Collapsing and expanding variable containers in Service Catalog

[Harsh33]

Dear Community,

I have seen several threads mentioning the need for collapsing and expanding variable containers in Service Portal, which is currently not supported. We are embarking on a journey for new functionality in Service Catalog and I was hoping you can help me understand the main reasons your users need this behavior.

I envision the following possibilities:

a) A pretty long catalog form

b) It's perceived to have a better look and feel

c) You need to specify titles which are only available in containers and variable sets

If you need variable containers to be collapsed for any one of the above reasons or any other reason, it'll be great if you can mention it as a response to this post.

Thanks!

[Oleg]

I posted recently here eine detained description where I use Catalog Client Script for inserting collapsing button via DOM manipulation. The client script should be started on Service Portal only. As the result you will have the same look on both Desktop and Service Portal. I included two scripts: one, which displays container of variables in collapsed form initially (I think it's what you need) and another one with expanding initial container. I hope it's want you need. I use the solution since a long time at our customers.

[Harsh33]

Thanks Oleg.

My question was more about the need for such a capability and was hoping that you could provide me with a few use cases. I am part of the product management team in ServiceNow and wanted to understand why our customers need this feature so that we can plan to solve for it in the future releases. 

[Oleg]

An example: The main problem of our customer was providing users possibility to enter some optional parameters of order, which we don't want to have in all requests. We want for example provide the possibility to order at later date or to write more detailed description of order reason. If one would display the options in collapsed form then users will spend less time for making standard orders. If one would display all the optional variables on every order then users will have long time to read and to fill the form (or to hold some fields unfilled). Additionally some users will misunderstand some questions because the questions have not much sense in his context. As the result, one will have unsatisfied users and some wrong filled orders which have to processed manually and the corresponding orders could be placed once more in correct way.

Simple collapsing of optional variables is really helpful feature in my opinion and it can be used in many scenarios.

[Harsh33]

Thanks for your response Oleg.

[ABouland]

In my case a mix of all three reasons.  Best example I have is Catalog Request for Server Onboarding.  
For us, a large number of details must be collected in order to complete the process.  4-5 teams are involved in providing the details (done by way of individual task assignments) and we've found that we must use individual variable fields for each piece of data or we don't manage to capture it.  Variables are all displayed on the request form so each team can see them and we separate by containers for each team so that they can easily locate the section they need to fill out.  Of the teams involved in the process, only one really needs to see ALL of the details, most teams just need to see two containers, the topmost with the basic details of the request and then their own section for where their details go.  There might be a better way to accomplish all of this but building on what I knew at the time, this was what we came up with.