would impact performance as well per our understanding. Will we be able to use the workflow advanced features. Found an article on system property impacting performance too - https://www.servicenow.com/community/now-platform-blog/prevent-performance-issues-caused-by-improper...

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