How to remove default "waiting for approval" stage

[terp]

Community,

How do you eliminate the first and last default stages (Waiting for Approval and Completed) when requesting an item via the Service Catalog.  

I created an execution plan with only 2 stages but when I request this item, there are four stages in the Request Status, after the checkout.  

The first stage, not in my execution plan, Waiting for Approval, automatically default to Approved. Which I don't understand either.   Although, I would like to keep or create in my execution
plan the Completed stage, I am wondering if anyone can help me identify where and how to get rid of these default stages and explain why Waiting for Approval automatically
defaults to an Approved state.  

Thanks
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

[Uncle Rob]

So that first "Waiting for Approval" is the ugly, vestigial, atavistic component of the Servicenow Service Catalog.

In the early days it was assumed that people would "buy" lots of stuff at once from a Catalog, and that approvals would be required based on the total of the items.   For that reason, the "wrapper" (Request layer) was created with an approval mechanic.   What a decade of ServiceNow usage has shown is that:

1)   People very rarely order multiple things at once.

2)   Approvals are exceedingly rarely generated based on total cost of different things, but rather the things individually.

3)   Consumers absolutely despise the request / requested_item dynamic.

The really bad news is that you can't get rid of that visual on the stage renderer without significant hacking.   We just have to keep pushing SN for the desperately needed Catalog re-architecture.

[terp]

I appreciated the and had to laugh out loud at the bad news.   I spent many hours trying to figure out how to get rid of that stage and your response is a timesaver.   Also, thanks for the side note on using the workflow.

[tim_harris]

rfedoruk - I seem to be incapable of figuring out what you meant by "significant hacking" on my own. 🙂 Any chance you could point me in the right direction? I am sick of seeing this and building in auto approvals for all my request items.

[Uncle Rob]

Also, just as a side note, you really should be using Workflow.   Execution plans were the predecessor from the days before Workflow's existence.   There's nothing that execution plans can do that Workflow can't do 1000x better.