Service Portal ignores multiple column variable layouts in catalog - Known Error

Service Portal ignores multiple column variable layouts in catalog Description Service Catalog uses containers that enable control of the layout of the variables of catalog items, so you can create variables that appear in multiple columns. Service Portal does not honor containers, causing everything to display in a single column. Compared to the platform view of a catalog item, Service Portal does not render nested containers. Only variables and variable sets can be displayed inside a container.

Steps to Reproduce

On a catalog item or record producer, add a container_start variable with layout = 2 columns, alternating sides.

Add a few variables in order after the container.

Add a container end variable at the end.

Open the catalog item or the record producer in Service Portal.

Note that the fields appear in single column and not in two columns as defined in the container.

Workaround The intent with Service Portal is to enable our customers to provide modern, easy-to-use, device agnostic experiences for their end users or requestors. We do not intend to provide full feature parity between the Platform experience and the Service Portal experience. However, we do understand that you may have built out catalog item forms that are fairly complex and do not render well in the Service Portal today. Hopefully, the updates provided in the link below will help you overcome some of those challenges.

https://community.servicenow.com/community/service-automation-platform/blog/2017/05/05/service-catalog-on-service-portal

If they do not, there is an update set within the link that adds 2 new fields to the sc_cat_item table using iFrames but has changes that mask the iFrame experience.

Before using the update set, please understand:

This approach is not a product offering, but only provided as an option that you can use, if you choose to do so. There will be NO SUPPORT for this. This is intended to be a short-term option so you can continue to use the Service Catalog on the Service Portal, while you set in motion plans to transform your catalog item forms to fit the Service Portal experience.