The user followed the documentation to Clone requests. While this did successfully place 10 reference fields on the checkout cart page, REQ, RITM, and SCTASK records do not contain the correct "Requested For" values for the new users entered in those reference fields. Instead, each of cloned REQs has the same information as the original REQ ("Requested For" information included).

After some time, it was found that the behavior the user was experiencing was expected per their configuration.

In an Out of Box (OOB) scenario, there is a parent Request (REQ) which has the "requested_for" field, and then the same field appears on the Requested Item (RITM) via dot-walking (request.requested for). The same dot-walking applies for Service Catalog Task (SCTASK) records (in this case, request item.requested for).

This is how the proper names are carried consistently down through each level of the REQ > RITM > SCTASK, and why this works fine OOB.

In the user's case, however, they have variable values which are entered when the item is ordered. The variable values are not going to change per cloned request, because the initial values entered in those variables should not naturally change. It makes sense to clone them. The idea of cloning requests is to process the same request for someone else. That's the function of this cloning tool.

For example, if hypothetical user Stephen Strange requests a new cell phone with a variable asking for a color for the phone, and he chooses "infinity-stone green" and then clones the request, all Requests will have RITMs showing the "Color" variable question's answer as "infinity-stone green". This is expected. Stephen is cloning the details of the request. He is just changing who the request is requested for (e.g. changing it to also be requested for Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, etc). This happens just fine until the Flow attached to the Catalog Item runs.

Why the requested_for value is always changing back to the original requestor in the user's case is because they have a Flow which is setting the "requested_for" value back to the variable value stored in custom variable "u_requested_for" (see Flow "Submit Custom Request").

To be sure, when the cloned REQs are initially submitted, the correct "requested_for" is set. Only after the Flows associated with the child RITM kicks off is the value set back to the original request's "requested_for" value. This is what needs to fixed.