Product Catalog Items Not Captured In Update Sets

[jim pisello]

I've noticed that when a product model is published to the Product Catalog, the catalog item is not captured in an update set. Variables, variable sets, ui policies and client scripts associated with the item are captured in the update set, but not the item itself. This makes it inconvenient (to say the least) to build these items in a sub-production instance and then move them, without performing an XML export/import; an extra, and seemingly unnecessary step IMO. I find it odd that Product Catalog items would not be captured since this table and its children are extended from the sc_cat_item table, changes to which are captured in update sets.

Does anyone know if this is by design or not? I'm currently using this UI Action from the ServiceNow Guru blog to manually add these items to my update set, but of course this requires me to take manual action each time the item changes. I'd prefer something more automatic. Anyone have any thoughts about other options? I know I can temporarily deactivate the business rule that prevents adding the update_synch attribute to the Product Catalog tables, and I might take that option eventually. I'd really like to understand the thinking behind the decision by SN not to include these tables in update sets, though.

[tltoulson · Accepted solution]

According to the Product Catalog - ServiceNow Wiki, in the Eureka release:

Customizations to the following product catalog tables can be tracked in update sets.

Hardware Catalog [pc_hardware_cat_item]
Product Catalog Item [pc_product_cat_item]
Software Catalog [pc_software_cat_item]
Vendor Catalog Item [pc_vendor_cat_item]

These tables are the ones that inherit from cat_item so I believe your troubles will be resolved with Eureka.   If you take the update_synch attribute route, it would temporarily resolve this issue but then you would have to revert those records / force update in the Eureka upgrade.

[jim pisello]

Terrific, thanks for tracking that down Travis!