Designing Order Guides & Cascade Logic
While working with multiple products or services, it is important to create a simple way for users to search and submit individual catalog items with less friction. Order guides are a way to streamline complex processes.
In this topic, we will understand more about ServiceNow order guides and cascade variables.
What is a ServiceNow order guide?
ServiceNow creates order guides to help streamline the workflow. They act as Journey/Wizard that compiles multiple items in a single checkout based on user responses.
ServiceNow order guides determine what catalog items to order by analyzing the rule conditions. Customer information within the order guide can be passed as cascading variables to the ordered items, allowing information to be used across different items.
What are Cascade Variables?
ServiceNow cascade variables are an important feature that passes information to items. They are used to automatically fill the identical variables in the child items as per the guide.
It is important that there is the same variable on both the order guide and the ordered items for ServiceNow cascading variables. It can be useful to define a variable once in a variable set and then assign it to the order guide and catalog item. It helps reduce duplication and creates the same variables in both locations.
- Mechanism: It compares variables based on their Name (backend name). If both the Order Guide and the child Catalog Item have a variable with the name v_location, the value is copied over.
- Requirement: The variable names must match, and the Cascade Variables checkbox on the Order Guide header must be checked.
Rule-Based in Order Guides
The rule base is a condition of an Order Guide that defines which catalog item gets selected in the request bundle based on the variables answered in initial steps. Each record in the Rule Base related list creates a relationship between a condition and a target catalog item.
| Rule Base Fields | Purpose | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Item | The Catalog Item to include when the condition evaluates to true. | Standard Developer Laptop |
| Condition Builder | The logic evaluated against variables defined on the Order Guide. | [Department] [is] [Engineering] |
| Variable Set Assignments | Optional mappings or script overrides executed when the item is added. | Pre-populating specific hidden options. |
To add rules in a ServiceNow Order guide, move to the rule base related list in the record and click New. Add reference target Catalog item and use condition builder to define when item should be used. Finally, submit the form and repeat for all catalog items that you need.
Conclusion
By understanding the overall ServiceNow catalog setup, variable configuration, and order guide, we have learned the Service Catalog management process. This will help you convert complex operations into a simpler, user-friendly experience.
By building your own instance and practicing what you have learned, you will get hands-on understanding of how catalogs are secured, scaled, and made easy to use.
In the next chapter, we will be focusing on how ServiceNow Service Level Management processes and different operations work.
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