Setting up specifications and product offerings

By creating and publishing versioned specifications and product offerings in a technical product catalog, your customers can order up-to-date versions of the products or services that they require. Your product catalog manager can create versions of the published specifications and product offerings with the required enhancements to support your customer's business, marketing, manufacturing, or operational changes.

Overview of product offerings with specifications

As a product catalog manager, you set up product offerings in a technical product catalog. A product offering contains the product description, pricing, eligibility, and product options. You use a product catalog to group your product offerings so that your customers can order the products or services that they want. Only published product offerings can be added to customer contracts.

The relationship between product offerings and the product, service, and resource specification determine how a product is fulfilled. For example, the following diagram shows the relationships between the product offerings, the product specification, the service specification, and the resource specification for an SD-WAN product model.

Figura 1. SD-WAN product model

Each product offering has the following components:

Product specification

A product specification defines the various aspects of a product including the following:

• All the specification characteristic options that are available for a product, and how they should be fulfilled.
• Various categories of information, such as the brand, cost, terms and conditions, and product-related materials, which include product visuals. Product specifications are customer-facing and are added to product offerings.
• Its relationship to other product, service, and resource specifications, and how a customer order of a product offering is delivered.

To learn more, see 0f03ade088fed750d8bed0be86597769252c933c.dita.

Service specification

A service specification defines a service, and the technical information of that service, including the following:

• All the specification characteristic options that are available for a service, and how they should be fulfilled.
• Various categories of information, including the cost, terms and conditions, and service-related materials. These resources include the service-related visuals and implementation guides. Service specifications can be customer-facing or resource-facing.
• Its relationship to other product, service, and resource specifications.

To learn more, see ca32b015fe6fb38499285c1f0b0cb443cefdecef.dita.

Resource specification

A resource specification defines the technical information for a resource, including the following:

• All the specification characteristic options that are available for a resource, and how they should be fulfilled.
• Various categories of information, such as the manufacture, model, and brand-related information about a resource, including the resource visuals and activation guides. Resource specifications are not customer-facing.
• Its relationship to other product, service, and resource specifications. You can enable the product and service delivery by using the required resource.

To learn more, see Create and publish resource specifications.

The following example shows a managed firewall service structure that incorporates service and resource specifications.

Figura 2. Managed firewall service structure

Setting up your initial specifications and product offerings

The following diagram and summary shows an example sequence that you can use to set up technical product offerings, such as telecommunications products for your customers.

Figura 3. Configure technical product offerings

Tabela 1. Creating technical product offerings

Step	Description
Create product characteristics and characteristic options	Add product characteristics and characteristic options that you can later add to your technical product offering.
8577d7a081fdeca4418f02a50fb4e4e13e3f4ae3.dita	Create product, service, and resource specification categories that you associate with model categories to determine the product model and fulfillment workflow of a technical product offering for your customer.
Create and publish resource specifications	Create and publish the initial base version of a resource specification to define all the resource options for a customer-facing product that you sell and to designate how to fulfill these options.
ca32b015fe6fb38499285c1f0b0cb443cefdecef.dita	Create and publish the initial base version of a service specification. A service specification defines all the service options that apply to a customer-facing product you sell, and designates how to fulfill these options.
0f03ade088fed750d8bed0be86597769252c933c.dita	Create and publish the initial base version of a product specification. A product specification defines all the product options that apply to a customer-facing product you sell, and designates how to fulfill these options. It contains information such as the product description, pricing, eligibility, and product options.
696b1f06852a29ca0015b3bc711589daafdaadcb.dita	Create the specification relationships and optional decomposition rules that define the associations between the product, service, and resource specifications for a product offering. These relationships control how an order is fulfilled for a customer.
9eb6eb97c8a4daf06b9117a49715bfe59b35d310.dita	Define attribute-mapping rules between two specifications in the product catalog so that fulfillment agents can access all relevant characteristic values in your product, service, and resource orders.
Create a product offering catalog and product catalog categories	Create a product catalog and the catalog categories for organizing the catalog.
Create product offerings	Create the product offering associated with the specification.
Associate product specifications to product offerings

1. Create characteristics and characteristic options. To learn more, see 35b239794a6c29788b42fb7d9c9ef47458019efa.dita.
2. Create product, service, and resource specification categories and associate them with model categories. To learn more, see 8577d7a081fdeca4418f02a50fb4e4e13e3f4ae3.dita.
3. Create and publish the initial base versions of your product, service, or resource specifications. For each specification, create the specification relationships, decomposition rules, and attribute mappings. To learn more, see:
   • Create and publish resource specifications
   • ca32b015fe6fb38499285c1f0b0cb443cefdecef.dita
   • 0f03ade088fed750d8bed0be86597769252c933c.dita
   • 696b1f06852a29ca0015b3bc711589daafdaadcb.dita
4. Create and publish the initial base versions of your product offerings. To learn more, see 51704600ac5473b44535a24ad67d4891804ab983.dita.
5. Create a product catalog. To learn more, see d6aca7ab827ae099e92ae3e5ee1fd337c5e61296.dita.

Creating versions of specifications and product offerings

You can create and publish versioned specifications and product offerings so that your customers can order the most up-to-date versions of your product and service offerings. To learn more, see:

• f83145089649af8ef69fec90f2f7108bdb527ca6.dita
• 135e4af12144850a29d75f0f4331b62cdb5e148d.dita

The following process describes the steps for creating a version of a specification or a product offering:

1. Create and assign a new version number in each of the product, service, resource specifications, or product offerings that are affected by the changes. To learn more, see Create and publish resource specifications.
2. For each specification in the new version, create the required specification relationships, decomposition rules, and attribute mappings. To learn more, see:
   • 696b1f06852a29ca0015b3bc711589daafdaadcb.dita
   • 9eb6eb97c8a4daf06b9117a49715bfe59b35d310.dita
3. Create a product offering, and then publish it when you update your product catalog. To learn more, see f83145089649af8ef69fec90f2f7108bdb527ca6.dita.
4. Retire or archive old or unused specifications, and product offerings, as needed. To learn more, see 087d41c3a2296d2fb305177af8c1dad38566d629.dita.

Nota:

You can't use versioned or non-versioned catalog entities, such as specifications and product offerings, in ordering, inventory, or for other purposes when they are in a Draft state. For example, you can't select and use a product offering in Order Capture if it is still in a Draft state.

• Create the characteristics and characteristic options for your product offerings
  Create characteristics and characteristic options so that you can define the product attributes and options for the product offerings that your customers can order from.
• Create and associate specification categories with model categories
  Create product, service, and resource specification categories that you can associate with model categories to determine the product model and fulfillment workflow of a technical product offering.
• Create and publish resource specifications
  Create and publish a base version of a resource specification to define all the resource options for a customer-facing product that you sell and to designate how to fulfill these options.
• Create and publish service specifications
  Create and publish a base version of a service specification. A service specification defines all the service options that apply to a customer-facing product you sell, and designates how to fulfill these options.
• Create and publish product specifications
  Create and publish a base version of a product specification. A product specification defines all the product options that apply to a customer-facing product you sell, and designates how to fulfill these options. It contains information such as the product description, pricing, eligibility, and product options.
• Create specification characteristics
  Define characteristics for a product, service, or resource specification.
• Defining mappings for attribute value propagation to domain orders
  By defining attribute-mapping rules between two specifications in the product catalog, your fulfillment agents can access all relevant characteristic values in your product, service, and resource orders.
• Create specification relationships, quantity mapping, and decomposition rules for Order Management
  Create the specification relationships and optional decomposition rules that define the associations between the product, service, and resource specifications for a product that you offer. These relationships impact how an order is fulfilled for a customer.
• Create and publish your product offerings to a catalog
  Create and publish versioned product offerings to a product catalog so that you can define how you sell your products to your customers.
• Create a product catalog
  Create a product catalog to add your product offerings. As a provider, you can use the product catalog to define how you want to sell products to your customers.
• Creating and publishing specification versions
  As a product catalog manager, you can create and publish the specification versions that list the improved products and services that you can offer to your customers in a technical product catalog.
• Updating specification versions
  Enterprises frequently create and update new versions of product and service specifications. When these changes occur, it's important to update the existing product specification in ServiceNow®. Failure to update the product specifications can lead to difficulties with MACD (Modify, Add, Change, Delete) operation when orders enter fulfillment.
• Creating and publishing product offering versions
  As a product catalog manager, you can create and publish the product offering versions that list the improved products and services that you can offer to your customers in a product catalog.
• Retiring or archiving versioned specifications and product offerings
  As a product catalog manager, you can move a published specification or a product offering to a Retired or Archived state when they are no longer in use or are being sold. When you retire a specification version, you can't use it in a product offering or create specification versions.
• Create and publish a template
  Create and publish a template so that you can define the 5G network services for your organization.

Referência relacionada

• Product catalog data model and catalog versioning