How to handle requests not in the service catalog

[markyeatman]

We're fairly new to ServiceNow and currently have a limited number of catalog items built out in our end user accessible catalog. We do have a portfolio of overall services but not all the corresponding catalog items and related tasks built out.   Realistically we won't for some time, so until then we're looking for suggestions or examples of how other organizations intake and process requests that are not yet available in the catalog.

We process approximately 10K requests a year and most won't have a corresponding catalog item initially. Offhand it seems we need a methodology functionally similar to how incidents are created and processed as a stop gap until more things are available in the catalog or maybe there's another way to handle this?

Looking for suggestions or examples, initially at a high level, of how other organizations have dealt with this issue. We're aware of the relationships between Requests, Items and Tasks so don't need to cover that unless it's specific to a proposed solution.

[Chuck Tomasi]

Hi Mark,

You could have a "Can't find it?" category and have a generic "catch all" catalog item that asks some basic questions.

• Who is this for?
• Describe your need.
• When would you like it?
• If approval is required, we will contact your manager. Please indicate someone else we can contact if this is incorrect.

Keep it simple and then you can start to categorize and measure demand on the RITM side of things to help drive where you need to build additional catalog items.

[Chuck Tomasi]

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Thank you

[markyeatman]

We do have a generic "Submit a request to IT" form that incorporates some of what you suggested and while that seems to be a somewhat reasonable solution to end users, we're finding it lacking for IT to IT requests (our ITIL users) as well as ITIL users that want to self enter their own request/task related work for record keeping. The Incident form is so simple and direct but for requests the Req>RITM>Task architecture makes it so layered it's prohibitive for simple requests.

[Chuck Tomasi]

Another option... You could always create a custom table from task and a record producer to capture these "off catalog" requests. Be aware this may impact your licensing as anyone fulfilling these request may require a platform runtime license. Check with your sales rep to understand the ramifications better.