Defining product characteristics and characteristic options
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Summary of Defining product characteristics and characteristic options
As a product catalog administrator in ServiceNow, you define product characteristics and their options to describe and differentiate product offerings and specifications. Characteristics are attributes such as size or color, and characteristic options are the selectable choices for those attributes. These characteristics appear in the product configurator, enabling agents and customers to configure products accurately for opportunities, quotes, orders, and Business Portal transactions.
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Characteristic Data Input Types
When creating characteristics, you assign a data input type that determines how options are entered in the product configurator. ServiceNow supports a variety of input types, including:
- Address: Mail address input
- Attachment: External document upload
- CheckBox: Binary select or clear option
- Choice: Single selection via radio buttons or dropdown
- Decimal: Numbers with fractional parts
- Date/DateTime: Date picker with optional time
- Duration: Time period input
- Email: Email address input
- Single Line Text: Free-form text
- Integers: Whole numbers
- Yes/No: Boolean response
- Object: Hierarchical complex characteristics with parent and child attributes
- Arrays: Multiple instances of a characteristic type (e.g., array of dates or objects)
Complex Characteristics
The Object data type enables creating hierarchical characteristics where a parent attribute contains multiple child attributes, which may themselves be complex or arrays. For example, a "Routing Addresses" characteristic could have child attributes like Procurement Date, Route, and Address Supplier, with some children being arrays of objects. This hierarchy is reflected in the product configurator for detailed product configuration.
Setting Up Complex Characteristics
To define complex characteristics, you first create a parent characteristic of the Object type, then establish relationships and display order with its child characteristics. This setup allows for sophisticated attribute structures, enhancing product configurability and accuracy during configuration.
Practical Application for ServiceNow Customers
By leveraging characteristic definitions and options, customers can precisely tailor product offerings in the catalog, improve configurator usability, and ensure consistent data capture across sales and ordering processes. The variety of input types supports diverse product attributes, including complex hierarchical data, enabling comprehensive and flexible product definitions.
As a product catalog admin, you create the characteristics and characteristic options for product offerings and specifications. Product characteristics are attributes that define and describe a product.
For example, if a product offering is a bike, the characteristics might include bike size and color. The characteristic options are the choices, such as the various bike sizes and colors available. Characteristics and characteristic options for products are displayed in the product configurator when agents configure products for opportunities, quotes, and orders and when customers order products using the Business Portal.
Characteristic data input types
When you define product characteristics and characteristic options, you provide basic attribute information, including the characteristic name and the data input type for the characteristic options. The data input type indicates how the characteristic options are entered in the product configurator, such as single line text or choice selection.
- Address - Mail address
- Attachment - External document to be attached
- CheckBox - Select or clear an option
- Choice - Options that can be chosen, presented as radio buttons or available from a drop-down list
- Decimal - Numbers that require a decimal point to indicate fractional amounts
- Dates - Date picker for selecting day, month, and year
- Date/time - Date picker for selecting day, month, year and time of day
- Duration - Period of time
- Email - Email address
- Single Line Text - Free-form text
- Integers - Whole numbers
- Yes/No - Yes/no response
- Object - Structure that represents a hierarchy of attributes, also called complex characteristics. An object has parent attribute with one or more child attributes.
- Arrays - Multiple instances of the same attribute type, such as arrays of Date, DateTime, Integer, Single Line Text, Object, and Decimal
The following example shows a characteristic hierarchy for Routing Addresses, which is a parent-level attribute with an object data type. This attribute has the following child attributes: Procurement Date, Route, Additional Address Required, BGP, Routing Type, and Address Supplier. Notice that the BGP child characteristic is an array of objects with a minimum size of 2 and maximum size of 4.
Setting up complex characteristics
Defining a hierarchical attribute structure involves setting up the parent attribute, for example routing addresses, as an object type. You then define the characteristic relationships between the parent attribute and child attributes to establish the hierarchical structure and the order in which the child characteristics display in the product configurator.
For details on defining characteristics, see Create product characteristics and characteristic options.