Service Bridge v2.1: February25 Store Release - Publish catalog items as remote record producers

[Kenny Caldwell]

This time saving feature allows providers to publish local catalog items to Service Bridge as remote record producers. 

A provider can create a remote record producer from the following catalog classes.

1. Catalog Item
2. Record Producer
3. Hardware Catalog
4. Software Catalog

The catalog item must meet the following requirements.

1. Must be in a published state
2. Must be one of the supported classes
3. Cannot already have been published to service bridge

Catalog items can be published to Service Bridge individually or in bulk. When publishing catalog items in bulk, the default limit is 20 items. The limit can be changed by defining and setting the system property sn_sb_pro.max_batch_size_covertable_catalog_items.

Publishing a catalog item to Service Bridge creates a copy of the item as a remote record producer. The remote record producer is associated with the original catalog item via the reference field Created from cat item.

Publish individual catalog item to Service Bridge

1. Navigate to the catalog to be published.
2. Click the Publish to Service Bridge Related Link
   
   
   
   
3. A remote record producer is created from the catalog item and navigation is directed to the newly created remote record producer.
   
   
   
   

Publish catalog items in bulk to Service Bridge

1. Navigate to a list of catalog items to be Published to Service Bridge.
2. On the list, select the checkboxes for the catalog items to be Published to Service Bridge.
3. In the Actions on selected rows… menu, click Publish to Service Bridge.
   
   
   
   
4. Publishing to Service Bridge modal is displayed while in progress.
   
   
   
   
5. On completion, the results are displayed.
   
   

After publishing to Service Bridge, items need to be finalized prior to Publishing for synching to consumer instances. Finalization steps include.

1. Adding a required flow
2. Adding Consumer Criteria
3. Adding Persona if required
4. Verify and update remote record producer content and variables. Example reference variables may need to be changed to remote choices.

[MattCD]

Why require the state field to be published? This limits the catalog items to ones built using Catalog Item Builder unless you use a script to update this field on the item.

Am I missing something obvious?

[Kenny Caldwell]

@MattCD In the Aug25/Zurich release of Service Bridge, the condition has been updated to allow publishing items with an empty state field. So publishing will be allowed for items with a state of Published or an empty state

[kshim21]

This may be unrelated to publish a catalog item to Service Bridge. For some reason the requested for selected in consumer instance on a specific form is not reflected in provider RITM Requested For (the actual field), I do see it in variable data . Is there mapping option for "requested_for" in provider task?

[Bharath38]

@kshim21  How did you trigger RITM from remote catalog item ? Did you create custom flow to assign on provider side ?

[spike]

I've used this feature  but I'm unsure of what flow to put against the new RRP. I want it to create a RITM in my provider instance but there doesn't appear to be a flow for this.

Any one have any thoughts over what my course of action is here?

Do I need to build my own flow? If so I'd need to build a different one for every catalog item we have. That doesn't seem like the best solution?

Any direction would be most appreciated!

[MattCD]

@spike 

This has been asked a few times. A good explanation can be found here Re: Service Bridge Consumer - Wants a REQ/RITM Cre... - ServiceNow Community

Short answer; don't use Service Bridge to create RITM's on the provider directly because you're creating a record producer not a traditional REQ/RITM/SCTASK catalog item. 

• If you're using CSM, the flow mapping should be CON -> Case/Case Type
• If you're not using CSM you could map CON -> INC or consider creating a dedicated Task type like "Customer Request" and create a flow to map CON -> CREQ

This top-level record is where the customer and your record sync and where your communication happens. This record could then be the parent for 1 or more Requests in the provider instance that are either auto created from the flow or manual created by the agent.

[Patryk Oshibuch]

Hello,

Do you have any ideas how to deal with those problems?
- How to keep remote record producer up-to-date according to related Catalogue item?

- How to sync Provider Task with RITM on provider side?

Br,

Patryk Oshibuchi

[spike]

I have come up with a solution for this. Since we already have a Service Catalog, I have published those items into Service Bridge. I've now got the Service Bridge version and the Service Catalog version. I've then added a flow to the Service Bridge version that creates the Service Catalog version. The consumer raised the SR in their instance, the provide task is created and the flow runs to create the provider RITM.

Synchronisation is handled by the provider task and everything hangs together.

You'll need a flow to update the state of the provider task when the RITM changes so that is synced across (I think that's how incident does it).

The downside is that so far I've not worked out how to dynamically raise the provide side RITM. It looks like I might need a flow for each RITM I want to raise. And that's going to be quite a lot!

(We haven't got CSM running. While this is the direction of travel it's not something we're able to accomplish at this time - which isn't my decision and pains me massively.)

[Patryk Oshibuch]

@spike

Check the variable set option. If variable set is shared between Catalogue Item and Remote Record producer than any update under shared variable set is reflated on Remote Record producer and o consumer side without checkout/publishing/consumer interraction. 
And than if Remote Record Producer is build on top of the same variable set like on related Catalogue item than you can create RITM from Provider Task record cuz set of questions are the same (both are using same variable set). But I dont know if that is a good practices. 

[Patryk Oshibuch]

@MattCD 

But if we cannot map Provider Task into RITM than whoever was working on Catalogue item and whole process flow for it will gone. Maybe servicenow can provide for us such flow to create proper REQ/RITM from provider task?

Also if agent will create this request manually than it will be a disadvantage. We already have a set of answers from customer request which we can use to create REQ/RITM automatically. I have build such flow, but as @spike already mentioned. State must be sync with Provider Task via custom flow/business rule.