How to get the virtual agent to stop presenting an order guide

[Rachel55]

Hello.  We like to use order guides in our service portal to present a less cluttered list of choices to our users, but since the VA cannot present them in a conversational manner, we would rather have VA present the catalog items individually.  I am able to get the VA to present the individual catalog items while still having the order guides only presented in service portal.  However, I have not figured out how to get the VA to quit offering the order guide as well as the individual catalog item.  Any suggestions?  

[GlideFather]

Hi @Rachel55 how are the records presented to a user, via topic?

in that topic what’s the configuration, can you share? 

also navigate for “search” in the app filter, i dont remember the exact module (am on mobile now) but something like “search profile” or in the conversational interface, somewhere you could be able to define the search… currently my colleague was doing this on order to present results from both catalog items and knowledge articles, so there was configuration (even no code)…

please try to look it up, latest tomorrow morning i will get a look at it

[SasiChanthati]

To get the Virtual Agent (VA) in ServiceNow to stop presenting order guides while still showing individual catalog items, you'll need to configure the VA topic settings specifically. Here's how you can approach this:

1. Create or modify a VA topic that filters out order guides:

   • Navigate to Virtual Agent > Designer
   • Create/edit your topic that handles catalog items
   • In the script that fetches catalog items, add a condition to exclude order guides

2. You can use a script like this in your VA topic:

   (function() {
    var items = [];
    var gr = new GlideRecord('sc_cat_item');
    gr.addActiveQuery();
    gr.addQuery('sc_catalogs', current.catalog);
    gr.addQuery('visible_standalone', true);
    // This is the key filter - exclude order guides
    gr.addQuery('sys_class_name', '!=', 'sc_cat_item_guide');
    gr.query();
    
    while (gr.next()) {
        items.push({
            "text": gr.name.toString(),
            "value": gr.sys_id.toString()
        });
    }
    return items;
   })();

3. Ensure that your VA conversation flows are set up to use this filtered list rather than the default catalog presentation.

4. If you're using out-of-box VA catalog functionality, you may need to create a custom VA topic that overrides the default behavior for catalog browsing.

5. Test your implementation thoroughly to ensure the order guides don't appear in the VA while individual items do.

This approach maintains your order guides in the Service Portal while preventing them from appearing as options in the Virtual Agent conversations.

[Rachel55 · Accepted solution]

Thank you for your help.  It turns out that all I needed to do was add a condition to Now Assist Multi-Turn Catalog Ordering search source for 'class in not order guide'.