To add items or services to your catalog, you need to create a new form for each thing being requested.

Summary: After reading this topic, you’ll understand:
  • How form templates get you started creating your own forms.
  • How to customize the layout and questions on your forms.
  • How to make a form (AKA catalog item) appear in your app.
  • How to make a form stop appearing in your app!

What is a form?

A form is a list of questions that people answer to make a request. They might ask for a keyboard, a laptop, or permission to take a vacation. The answers to those questions provide the fulfiller with all the information they need to fulfill the request. For example, if someone asks for a laptop, the fulfiller might need to know the size, the make, the model number, the operating system, the delivery date, and so forth.

In addition to questions, forms can contain images, headings, and text descriptions to explain the questions.

You’ll need a different form for every type of item or request a requestor can ask for. Why? Because the questions you need to ask for a keyboard differ from those you need to ask to give a requestor permission to take a vacation. So, there’s one form for each type of request that people can make. You can think of a form as representing a catalog item.

Your app will likely have multiple forms, meaning multiple things requestors can ask for. We call a collection of forms a catalog of items.

Key terms:
Item
Something a requestor can ask for. Each item requires its own form.
Catalog
A collection of items that represent all the items a requestor can ask for.

Some examples of catalogs and items

The following table shows three catalogs. The column on the right shows the names of the items in each catalog. If you have three items, you’ll need three forms.
Table 1. Example catalogs and their items
Service catalog Example app Sample catalog items
HR self-service Human Resources global people portal app
  • Benefits coverage question
  • Time off request
  • Change of address needed
Branding resources Marketing and branding app
  • PowerPoint templates
  • Approved Zoom backgrounds
  • Logo files
IT fulfillment Hardware request app
  • Mouse
  • Headset
  • Replacement charging cable

Let Creator Studio give you a head start

When you choose a form template to start creating your app, Creator Studio builds a form with questions you might like to use. The questions and their layout make up the form.

Key term:
Form template
A set of questions arranged on a form provided by Creator Studio.

The form template that Creator Studio provides is called the Creator Studio Default Template. It contains three questions to get you started. You can customize, add, and subtract questions on your form.

Your system administrator can delete the default template, create additional form templates, and restrict who can fill out the forms. If you're a system administrator, you can read more about this topic in Creating catalog templates for use in Creator Studio apps.

To store the forms that requestors fill out, Creator Studio creates a table by default. One row represents one filled-out form.

Your application can contain as many forms as you need. When you create a new form, Creator Studio uses the app's request table to hold the submitted answers for each form. All requests from all of an app's forms get stored in the same table.

Types of questions you can ask

You get to pick the questions to ask requestors. Creator Studio provides two types of questions you can ask:
  • General questions are where you give requestors an empty box to write a short answer (think name or email) or a list of choices to pick from (like a dropdown menu or those little circles you fill in).
  • Reference-based questions are where you provide a list of choices that you define in a table.

Laying out the questions

Creator Studio provides an initial layout for its default form. You can use columns, images, divider lines, and more to customize the layout of the questions on the forms. There are two procedures you can use to customize a form:

Where can I see forms?

After deployment, your app lives as forms in the Service Catalog and categories you specified when creating the forms.

Users can access those forms directly in Service Catalog, as well as Service Portal and Employee Center.

Making forms available for an app

Forms have two states:
  • Draft
  • Published
Keeping forms in a Draft state lets you work on them until you’re finished. When you’re pleased with the form, publish it by selecting the Mark as ready button. Only then will it appear in your application (assuming your app has been deployed).

A published form appears as an item in your catalog of offerings. For example, your site might enable requestors to ask for computers, mice, monitors, keyboards, technical support, and so forth. Each item requires a different form, and appears as a different catalog item in your app.

Key terms: Don’t confuse deploying your app with publishing a form.
  • Publishing a form means that the form will appear as a catalog item only after your app is deployed. That’s why the button label is Mark as ready.
  • Deploying an app is what system admins do to make your app available for people to use.

Changing published forms

It’s inevitable. You deploy your app and find that you need to revise the questions on your form. No problem! Just edit the form as you did when you created it.

Editing a form creates a new Draft version of the form that you can update and then Mark as ready when you’re finished. Any changes you save to the Draft version will not affect the catalog item in your deployed app. To update the forms in the deployed app, you must redeploy the app.

Undoing form changes

You can select the Undo all changes option, available in the form header's more options icon (Select more options to undo changes), to reset a form to the most recently published version.

Deleting published forms

You can’t delete a form, whether it’s in a Draft or Published state.