Create a simple catalog item in ServiceNow

 

Create Catalog Item and Flow Designer to Update Record

Flow Designer is a Now Platform® feature for automating processes in a single design environment. Flow Designer lets process owners use natural language to automate approvals, tasks, notifications, and record operations without coding.

You can expand Flow Designer to communicate with external instances and third-party systems by requesting a separate subscription to Integration Hub.

This article aims to provide a step-by-step guide on how to create a ServiceNow Catalog Item, which will trigger a Flow to update a record. In this case, we will be updating the CMDB Window Server CI as an example.

Development

STEPS

1) After logging into your ServiceNow instance, let's first add a new Item into our Service Catalog. Go to Service Catalog -> Maintain Items (table: sc_cat_item_list) and click on 'New'.

2) Enter The Name, Short Description, Description and click 'Save'.

3) Update the Catalog and Category and then navigate to Portal Settings and change the Request method to 'Submit'.

4) Now, let's navigate to Process Automation -> Flow Designer

5) Click on New -> Flow

You'll get redirected to a new page. Click on Create new -> Flow

6) Enter a name for the flow and click on 'Submit'.

7) Select 'Service Catalog' as the Trigger.

8) Select 'Run flow in background' and Click 'Done'.

9) Navigate to Manage flow catalog variables.

10) Click 'New' to create new variable. Each variable will appear as an input field when this catalog item is triggered.

11) Enter the details for the first question, 'What is the name of the windows server?'. We will be using the name as a way to identify the Windows Server.

12) Add another variable for the following question, 'What is the Serial Number of the Windows Server?'. This will be the field to be updated to the Windows Server CI via the catalog. But let's do this via the Variables tab in the Catalog Item 

Fill in the info:

13) We should have 2 variables created.

14) Go back to the Workflow Studio and click on 'Action' to add a new Action to the flow.

15) Select 'Get Catalog Variables'.

16) Enter the Submitted Request, Catalog Item and select the 2 variables that we have created previously.

17) Next, add another Action, 'Create or Update Record'.

18) Specify the Table Name, and Fields to be updated. Remember to check the 'Determines uniqueness' for the Name field. This configuration specifies the Table in ServiceNow to be updated, as well as how the Table Fields should be populated.

19) After all that has been done, we can click on 'Save' and then 'Activate'.

20) Let's go back to our Catalog Item that we have created, and update the Flow to link it to the Catalog Item.

Testing

21) We can now test the Catalog Item by clicking on 'Try It'.

22) Type in the Window Server Name and Serial Number. Click on 'Order Now'.

23) Go to Configuration -> Servers -> Windows and verify that the CI was created. The record was created as the system detects that there were no existing record with the same name.

24) Let's go back to the Catalog Item and test to see if update works by clicking on 'Try It'.

25) Let's key in the same Name as before, but change the value of the Serial Number.

26) If we go back to the Windows Server CI, the Serial Number should now be updated.

27) The Flow Designer also provides Execution Details. Go back to the Flow Designer, and click on 'Executions' button.

28) Select one of the transaction to look at the details.

29) You can also navigate the the Service Portal to look at the form that was created for the Catalog Item.

We have successfully built a simple flow and catalog item!

Source:

• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tutorial-create-catalog-item-flow-designer-update-record-steve-ng/