Generate Custom Excel Document

[Steve McCarty]

I have a vendor that only accepts orders in an Excel spreadsheet sent as an attachment to an e-mail.   When my user's need items from this vendor they currently have to download a template and update the Excel file and e-mail it to the vendor themselves.   Which means I have no record of what was purchased for whom.   I would like to move these orders into our service catalog so that at the very least I have a record of what was ordered.   The problem comes when I want to actually place the orders with the vendor.   I would like to be able to simply look at a request, automatically generate the needed Excel spreadsheet (preferably using a template), and send an e-mail to the vendor with the spreadsheet attached.   The spreadsheet has to be in a particular format with order information in the cells at the top and then the list of items below.   The service catalog items and sending an e-mail I can do, but does anyone know if there is a way to build a custom formatted Excel spreadsheet within Service-Now and then attach that to an e-mail?

[Community Alums]

Stephen, can you provide a sample of what the resulting spreadsheet should look look like and how it should be formatted? Does the vendor require this format because they have an automated way to pull it into their system?

[Steve McCarty]

I've attached a sample template.   I'm not sure why the vendor requires this format, they haven't been real helpful on that.   Basically it boils down to if we want to get the discounted pricing they offer, we have to supply the information in the format they want.   These are accessories for handheld PDAs we already own (we have several thousand of them around the US and Canada) and the choice of vendors is rather limited.   All the information needed for the order form is in Service-Now, I'm just not sure how to put it in the right fields in the Excel file.

[Mike Hill1]

Did you ever find a solution to this?   We have a similar requirement that I am looking into and your question most closely matched our situation.   Appreciate any information you found out that you might be able to pass on about it.  

Cheers!

[Steve McCarty]

No we haven't been able to find a way to generate a custom Excel document.   I was able to convince the vendor to let us just send the information in the body of the email instead of in an attached Excel document by creating a sample email and sending it to them.   When they saw that I could get them the same information in a consistent format they were okay with it.   I would like to revisit this for some other applications if I get some time, but it may be a while before I can do any more research on my own.