Getting started with Catalog Builder to scale your catalog development

[Dawn Jurek]

The Service Catalog team at ServiceNow is busy cooking up innovation for scaling your catalog development, and the first iteration of the new Catalog Builder is available in the Quebec release.

In Catalog Builder, catalog administrators build templates for catalog items. Then business owners build catalog items from those templates. Even if you're a business owner and you've never programmed or built a catalog item before, the Catalog Builder allows you to create your own catalog items via a safe, controlled process, in a user-friendly interface.

We've created the Catalog Builder video series to show you how Catalog Builder works, and we've compiled the tips below for both administrators and business owners to help you get started.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Tips for creating catalog item templates

If you're a catalog administrator and need to create a catalog item template, watch our video for an example scenario and to see a demo. Then read the tips below to get started.

Gather requirements for the template

You'll need to answer the following questions for the catalog items that your template will produce.

Standard catalog item versus record producer?

Should this template create standard catalog items or record producers? You need to pick one or the other for each template. Standard catalog items will automatically insert records into the Requested Item table. For record producers, you need to specify the table in the Destination tab.

Do you want to provide item owners with suggestions for name and description?

You can provide suggestions for the item name and description in the Details tab. The item owner can edit these values.

Who can access the template?

Who will have access to the template to create catalog items? Business owners need the catalog_builder_editor role to access all catalog templates, but you'll want to set additional user criteria that users must meet to access your template in the Template Details tab. If the criteria that you need doesn't exist, create a new user criteria record by navigating to Service Catalog > Catalog Definition > User Criteria and clicking New.  

Where will catalog items appear?

Catalog items will automatically appear in one or more catalogs that you select in the Locations tab. You can also specify in which category (or categories) catalog items will appear.

What questions should appear in the catalog item?

You can specify question sets (variable sets) that will appear in every catalog item in the Questions tab. Business owners will add additional questions as needed. To create or edit a question set, navigate to Service Catalog > Catalog Variables > Variable Sets.

Do you need to restrict the types of questions that can be added to the catalog item?

For questions that the item owner adds, you can restrict the available question types, such as Text, Yes or No, etc., by clicking Define owner permissions in the Questions tab.

Do you need to control attachments or other portal settings?

You can hide attachments, or make them mandatory, in the Settings tab. You can also control other portal settings such as hiding the Add to wishlist or Add to cart options.

After you are done specifying all the attributes of the catalog, you may now want to specify the guard rails to control what you want the business user to edit. There may be attributes that you may not want them to edit at all, while you may want some of them mandatorily filled in. On the other hand, there could be attributes like catalog, category and user criteria where you’d want to allow them to edit selections, but only from within the options you specify. These guard rails can be specified in the Overrides section of the template.

Who can access the catalog item?

You can set who catalog items are available for, or not available for, by selecting user criteria in the Access tab. 

Duplicate and repurpose templates

Once you have templates set up for creating catalog items, you can duplicate them and edit them as needed to streamline your template building process. In the Catalog Builder, click Catalog item templates for a list of available templates. Click a template to select it, then click Duplicate.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Tips for creating catalog items

If you're a business owner and you need to create a catalog item, watch our video below for a demo, then see our tips below to get started.

Gather requirements for the catalog item

You'll need the catalog_builder_editor role to create a catalog item from a template. Open the template in Catalog Builder and click through the tabs to see what information you'll need. Items that appear with a lock are set in the item template and are not editable.

What additional information do we need from the user?

The template may already have questions set up, but you'll need to add additional questions as needed.

Do you need to control how/when questions display?

Catalog UI policies allow you to control when a question is visible, mandatory, or read-only. We're using the term dynamic behavior settings in Catalog Builder to describe the same functionality. To access dynamic behavior settings for a question, point to the question and click on the UI policy icon.

What if my catalog item requires more complex capabilities?

The Catalog Builder is designed to cover most use cases, but if your catalog item requires more capabilities than what's in the template, your catalog administrator can add that functionality for you.

_______________________________________________________________________________________ 

Let us know what you think!

We want to hear from you! After you've had a chance to take Catalog Builder for a test drive, let us know if you have any ideas for improvements on the Idea portal. Your feedback can help us decide what enhancements we make and when! 

For more information:

Catalog Builder video series - playlist on the ServiceNow Support YouTube channel

Catalog Builder - Product documentation

Your catalog is ready to fly the nest - Blog post on the Community by Harsh

First Impressions of the Catalog Builder - Blog post on the Community by joseph.yamoah

[bianca_vaccarin]

This is really good information on building our the catalog!

[nayanawadhiya1]

Hello Dawn,

One quick Question, I was trying to configure Catalog Templates for Scoped Applications but I am facing some issue and on documentations I didn't find any Note or Steps to create template for Scope Apps.
So, Can we use catalog builder for scoped App?

[jmatthews]

You lost me at "cooking..."

[Mickey_Cegon]

I have what might be a silly question, but how can I turn this feature off for now? I am the only developer at our company, and do not have the bandwidth to implement this with Quebec. I need to determine how to accomplish this, and need time to understand the scope of this. I still need to edit my existing catalog items, and now they are all locked down, and forcing me to use the Builder, which is not what I have time to do at this point. Please advise!

Mickey Cegon

[Mickey_Cegon]

I think I figured it out. There are several roles that got added to the catalog_admin role. And, the form was locked down because someone had "checked out" the items I was looking at, so once we cancelled the checkout, I was able to edit the item.

Mickey Cegon

[Dawn Jurek]

Great, glad to hear this Mickey! Thank you for documenting the fix for others.

Dawn

[Brian Arndt1]

Is this feature intended to be used in a production environment (like knowledge base) or in a development environment (and promoted using the app dev tools)?

[Dawn Jurek]

Hi Brian,
I contacted one of our experts on the Catalog Builder team, and here's what they had to say:

Catalog Builder can be used in sub-production/development environments, as well as production - though our final goal is that catalog development should happen in production. That's the direction we're headed, but at the same time the Quebec version of Catalog Builder a) does not have a step-based fulfillment authoring experience, and b) does not have any hooks for an approval workflow. So sub-production may still be a better bet - especially for first time users/teams. However, we have addressed these two areas of concern in the Rome release, so Catalog Builder can be used directly in production in that release if you prefer. The only caveat is that it's not possible to "preview" the fulfillment process. If you are confident that the fulfillment process (either step-based or defined using flow/workflow) would work fine, then you can use Catalog Builder directly in production.

We have a new video about step-based fulfillment that you can view here:

Catalog Builder | Defining service fulfillment steps in catalog items

Brian, hope this helps!

Dawn

[Dawn Jurek]

Brian, we just published a video demonstrating how to set up an approval workflow in Rome: 

Catalog Builder | Defining and configuring a pre-publish subflow

[kzajc]

Thanks for asking this question - had the same!