In ServiceNow's Telco Product Catalog is a centralized database that stores information about the products and services offered by a telecommunications company. It is designed to provide a single source of truth for all product-related information, including product features, pricing, and availability.
The ServiceNow product catalog enables telecommunications service providers to manage their products and services more effectively by providing a comprehensive view of their offerings. It allows service providers to define product attributes and relationships, manage product versions and lifecycles, and associate products with services offered.
A telecom service provider product catalog manager will often need to modify characteristics of a published product offering and or published specification, then introduce a new version. The product catalog manager must be able to accomplish the tasks rapidly to meet market timing constraints.
Catalog Challenges
Once a product offering and or specification has been published it can’t be modified. Versioning addresses this by allowing multiple published versions of the same product offer and specification to be available. Storing separate versions of catalog entities ensures that the product catalog manager can keep track of any modifications made over the lifecycle of the catalog entities and allows roll back to previous iterations when required.
Using versioning allows adjustment to catalog entities to be made while keeping the changes hidden from sales channels or other catalog functions. The product catalog manager can then assign catalog version publishing date effective to control when each version is available to be made visible and sold in a market.
Catalog version management provides the telecom service provider simplified maintenance of existing products & services, faster time to value, reduced development and operational costs.
Scope and versioning capabilities
Scope and constraints:
- Create a new version option to be available only for published specifications and product offerings
- Versioning is not supported for characteristics, specification category and product offering catalog
Capabilities:
Create and manage versions in product catalog features:
- Create and manage versions in product catalog:
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Product catalog manager can create a new version with updated product offering details:
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contract terms, distribution channel and pricing.
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product specification version (not the product specification).
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characteristics and characteristic option
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Product catalog manager can create a new version with updated:
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specification details
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characteristics and characteristic options
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specification relationship and decomposition rules
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attribute propagation
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- Manage multiple active versions of a product offering/specification
- Manage (Retire/Archive) state of previous versions
Product and service catalog APIs:
- Create new versions of product/service specification
- Support for GET operation to retrieve all versions of a catalog entity based on external id/sysid
Product and service order APIs:
- Support for product and service specification version in the product and service order API.
- If version is not mentioned, system picks the latest active version for order fulfillment
Order decomposition:
- Order decomposition and fulfillment process enhanced to refer to a specific version of product and service. An order will be decomposed using the product/service id and version received from the payload which should be in” active” state at the time of order creation. To ensure consistency, the logic will refer to the same version throughout the order fulfillment/decomposition process (including staggered decomp).
The product catalog versioning logic auto increments and maintains each new internal catalog version created. It will:
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Copy existing details
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Different sys id –auto generated
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Number remains same across all versions
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Version is auto incremented but editable
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New version will be created in draft state
External version, if provided the version id, will be stored, and maintained in the product catalog for each version provided.
Each version maintains a reference to the previous version from which it is created. The initial version maintains a reference to the base/initial version of the catalog entity:
Catalog Version – Catalog UI and API diagram:
Use Case: Create new product offering version
Persona – Product Catalog Manager can:
- Creates and manages different versions of product offering and specifications
- Creates and manages Product Offerings, Specifications (Product, CFS/RFS/RS)
- Creates specification relationship with quantity characteristic
- Publishes product offerings to entitled customers by associating them with contracts
Use Case: Create new product offering version.
Description: As a product catalog manager, I need to create new versions of an existing published product offering and specifications so that it incorporates required changes to the catalog entities and launch a new version of a product offering for order capture and fulfilment. Select an existing product offering available from product offering list and create a new version, configure some product offering characteristic values, review and publish the new product offering version.
List view of product offerings: select Premium Home Internet starting at $29.00.
In the example scenario below for premium home internet starting from $29.
Notice - Version number is 1.
Notice – State is Published
Product offering UI – Premium Home Internet – published offering:
Create a new version of the offering – Premium Home Internet:
Product offering UI view – details tab
In version 2 of the Premium Home Internet offering:
- Notice - The offering is in state = Draft
- Notice – offering version = 2
- Notice – the default display name appended version 2 value, which in this case will be changed later prior to publishing version 2 to a name appropriate for the new offer
Product offering UI view – details tab, creating a new version of the offering
Next example, creating a new offering from the previous version of the product offering such that it will allow us to modify the product offering in version 2 so that the new version can be made available to be offered to the same distribution channels.
- Change the name of the offering [Name & Display Name]
Product Offering UI view:
On the product Offering Characteristic tab:
Change the following characteristic options to ‘true’ for the following:
- Gaming and Streaming option, customer input required value = true
- Email and Browsing option, customer input required value = true
Product Offering UI – product Offering Characteristic tab:
Change the following characteristic options to ‘true’:
- Gaming and Streaming option, customer input required value = true
- Email and Browsing option, customer input required value = true
- Publish the new offering.
Product Offering UI – product Characteristics UI (Customer input required value):
Under Details tab, the product offering state = Published
- Notice: new offering name is ‘Premium Home Internet starting from $120.00 in Name and Display Name. Of course, these names can be different, what is displayed is what is viewable in the Catalog offering.
- Notice: Start date is the same as the previous version and the initial version; the version 2 start date could had been updated for offering to reflect a new available to be offered to the market
- Name of the offering is ‘Premium Home Internet starting from 120.00.
- Notice: the Start date is the same as version 1; in real life scenario, must likely, the start date for the offering may be updated for when the offering will be available in the market
- Notice: the initial version and the previous version shows ‘Premium Home Internet starting at $29.00,
- Notice: same distribution channel, this could be updated such that the version 2 offering is only available for different channels, or additional channels.
Product Offering UI - Details tab:
As the product catalog manager, when viewing the new product offer, we notice:
- The initial version 1 is for premium home internet starting at S29.00
- Premium Home Internet starting at $120.00 as version 2.
Product Offerings UI list view:
Use case: Select new version of product offering published for selecting for a customer order
Persona: order capture manager or agent
Use case description: As an order capture manager, or agent, channel partner or internal sales agent acting in an order capture role I need to have made available the new product offering version that has been published so that I select as a product offering for a new customer order, and be able to select from a drop-down choice list what usage type will be configured for the new-add customer order for Premium Home Internet starting at $120.00.
Product Offering UI – select published Premium Home Internet offering for new/add customer order:
Notice that:
- Home Internet Order Line Item has missing information that is required to be selected.
- The new product order for premium Home Internet starting at $120.00 has product offering characteristic options that are required to be selected as this product is now offered for selected usage types.
Product order UI – missing info
Product Order UI – configure missing OLI data required to selected:
Summary of product offer catalog versioning logic:
- Version: auto increment when creating a new version, integer field, read-only
- Initial Version: the initial version of specification, reference field, read-only
- Previous Version: the previous version of specification, reference field, read-only
- Display name: stores the combination of the entity’s name and version, string field, not read-only
- External version: stores the versions of external system, string field, not read-only
Diagram – Product Offering version logic flow:
In the simplified example – we only changed the product offering characteristics option to reflect a new offering version from the initial offering. The product specification is still the same.
In a real-world scenario, it maybe along with the new product offering version, a new specification (version) may be created as well for the product offer. Or it may be a scenario where the new offering version is only available for certain distribution channels.
Or the initial version is going to be retired at some future date and the new product offering with new pricing made active on the day after the end date of the previous version.
Also note, in this simplified example, for illustrative reasons we changed the display name, but version 2, could had been offered with the same product offer name, but with a different display name – the version logic automatically appends that this is v2 to the display name.
We could also had changed the displayed name to identify directly that this is a Premium Home Internet Gaming, or Premium Home Internal starting at $29.00 for email and browsing. As a product catalog manager, my marketing dept has defined a new product requirement for Premium Home Internet starting at $29.00 that has pricing specific for gaming and streaming and email and browsing usage. I will use the same version of the product specification in the new product offering version.
Use Case: Publish a new product offering version and archive the previous version
Description: I want to set the new version to be available to the market by a certain start date and the previous version not available prior to the new version start date in order to not have multiple versions active and available product offer versions to be sold in the market.
Product Offer - Details tab - version 3 of Premium Home Internet:
In the next article on catalog versioning – we will look at specification versioning and go full circle on catalog versioning.
Use case: define a new product offering version and a new version a new version of product specification. Publish the new product offering version, including the published new version of the product specification.
Reference documents:
Product Catalog data model and versioning (servicenow.com)
