Service Catalog Items VS Product Catalog Items/Hardware/Software etc

Johannes Coetse · ‎07-11-2016

Hi there,

Hope someone can help me see the light here.

Whilst working on our Service Catalog and working through some demo requests I realized some items are Source-able and others are not. Then came to the conclusion that those not source-able came from the Vendor Items in the Product Catalog and those Source-able were from the Service Catalog Items.

Now what I need to understand is why are there different catalogs that seem to almost do the same thing? It's just causing way more upkeep with the different catalog items being in different places. Or maybe I'm just missing the logic behind it.

The Sourceable items all have a workflow that trigger a Task for the sourcing and then creating a PO etc but when the item is not Sourceable the workflow kind of runs into a dead end. I'm guessing I'd have to copy and edit some of the workflows to trigger the needed tasks that are not in baseline?

So to recap, do you suggest we use the Service Catalog items only, or only Product Catalog or combine them both as in the demo data?

Thank you in advance. If anything unclear please just ask. I'm really struggling to wrap my head around the structure of the different catalogs and how they integrate with each other

Kind regards,

Johannes Coetsee

rohantyagi · ‎07-11-2016

Johannes, assuming I understood your question correctly below are my thoughts:

Service catalog is a way to provide EITHER GOODS OR SERVICES in a consistent and user friendly way. It also allows more flexibility to the admin while configuring and providing options to its consumers. So service catalog is exclusively those goods or SERVICES (hence service catalog) that a consumer can order and get them fulfilled in some way.

Product catalog is a piece of Asset management. Product catalog is a set of information about an asset. So, information about GOODS. It is based on the SN's theory of Models. Models are used for managing and tracking assets through various ServiceNow asset applications like Product Catalog. However note that: Models published to the product catalog are automatically published to the service catalog.

Nutshell, Product catalog - more aligned towards asset management. Service Catalog - to provide Service or consumer experience and aligns with Request management.

Service Catalog should be the interface for your consumers

Hope this information helps you make the decision. Additional links below will help further understand it better.

Product Catalog - ServiceNow Wiki

Introduction to Service Catalog - ServiceNow Wiki

View solution in original post

manlio1 · ‎09-28-2017

Hi,

does it exist a external service to bring real market IT Harware/software catalogue in the system ?

Thank you

Johannes Coetse · ‎10-26-2017

Hi Manlio,

I'm not sure what you mean?