Overview

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Request Catalog Items are what ServiceNow calls the forms in the Customer Portal which can kick off tickets or workflows. In order to understand forms, you should have a basic understanding of types of tickets within ServiceNow. Cases are by far the most common type of ticket, but they are not the only type. Where a Case is more 'flat' in that it doesn't use any automation or workflow to move through the system, a Request Item is a ticket type that is more malleable and dynamic and does allow for automation and workflows.

 

Types of Forms

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There are three main types of forms available in ServiceNow. We can help you determine which works best for your needs, but they are:

A Case record producer that generates a Case - this is a fancy way of saying the form has no workflow, approvals, or subtasks generated automatically. It simply creates a standard case CS0000x record. 'Submit a Ticket' is a record producer that generates a case. With this type of form, you have the option of asking the submitter some custom questions which are available to you in the agent view. If you need a ticket created in the system to go to a certain team, this is what you would want set up.

A catalog item that creates a Requested Item, aka a 'RITM' - this looks similar to a record producer that generates a case, but the back end processes are different. You are able to create linear 'when this is done, make this happen' logic. So you can have step 1 be 'this request gets approved' step 2 be 'a task gets created for this assignment group' and step 3 be 'a task gets created for that assignment group'. 'UCPath Cognos Reports Access Request' is a catalog item that generates a RITM and Tasks.

An order guide - this is an option for more complex workflows and ordering needs. Order guides contain multiple catalog items allowing multiple RITMs to be ordered on one form, and allow concurrent requests and tasks to be created for those items. Oracle and Concur Role Requests is an order guide. An order guide can have 1 option that creates a case and 1 option that creates a RITM, or it can have multiple items that create a Case, or multiple items that create a RITM.

In addition to these 3 main types, we have recently created a few forms meant only to lookup data within the system. An example of that is this form that allows users to look up group data within the system without having access to the system. Lookup forms are limited by various security roles, but are useful depending on the business case. For instance, if ServiceNow is able to look up data within another system, such as Oracle, a read only form will allow a user to go to a form in ServiceNow and lookup the status of an item in Oracle.