Staggered decomposition
Summarize
Summary of Staggered decomposition
Staggered decomposition allows ServiceNow customers to break down customer orders into multiple iterations rather than decomposing the entire order at once after approval. This approach leverages domain-level information available at different times during fulfillment, enabling more flexible and accurate order processing.
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This method is particularly useful when service and resource orders arise from varying factors such as customer needs or service availability at specific locations. It delays the creation of domain orders (product, service, and resource orders) until the necessary information is available, ensuring that decomposition uses the most current data.
How It Works
- Upon order approval, decomposition begins using existing order and catalog information.
- If critical characteristic values required by decomposition rules are missing, the process skips those domain orders.
- When missing characteristic values become available—either through user input or attribute propagation rules—the decomposition process automatically retriggers for the previously skipped domain orders.
- Once decomposition completes for these domain orders, further updates to characteristic values do not trigger additional decomposition.
This contrasts with traditional decomposition, which initiates once after approval and skips domain orders permanently if required data is missing at that time.
Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
- Improved order fulfillment flexibility by accommodating evolving information during the order lifecycle.
- Reduced risk of incomplete or inaccurate domain order creation due to missing data at initial decomposition.
- Automation of decomposition retriggers minimizes manual intervention and accelerates order processing.
Practical Considerations
Implementing staggered decomposition helps ensure that your order management reflects the latest available data, making the fulfillment process more resilient and responsive to changes. It supports scenarios where orders depend on characteristics that may only be defined or updated later in the process.
Learn how you can stagger the decomposition for your customer orders. You can decompose your customer orders in multiple iterations by using the available information at the domain level, rather than decomposing an entire customer order at one time after it is approved for fulfillment.
Staggered decomposition helps you fulfill your customer orders even when service and resource orders were created from different factors, such as a customer's need, availability of the services at a customer's location, and so on. Staggered decomposition creates the domain orders (product, service, and resource orders) at a later stage during the order fulfillment process. The decomposition process is based on the latest information.
However, the one-time order decomposition process (before the staggered decomposition) works well when the products and services have the necessary information and order approval to create the domain orders for the order fulfillment.
The following diagram shows how the staggered decomposition process works in comparison to the standard order decomposition. You can start the decomposition process with the information that you already have for your order and order line items. The decomposition process skips the domain orders (product or service or resource orders) that you don't have the required information for at this time. When you add this information later, the decomposition process triggers and completes the processing for the remaining domain orders.
Contrast to earlier decomposition processing
Before staggered decomposition was available, order decomposition processing started immediately after a customer order was approved for fulfillment. Order decomposition was based on the specification relationships and decomposition rules that were defined in the product catalog.
If the decomposition rule depended on any characteristic value that was not available at the time of order decomposition, the order processing skipped the decomposition of orders. However, in staggered decomposition, with the initial decomposition, the decomposition automatically triggers again for the skipped orders when the dependent characteristic value is available. The characteristic value can be set by your order fulfillment users or by the attribute propagation rules.
How staggered decomposition works
To support order decomposition in a staggered manner, you can use this method to retrigger the decomposition process for the skipped domain orders when the characteristic values are assigned in the corresponding decomposition rules.
When you approve an order, the order decomposition process starts. The decomposition process creates domain orders by using the information that is available from the order, order line items, and catalog definition. It also evaluates the decomposition rules to create the target domain orders. If the decomposition feature fails to evaluate the decomposition rules due to the unavailability of characteristic values, the decomposition is stopped for those domain orders.
When the characteristic values are available either from a user’s action or from an attribute propagation rule, the decomposition process is retriggered. The process then creates the required domain orders and completes the order decomposition. If you again update the characteristic value after the order decomposition is complete, it does not trigger the decomposition for the domain order.
To understand staggered decomposition with the help of an example, see Customer order decomposition.