Service portal category not appearing on public portal

k_lutz · ‎07-19-2024

The category has one catalog item which is NOT public but we would still like the category to appear in the listing. It has user criteria for a certain set of internal users but the requester was asking if it would still display to be consistent with the "look" on the internal page when the category does appear.

Using the SC Category widget without modifications other than the configuration settings. From the code, it seems like it should if the canView is set to false that it should just do a count of active items to decide to appear or not.

Know this is not really standard but any idea what I could look at to see if this would still have the category appear even if the catalog item is not accessible to public users?

jMarshal · ‎07-19-2024

This is normal OOB behaviour, if a user doesn't have access to any items in a category, they will not see the category.

I would advise against adjusting that OOB behaviour as it is core behaviour and can have a massive "trickle down effect".

Instead, if I were in your shoes, were you absolutely must have all end-users see a specific category which may not have items available to any given end-user, based on user criteria, I'd create a "stub item" (so-to-speak) which would be "can view" for everyone. This "stub item" would be treated similar to a stub KB article that acts as "additional information" feature about the category and what people may see there (perhaps this would shed some light on why an end user may not see anything else in this category).

This "stub item" can be configured to have no variables and if "requested/submitted", the flow just closes whatever task is assigned, sending an email with the same "additional information" that was presented when the end-user looked at it in the first place. Just make sure your messaging is clear in the "stub item" and this should work just fine as no-code solution!

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jMarshal · ‎07-22-2024

I think that would be a perfect use case. Perhaps a catalog item called "Need something else?" or "Request <CATEGORY NAME> item" which would be something that the end user would click on, if they didn't see what they needed, thinking it may be a general request form in the category they are browsing...but instead, it will be a guide to help them get the specific catalog item they actually need from that category, if they authenticate first! Good luck with the prototypes!

Sumanth16 · ‎07-19-2024

Hi @k_lutz ,

There are four conditions to make a catalog category visible is Service Portal :

The sys_id of the catalog category that you are trying to view needs to exist in the sc_category table.
The category needs to belong to the portal's catalog: The portal's catalog is set in the sp_portal record.
The category needs to be active: the active flag in the sc_category record needs to be checked.
The category needs to have at least one active catalog item: the related list "Catalog Item" of the sc_category record needs to have at least one catalog item with active flag set to true.

https://www.servicenow.com/community/itsm-forum/service-catalog-categories-not-displaying/m-p/524381...

https://www.servicenow.com/community/itsm-forum/service-catalog-category-not-showing-on-the-service-...

Plz mark my solution as Accept, If you find it helpful.

Thanks & Regards,

Sumanth meda

k_lutz · ‎07-19-2024

Thanks for the information. I think that list is not quite complete as it seems. As JMarshal mentions, the system is working as designed which seems like even though there is one cat item and it is not set to public...then the person will not see the category. So I think the information needs to denote logged in vs guest user. Thank you for responding.