The Service Catalog is one of the most widely adopted and implemented features in the ServiceNow platform. Think about it: On the first day your new hires step foot in your office, they have probably already been introduced to your organization's Service Catalog. As the employee makes him or herself at home in your office family, they will at some point or another touch the many opportunities that Service Catalog lends itself to.
As an admin working your magic on the Service Catalog, there are a few small but significant tweaks you can make to configure your catalog and make it easier and more efficient to use.
Five simple Service Catalog configurations (that can make a big difference):
- Change the number of previewed categories or items on the catalog homepage
- Add more widgets to the catalog homepage besides categories
- Adjust the catalog search to omit articles and categories unrelated to the user
- Turn your catalog bread crumbs into links
- Change the way you display item details: expanded, in a pop-up window, or in a list
These configurations allow you to better shape your catalog in a way that's most efficient for your organization. Of course, configurations and customizations are specific to your organization, so if you run into an issue with your catalog customization there is a chance that support can't help you out. But these configurations should be A-OK!
Change the number of previewed category items on the catalog homepage
Your catalog homepage should be the base for all guided activity. From the homepage, your employees or customers should be able to quickly and efficiently find the categories and potential items that they need to complete their order. By default, ServiceNow sets the number of category or items available on the homepage at five. Yes, just five categories or items will appear if you do nothing to configure this property. For some companies this number works fine, but for others (maybe larger, more complex companies) it would be nice to have more than five available. And for companies that prioritize simplicity, it would be ideal to display less than five categories.
You can adjust the number of categories or items on the Service Catalog homepage by setting the glide.sc.max_items property to whatever value your company prefers. Keep in mind, however, that more does not always mean better. So consider the user experience before picking 100.
Add more widgets to the catalog homepage besides categories
Also referred to as content types, the widgets on the catalog homepage can be exchanged or added to in order to provide your end user with the best user experience possible. To make things simple, the base system only shows catalog categories on the catalog homepage. You can add other widgets such as the Shopping Cart, Top Requests, and Services to the homepage as well.
To add more content types to the catalog homepage:
- Navigate to Service Catalog > Catalog Policies > Properties to view service catalog properties.
- Navigate to System UI > Widgets to see a list of content types available.
- List the widgets separated by commas in the glide.sc.home.filter property.
You can make the page as detailed or simple as you like. Of course, as mentioned previously, more is not always better.
Adjust the catalog search to omit articles and categories irrelevant to the user
This seems like a pretty "duh" type of configuration. Of course you only want relevant catalog items searchable by the user. We wouldn't want our new hire, Jimmy, ordering himself the $20,000 ergonomics mobile setup with treadmill-powered laptop battery and complimentary ecosphere in the inactive "Cool Secret Stuff for Execs" category available for order, right? Well, by default, any user who can access the homepage can search the service catalog. It is up to you to restrict access to search by role (glide.sc.can_search) or restrict which categories appear in search (glide.sc.search.disabled_cats).
Another way to access glide.sc.can_search without having to go to the sys_properties table is through Catalog Policies > Properties, where it says "List of roles (comma-separated) that can search the Service Catalog' (this is set to user 'public' by default).
Keep in mind that glide.sc.search.disabled_cats only blocks the inactive categories from showing up in search results and will not necessarily restrict all categories that an admin does not want to be seen. This is actually controlled through the glide.sc.search.exclude_catalogs property. This can be accessed through Catalog Policies > Properties where it says "List of catalog sys_ids (comma-separated) that are excluded from catalog item search." You can also access all of the properties of the Catalog by simply right-clicking any of the options on the Properties page and selecting Edit Property.
Turn your catalog bread crumbs into links
When the pesky "back" button in ServiceNow threatens to undo all of your search filters, it's nice when you can click on a link in your breadcrumbs and know your search is safe. CMS pages used as a catalog homepage will, by default, have breadcrumbs as just plain text. You can enable the breadcrumbs to be a link by setting glide.sc.use_breadcrumb_links.cms to "Yes." This gives your end users more control and (extra bonus) you can copy and paste the link to share with others.
Change the way you display item details: expanded, as a pop-up, or in a list
The more quickly your users can move through the catalog, find what they want and place their order, the sooner they can get to the important part of their work. You can choose to display as much or as little preview context to your end user depending on your goals for the user experience. The catalog gives you these three options to configure how you would like your item details displayed.
Expanded item details
The base system will automatically expand the details of the first two items on the page. For all the items after that, the user will need to click the "preview" arrow to view those details. If it is your user's first time in the catalog they may not realize they need to click the preview drop-down to get those item details. You can adjust the number of items for which the details expand by indicating that value in the glide.sc.auto_expand property.
If you change the expand property to 1, you can focus your end user's attention on the items your company suggests for the general users.
Pop-up preview
Some managers find the long list of expanded items to be confusing or too much clutter. If you prefer to just see the items in a list without the details, you can enable pop-ups to provide those items details in a preview, rather than having your end users scroll on, and on.
View as a list
If having all of the item details automatically expanded is annoying to scroll though, and the the pop-up windows are distracting, you can opt to have nothing expanded and instead have them appear as a list. Make sure glide.sc.cat_view_use_popup_for_details is set to "No" and glide.sc.auto_expand is set to "0."
You can also do things like hide the prices in the catalog and have the prices change based on the user's location. The possibilities are nearly endless with the Service Catalog. These configurations should help you tweak the user experience so that end users can navigate and place their orders efficiently and without too much trouble.
For more information on Service Catalog, see:
4 actions you can take when your Service Catalog variables are out of whack
Ensure updated Service Catalog items and categories are visible on all app nodes
Styling your Service Catalog form in Geneva
Filtering on the List Collector or SlushBucket variable in Helsinki
Top 5 Service Catalog solutions in Geneva
Getting your ServiceNow URLs right
Create a custom attachment button for your service catalog
Customize your service catalog's shopping cart
Re-align Service Catalog variables to reduce unwanted white space on forms in Geneva
