How to Create a New Service Catalog Category in ServiceNow
In this article I’m going to go over how to create a new service catalog category in ServiceNow, and how to create a hierarchy.
Service Catalog Category
A service catalog category is a record that is used to logically group one or more catalog items together. Organizing catalog items in the service catalog provides end users with an enhanced user experience since all catalog items are grouped together, and it also allows end users to make requests faster and easier.
You can also create and build hierarchies with service catalog categories. For example, you could have a parent service catalog category called software, and then beneath that category, you could have two child categories, one for SaaS, and another for self-hosted.
Creating a Service Catalog Category
In today’s post, I’m going to show you how to create a service catalog category, and then how to build out a hierarchy.
For today’s example, I’m going to create a new service catalog category called “IT Equipment”, and then we’ll make the existing “Hardware” and “Software” service categories child categories of the “IT Equipment” category.
To get started, open up ServiceNow, and type in “Maintain Categories” in the application navigator.
Click on the “Maintain Categories” module located underneath the “Service Catalog” application.
You’ll now be navigated to a list of all out-of-the-box service catalog categories.
To create a new one, click on the “New” button.
You’ll be navigated to a blank service catalog category form.
In the first field “Title”, this is the title of the service catalog category. Here I’m going to enter “IT Equipment”.
Next, we have the “Catalog” field, this field allows you to select what catalog this service catalog category applies to. For today’s example, we’re going to select the “Service Catalog” catalog.
For the other fields on this form we’re going to leave them blank since they’re optional, and not required.
Now click on the “Submit” button.
You’ll now see that the new service catalog category is available in the list view.
Creating a Hierarchy
To create a hierarchy, let’s search for the “Hardware” and “Software” service catalog categories.
Populate the “Parent” field with the “IT Equipment” category, this will create a parent child hierarchy.
Now that we’ve completed that, let’s head over to the service portal by adding “SP” to the end of our instance’s URL.
You’ll now be taken to the service portal.
Click on the “Catalog” link along the top of the portal.
Now click on the “Browse by categories” link.
You’ll now be taken to the service catalog where you can see all of the catalog items that are available to you, with their service catalog categories displayed on the left hand side in the “Categories” widget.
As you can see, we have a new “IT Equipment” category, and if we expand the category, you’ll see the “Hardware” and “Software” categories nested directly underneath it.
And it’s as simple as that, creating a new service catalog category is a fairly simple task to perform, and it can help organize your service catalog in a matter of minutes.
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