In this article by Tim Woodruff, authors of the book Learning ServiceNow, No matter what software system you're interested in learning about, understanding the interface is likely to be the first step toward success. ServiceNow is a very robust IT service management tool, and has an interface to match. Designed both to be easy to use, and to support a multitude of business processes and applications (both foreseen and unforeseen), it must be able to bend to the will of the business, and be putty in the hands of a capable developer.

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

You'll learn all the major components of the UI (user interface), and how to manipulate them to suit your business needs, and look good doing it. You'll also learn some time-saving tips, tricks, and UI shortcuts that have been built into the interface for power users to get around more quickly.

This article will cover the key components of the user interface, including:

• The content and ServiceNow frames
• The application navigator
• UI settings and personalization

We recommend that you follow along in your own development instance as you read through this section, to gain a more intimate familiarity with the interface.

Frames

ServiceNow is a cloud platform that runs inside your browser window. Within your browser, the ServiceNow interface is broken up into frames. Frames, in web parlance, are just separately divided sections of a page. In ServiceNow, there are two main frames: the ServiceNow frame, and the content frame.  Both have different controls and display different information.

This section will show you what the different frames are, what they generally contain, and the major UI elements within them.

The ServiceNow frame consists of many UI elements spanning across both the top, and left side of the ServiceNow window in your browser.

ServiceNow frame

Technically, the ServiceNow frame can be further broken up into two frames: The banner frame along the top edge of the interface, and the application navigator along the left side.

Banner frame

The banner frame runs along the top of every page in ServiceNow, save for a few exceptions. It's got room for some branding and a logo, but the more functional components for administrators and developers is on the right. There, you'll find:

• System settings cog
• Help and documentation button
• Conversations panel button
• Instance search button
• Profile/session dropdown

System settings

In your developer instance, on the far-top-right, you will see a sort of cog or sprocket. That is a universal sort of the Settings menu icon. Clicking on that icon reveals the System settings menu. This menu is broken down into several sections:

• General
• Theme
• Lists
• Forms
• Notifications
• Developer (Admins only)

Fig 1.1: System Settings

The settings in this menu generally apply only to the current user who's signed in, so you can freely toggle and modify these settings without worrying about breaking anything.

In the General tab (as seen in the preceding figure) of the System settings UI, you'll find toggles to control accessibility options, compact the user interface, select how date/time fields are shown, select your time-zone, and even an option to display a printer-friendly version of the page you're on. In Geneva, you'll also see an option to Wrap Longer Text in List Columns and Compact list date/time.

On the Theme tab (in the preceding figure), you'll find several pre-made ServiceNow themes with names like System and Blues. One of the first things that a company often does when deploying ServiceNow, is to create a custom-branded theme. We'll go over how to do that in a later section, and you'll be able to see your custom themes there.

The Lists tab (not available in Geneva) contains the option to wrap longer text in list columns (which was under the General tab in Geneva), as well as options to enable striped table rows (which alternates rows in a table between contrasting shades of gray, making it easier to follow with the eye from left to right) and modern cell styles. All options in the Lists tab except Wrap longer text in list columns require the List V3 plugin to be enabled before they'll show up, as they only apply to List V3.

If you've installed a fresh ServiceNow instance using Helsinki or a later version, the List V3 plugin will be enabled by default. However, if you've upgraded from Geneva or an earlier version, to Helsinki, you'll be on List V2 by default, and list V3 will need to be enabled. This, and any other plugins, can be enabled from System Definition | Plugins in the application navigator.

The Forms tab contains settings to enable tabbed forms, as well as to control how and when related lists load.

Related lists are lists (like tables in a spreadsheet) of related that appear at the bottom of forms. Forms are where key data about an individual record are displayed.

The Notifications tab (not available in Geneva) allows you to choose whether to get notifications on your mobile device, desktop toast notifications, e-mail notifications, or audio notifications.

Finally, the Developer tab (only available to users with the admin role) is where you can find settings relating to application and update set-based development. By default, your selected update set should say Default [Global], which means that any configuration changes you make in the instance will not be captured in a portable update set that you can move between instances. We'll go into detail about what these things mean later on. For now, follow along with the following steps in your developer instance using your Administrator account, as we create a new update set to contain any configuration changes we'll be making in this article:

1. If you don't already have the System Settings menu open, click on the System Settings gear in the top-right of the ServiceNow interface.
2. If you haven't already done so, click on the Developer tab on the bottom-left.
3. Next, navigate to the Local Update Setstable.
   • In the main section of the System Settings dialog, you should see the third row down labeled Update Sets. To the right of that should be a dropdown with Default [Global] selected, followed by three buttons.

     The first button () is called a Reference icon. Clicking it will take you to the currently selected update set (in this case, Default). The second button () will take you to the list view, showing you all of the local update sets. The third button will refresh the currently selected update set, in case you've changed update sets in another window or tab.

   • Click on the second button, to navigate to the Local Update Sets list view.
4. Click on the blue New button at the top-left of the page to go to the new update set form.
5. Give this update set a name. Let's enter Article 1 into the Name field.
6. Fill out the Description by writing in something like Learning about the ServiceNow interface!
7. Leave State and Release date to their default values.
8. Click Submit and Make Current.
   

   Alternately, you could click Submitor right-click the header and click Save, then return to the record and click the Make This My Current Set related link.

   

Now that we've created an update set, any configuration changes we make will be captured and stored in a nice little package that we can back out or move into another instance to deploy the same changes. Now let's just confirm that we've got the right update set selected:

1. Once again, click on the System Settings gear at the top-right of the ServiceNow window, and open the Developer tab.
2. If the selected update set still shows as Default, click the Refresh button (the third icon to the right of the selected update set).
3. If the update set still shows as Default, just select your new Article1 update set from the Update Set drop-down list.

Help

Next on the right side of the banner frame, is the Help icon. Clicking on this icon opens up the Help panel on the right side of the page.

The Help menu has three sections: What's New, User Guide, and Search Documentation. Or, if you're in Geneva, it shows only What's New and Search Product Documentation.

Clicking What's New just brings up the introduction to your instance version, with a couple of examples of the more prominent new features over the previous version.

The User Guidewill redirect you to an internal mini-guide with some useful pocket-reference types of info in Helsinki. It's very slim on the details though, so you might be better off searching the developer site (http://developer.servicenow.com) or documentation (http://docs.servicenow.com ) if you have any specific questions.

Speaking of the documentation site, Search Documentation is essentially a link. Clicking this link from a form or list will automatically populate a query relating to the type of record(s) you were viewing.

Conversations

Moving further left in the banner frame, you'll find the Conversations button. This opens up the Conversations side-bar, showing an (initially blank) list of the conversations you've recently been a part of. You can enter text in the filter box to filter the conversation list by participant name. Unfortunately, it doesn't allow you to filter/search by message contents at this point. You can also click the Plus icon to initiate a new conversation with a user of your choice.

Global text search

The next link to the right in the banner frame is probably the most useful one of all – the global text search. The global text search box allows you to enter a term, ticket number, or keyword and search a configurable multitude of tables.

As an example of this functionality, let's search for a user that should be present in the demo data that came with your developer instance:

1. Click on the Search icon (the one that looks like a magnifying glass). It should expand to the left, displaying a search keyword input box.

2. In that input box, type in abel tuter. This is the name of one of the demo users that comes with your developer instance.

   

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3. Press Enter, and you should see the relevant search results divided into sections.

Entering an exact ticket number for a given task (such as an incident, request, or problem ticket) will take you directly to that ticket rather than showing the search results.

This is a great way to quickly navigate to a ticket you've received an e-mail notification about, or for a service desk agent to look up a ticket number provided by a customer.

The search results from the Global Text Search are divided into search groups. The default groups are Tasks, Live Feed, Policy, and People & Places. To the right of each search group is a list of the tables that the search is run against for that group.

The Policy search group, for example, contains several script types, including Business Rules, UI Actions, Client Scripts, and UI Policies.

Profile

The last item on our list of banner-frame elements, is the profile link. This will show your photo/icon (if you've uploaded one), and your name. As indicated by the small down-facing arrow to the right of your name (or System Administrator), clicking on this will show a little drop-down menu. This menu consists of up to four main components:

• Profile
• Impersonate User
• Elevate Roles
• Logout

The Profile link in the dropdown will take you directly to the Self Service view of your profile. This is generally not what Administrators want, but it's a quick way for users to view their profile information.

Impersonate User is a highly useful tool for administrators and developers, allowing them to view the instance as though they were another user, including that user's security permissions, and viewing the behavior of UI policies and scripts when that user is logged in.

Elevate Roles is an option only available when the High Security plugin is enabled (which may or may not be turned on by default in your organization). Clicking this option opens a dialog that allows you to check a box, and re-initialize your session with a special security role called security_admin (assuming you have this role in your instance). With high security settings enabled, the security_admin role allows you to perform certain actions, such as modifying ACLs (Access Control Lists – security rules), and running background scripts (scripts you can write and execute directly on the server).

Finally, the Logout link does just what you'd expect: logs you out.

If you have difficulty with a session that you can't log out, you can always log out by visiting /logout.do on your instance. For example: http://your-instance.service-now.com/logout.do/.

The application navigator

The application navigator is one of the UI components with which you will become most familiar, as you work in ServiceNow. Nearly everything you do will begin either by searching in the Global Text Search box, or by filtering the application navigator.

The contents of the Application Navigator consists of Modules nested underneath application menu. The first application menu in the application navigator is Self-Service. This application menu is generally what's available to a user who doesn't have any special roles or permissions. Underneath this application menu, you'll see various modules such as Homepage, Service Catalog, Knowledge, and so on.

The Self-Service application menu, and several modules under it.

When you hear the term application as it relates to ServiceNow, you might think of an application on your smartphone. Applications in ServiceNow and applications on your smartphone both generally consist of packaged functionality, presented in a coherent way. However in ServiceNow, there are some differences. For example, an application header might consist only of links to other areas in ServiceNow, and contain no new functionality of its' own. An application might not even necessarily have an application header.

Generally, we refer to the major ITIL processes in ServiceNow as applications (Incident, Change, Problem, Knowledge, and so on) – but these can often consist of various components linked up with one another; so the functionality within an application need not necessarily be packaged in a way that it's closed off from the rest of the system.

You'll often be given instructions to navigate to a particular module in a way similar to this: Self-Service | My Requests. In this example, the left portion (Self-Service) is the application menu header, and the right portion (My Requests) is the module.

Filter text box

The filter text box in the Application Navigator allows you to enter a string to – you guessed it – filter the Application Navigator list with!

It isn't strictly a search, it's just filtering the list of items in the application navigator, which means that the term you enter must appear somewhere in the name of either an application menu, or a module. So if you enter the term Incident, you'll see modules with names like Incidents and Watched Incidents, as well as every module inside the Incident application menu. However, if you enter Create Incident, you won't get any results. This is because the module for creating a new Incident, is called Create New, inside the Incident module, and the term Create Incident doesn't appear in that title.

In addition to filtering the application navigator, the filter text box has some hidden shortcuts that ServiceNow wizards use to fly around the interface with the speed of a ninja. Here are a few pro tips for you:

• Once you've entered a term into the filter text box in the application navigator, the first module result is automatically selected. You can navigate to it by pressing Enter.
• Enter a table name followed by .list and then press Enter to navigate directly to the default list view for that table. For example, entering sc_req_item.list [Enter] will direct you to the list view for the sc_req_item (Requested Item) table.
• Enter a table name followed by either .form, or .do and then press Enter to take you directly to the default view of that table's form (allowing you to quickly create a new record). For example, entering sc_request.form [Enter] will take you to the New Record intake form for the sc_request (Request) table.
• Each table has a corresponding form, with certain fields displayed by default.
• Use either .FORM or .LIST in caps, to navigate to the list or form view in a new tab or window! 
• Opening a list or form in a new tab (either using this method, by middle-clicking a link, or otherwise) breaks it out of the ServiceNow frame, showing only the Content frame.

Try it yourself: Enter sys_user.list into the application navigator filter text field in your developer instance, and press Enter. You should see the list of all the demo users in your instance!

No matter which application navigator tab you have selected when you start typing in the filter text box, it will always show you results from the all applications tab, with any of your favorites that match the filter showing up first.

Favorites

Users can add favorites within the Application Navigator by clicking the star icon, visible on the right when hovering over any application menu or module in the application navigator. Adding a favorite will make it come up first when filtering the application navigator using any term that it matches. It'll also show up under your favorites list, which you can see by clicking the tab at the top of the application navigator, below the filter text box, with the same star icon you see when adding a module to your favorites.

Let's try out favorites now by adding some favorites that an admin or developer is likely to want to come back to on frequent occasions.

Add the following modules to your favorites list by filtering the application navigator by the module name, hovering over the module, and clicking the star icon on the right:

• Workflow | Workflow Editor
• System Definition | Script Includes
• System Definition | Dictionary
• System Update Sets | Local Update Sets
• System Logs | System Log | All

This one (All) is nested under a module (System Log) that doesn't point anywhere, but it is just there to serve as a separator for other modules.

It's not much use searching for All, so try searching for System Log!

Now that we've got a few favorites, let's rename them so they're easier to identify at a glance. While we're at it, we'll give them some new icons as well:

1. Click the favorites tab in the application navigator, and you should see your newly added favorites in the list.

2. At the bottom-right of the application navigator in the ServiceNow frame, click on Edit Favorites.

3. Click on the favorite item called Workflow – Workflow Editor. This will select it so you can edit it in the content frame on the right:

   

   01-10-Editing workflow favorite.png

4. In the Name field, give it something simpler, such as Workflow Editor. Then choose a color and an icon. I chose white, and the icon that looks like a flowchart. I also removed my default Home favorite, but you don't have to.

Here is what my favorites look like after I make my modifications:

01-11-Favorites after customizing.png

Another way to add something to your favorites is to drag it there. Certain specific elements in the ServiceNow UI can be dragged directly into your Favorites tab. Let's give it a try!

1. Head over to the Incident table by using the .list trick.

2. In your developer instance, enter incident.list into the filter text box in the application navigator; and then press Enter.
3. Click on the Filter icon at the top-left of the Incident list, and filter the Incident list using the condition builder. Add some conditions so that it only displays records where Active is true, and Assigned to is empty. Then click on Run.

   

   01-12-Incident condition for favorites.png

4. The list should now be filtered, after you hit Run. You should see just a few incidents in the list. Now, at the top-left of the Incident table, to the left of the Incidents table label, click on the hamburger menu (yeah, that's really what it's called). It looks like three horizontal bars atop one another. In that menu, click on Create Favorite.
5. Choose a good name, like Unassigned Incidents, and an appropriate icon and color. Then click Done. You should now have an Unassigned Incidents favorite listed!

Finally, if you click on the little white left-facing arrow at the bottom-left of the application navigator, you'll notice that whichever navigator tab you have selected, your favorites show up in a stacked list on the left. This gives you a bit more screen real-estate for the content frame.

Summary

In this article, we learned about:

• How content is organized on the screen, within frames – the banner frame, Application Navigator, and content frame.
• How to access the built-in help and documentation for ServiceNow.
• How to use the global text search functionality, to find the records we're looking for.
• What it means to elevate roles or impersonate a user.
• How to get around the Application Navigator, including some pro tips on getting around like a power user from the filter text box.
• How to use favorites and navigation history within ServiceNow, to our advantage.
• What UI settings are available, and how to personalize our interface.

Resources for Article:

Further resources on this subject:

• Getting Things Done with Tasks [article]
• Events, Notifications, and Reporting [article]
• Start Treating your Infrastructure as Code [article]