Service Catalog Items VS Product Catalog Items/Hardware/Software etc

Johannes Coetse · ‎07-11-2016

Hi there,

Hope someone can help me see the light here.

Whilst working on our Service Catalog and working through some demo requests I realized some items are Source-able and others are not. Then came to the conclusion that those not source-able came from the Vendor Items in the Product Catalog and those Source-able were from the Service Catalog Items.

Now what I need to understand is why are there different catalogs that seem to almost do the same thing? It's just causing way more upkeep with the different catalog items being in different places. Or maybe I'm just missing the logic behind it.

The Sourceable items all have a workflow that trigger a Task for the sourcing and then creating a PO etc but when the item is not Sourceable the workflow kind of runs into a dead end. I'm guessing I'd have to copy and edit some of the workflows to trigger the needed tasks that are not in baseline?

So to recap, do you suggest we use the Service Catalog items only, or only Product Catalog or combine them both as in the demo data?

Thank you in advance. If anything unclear please just ask. I'm really struggling to wrap my head around the structure of the different catalogs and how they integrate with each other

Kind regards,

Johannes Coetsee

rohantyagi · ‎07-11-2016

Johannes, assuming I understood your question correctly below are my thoughts:

Service catalog is a way to provide EITHER GOODS OR SERVICES in a consistent and user friendly way. It also allows more flexibility to the admin while configuring and providing options to its consumers. So service catalog is exclusively those goods or SERVICES (hence service catalog) that a consumer can order and get them fulfilled in some way.

Product catalog is a piece of Asset management. Product catalog is a set of information about an asset. So, information about GOODS. It is based on the SN's theory of Models. Models are used for managing and tracking assets through various ServiceNow asset applications like Product Catalog. However note that: Models published to the product catalog are automatically published to the service catalog.

Nutshell, Product catalog - more aligned towards asset management. Service Catalog - to provide Service or consumer experience and aligns with Request management.

Service Catalog should be the interface for your consumers

Hope this information helps you make the decision. Additional links below will help further understand it better.

Product Catalog - ServiceNow Wiki

Introduction to Service Catalog - ServiceNow Wiki

View solution in original post

rohantyagi · ‎07-11-2016

Johannes, assuming I understood your question correctly below are my thoughts:

Service catalog is a way to provide EITHER GOODS OR SERVICES in a consistent and user friendly way. It also allows more flexibility to the admin while configuring and providing options to its consumers. So service catalog is exclusively those goods or SERVICES (hence service catalog) that a consumer can order and get them fulfilled in some way.

Product catalog is a piece of Asset management. Product catalog is a set of information about an asset. So, information about GOODS. It is based on the SN's theory of Models. Models are used for managing and tracking assets through various ServiceNow asset applications like Product Catalog. However note that: Models published to the product catalog are automatically published to the service catalog.

Nutshell, Product catalog - more aligned towards asset management. Service Catalog - to provide Service or consumer experience and aligns with Request management.

Service Catalog should be the interface for your consumers

Hope this information helps you make the decision. Additional links below will help further understand it better.

Product Catalog - ServiceNow Wiki

Introduction to Service Catalog - ServiceNow Wiki

Johannes Coetse · ‎07-12-2016

Thank you Rohan,

It helps to just get a better understanding of how SN intended us to use it. It's quite easy to get stuck thinking you should only use one part but everything is so interlinked I've come to find that you have to keep a broad eye on it to understand how they all fit together.

Johannes

bsweetser · ‎07-12-2016

To add to what Rohan says, the catalogs are related. Here's an image I created to visualize it in the Asset Management training:

So there are really three "catalogs."

The Service catalog provides the "menu" from which users can select items (goods and services, as Rohan describes).
The Product catalog holds the Model records that describe the different items. These Model records are referenced by assets, CIs, and the Service catalog. This is how you can easily determine if a "sourceable" item requested from the Service catalog already has an associated In stock asset.
The Vendor catalog allows you to identify which items you purchase from a particular vendor and the specifics about it (vendor cost, vendor's part number, etc.). This allows you to identify which vendor to use when you need to procure new items.

I hope this helps, Johannes.

Ben

Johannes Coetse · ‎07-12-2016

Thank you for that image Ben.

I'm sure every organization works differently but this gives me a good idea of the process involved from creating the listings in the Vendor Items or Product Catalog Items and then publishing from either one of those to Service Catalog? It seems like the Product Catalog Items do not get published automatically as Rohan has said and also as the ServiceNow documentation said?

The way our current process works is the end user requests quotes for a new item (be it hardware or software) and Procurement supply them a couple of quotes they in turn request from the suppliers then the user decide which quote to accept (all this happens via email). Then a requisition is made out by the end user and sent to Procurement on hard copy! Then Procurement creates the PO in Oracle Peoplesoft which is the financial system of the organization. Now only is the item ordered from the supplier and once it arrives it's captured into the Asset system after it gets tagged etc. Lastly a installation task is created so that the new item can be delivered/installed at the users office by the field supporters.

Asset Management will be moved to ServiceNow but that whole part from request to installation is very difficult in our situation with the financial system being outside ServiceNow.

My idea is to supply the quotes to the user via Product Catalog which we populate with standardized items and that Request is then created on Checkout, the catalog task is created to Source Request either form stock room or PO so we opt for PO since no items are pre-bought. The PO field will need to be made changeable(unsure where probably an ACL?) since we need to match this PO up with the one created in Orale PS. When stock arrives the rest of the normal procedure continues like Receiving Slips > Receiving Lines > asset & CI creation> task for setup/configuration > installation

Is this a good process to follow in your mind? The main concern with Service Catalog Items was that every item there does not make the Source Request button available since it's status in un-sourceable and then can't get the PO linked to the Request. The Product Catalog items are all Source-able and then Source Request button is available and PO can be linked.

Appreciate your help thus far. Is all these different modules we now see in SN a result of how the product evolved and moved form only one catalog to different catalogs?

Regards,

Johannes