Overview Did you know there are over 60 server-side methods available in GlideSPScriptable ($sp)? Many of these methods are hidden or not documented, so we've combed through all the widgets and source code to provide you with this cheat sheet that includes all of the $sp methods available in Service Portal. Now updated for the New York release. Save time and maximize your productivity with this quick reference document for you to use day-to-day. Enjoy!
Service Portal Features in New York
The New York release of ServiceNow is finally here and includes a number of useful features, enhancements, and bug fixes to the Service Portal. In this article, we will review some of the new features and larger changes. New Features Agent Chat Your users can initiate and maintain an Agent Chat conversation in any portal page. You can now also create a script to pass portal-specific data to Agent Chat. For example, pass the name of your knowledge base to a Virtual Agent conversation. To enable, simply install the "Agent Chat" plugin, and create a configuration through the "Service Portal > Agent Chat" module. Official documentation Search Analytics & Suggestions Generate relevant search suggestions for your users and monitor search analytics to understand what your users are searching for. When you enable Search Suggestions, suggestions appear automatically when users enter text into search fields in the Service Portal. Official documentation Text index groups Configure a text index group to make Service Portal search results more relevant to your end-users. The base system text index group includes the Catalog items, Knowledge, and Social Q&A Questions tables. Official documentation Antivirus Scanning support for attachments View the health status of file attachments in Service Portal. Antivirus Scanning scans files in the Attachments [sys_attachments] table by default. When viewed from a Service Portal page, attachments may not be available for download depending on their health status. Official documentation Reset Password Although not much of a feature, you can now enable your users to reset their password from the Login widget using the Password Reset application. When the user clicks "Forgot Password?", the system redirects the user to the page value specified in the "glide.security.password_reset.uri" system property. Official documentation Service Catalog Related Catalog Items & Knowledge Articles Configure related items and articles for a catalog item to provide additional information or alternatives. These articles and items are displayed in the catalog item page in Service Portal. Official documentation Knowledge Management Route Map The "kb_article" page now routes to the "kb_article_view" page which is part of the Knowledge Management Service Portal which includes a number of features such as feedback and versioning. Multi Knowledge Bases Configure which knowledge bases to display on the Knowledge Management Service Portal Article Comments User can now reply and like comments as well as add links, attachments, or images to comments. Official documentation Automated Test Framework Open Service Portal Page Open a portal page in the Automated Test Framework. When building automated tests, test designers must first open a page in a portal before testing UI components on the page. Official documentation The New York release seems to be very promising with a nice mixture of features, enhancements, and much-needed bug fixes (over 150+ that I've counted). I am definitely looking forward to this release and all it entails. Check out all the New York release notes here. If you know of some additional features in Service Portal not mentioned here, please let me know in the comments below.
Service Catalog Item Wizard in Service Portal
We've had a number of clients ask about structuring catalog item forms as more of a "wizard" that only renders one section at a time. After thinking about it for a while, I realized that I could use the GlideForm API to programmatically hide and show the different sections (containers). So over the past couple of weeks, I've been working on a new widget that simply interacts with the out-of-box catalog item widget, and uses the API's to add all of the wizard-like capabilities. I think it turned out pretty cool, it's fully themeable, and best of all, it does not require cloning of any widgets. I still have a few more features to add, and I'm also considering adding an accompanying library of Variable Sets that provide a more graphical UI than the out-of-box catalog variables. If all goes well, I may end up including the widget in our RocketFuel library of widgets, so if you're interested in adding some wizard-like capabilities to your portal, feel free to contact me and we can schedule a demo. I'd love to hear what you guys think in the comments below. Is this a useful widget? Does this improve the user experience of the service catalog item form?
Featured Portal: Informatica
OVERVIEW Informatica is an Enterprise Cloud Data Management leader that accelerates data-driven digital transformation headquartered in Redwood City, California. Informatica enables companies to fuel innovation, become more agile and realize new growth opportunities, resulting in intelligent market disruptions. Informatica came to NewRocket to increase user satisfaction, simplify the process, and encourage self-service with their employee service portal. SERVICES Research & Insights Wireframe Design Clickable Prototypes Catalog Consulting High Fidelity Mockups Service Portal Development NewRocket was an integral member of our team and critical for providing the expertise and guidance we needed to make the Informatica IT Service Center a successful reality. We have been very satisfied with everything NewRocket has provided us and plan to continue to use them as needed in the future. - Scott Hiner, Senior IT Communications Manager THE CHALLENGE Informatica’s original portal although designed to accommodate multiple departments did not provide an intuitive experience that allowed users to easily navigate the content of the portal. The portal also served as a hub to other business platforms which diluted its original purpose to focus on service delivery. THE SOLUTION NewRocket developed a dashboard-like homepage that allowed relevant content from all parts of the portal to be easily accessible. Three main calls to action were created to guide users into the experience and help them to filter through the content to find what was most relevant to their needs. Customized widgets were also added to help facilitate feedback and to integrate dynamic content throughout the portal.
Creating Extraordinary Service Portals on ServiceNow
Check out our new Service Portal showcase video, featuring some of the 70+ portals we've designed and developed over the past 3 years. If you're interested in talking to us about your Service Portal project, you can book some time on our calendar here: https://calendly.com/newrocket/60min Or visit our website newrocket.com
Portal Localization Breakout at Knowledge 2019
Want to learn about how to localize your Service Portal? Learn how during our breakout session at K19! Service Portal localization presents a unique set of challenges. After localizing several portals in multiple languages, we've identified some best practices that make the process of extracting strings, managing the translation process and validating the translations less painful. DATE / TIME – Thur, May 9, 12:30 pm – 1:10 pm SESSION ID – CCB0784 SESSION TYPE – CreatorCon Breakout TRACK – CreatorCon Hope to see you there! The NewRocket Team – K19 Agenda
Let’s Meet at Knowledge 2019!
We’ll be attending Knowledge 2019 in Las Vegas in May! Be the first to check out our brand new LaunchPad Theme and RocketFuel UI Design System. What if you could completely redesign your service portal in just a few minutes? With our new custom design accelerators, you can. Meet with us at K19 to demo our brand new LaunchPad Themes and RocketFuel UI Design System. Together, these innovative new products can take your portal from 0 to 60 in just a few clicks. We will be available in between and after sessions from Monday through Friday. If you would like to lock in a time to meet with us, click the link below to add a meeting on our calendar. We'll see you in Vegas! Nathan Firth - Meet us at K19
Service Portal Features in Madrid: Updates, Enhancements & Mobile
As you may know, the newest addition to the ServiceNow family “Madrid” will be released sometime this year. In addition to a new interface, bug fixes, and enhancements, it's also expected to include several new updates to Service Portal. In this article, we will go over some of the changes to Service Portal as well as some of the new mobile features available in Madrid. New Service Portal Features Mobile App Defects & Enhancements by Product Highlighted Features SCSS Support in CSS Includes — By far the most exciting new feature in Service Portal is SASS support within CSS Includes. Up until now, SASS has only been available for use within the Page, Instance, and the Widget... but I would argue that the most relevant and needed place for SASS is within the CSS Includes on the theme. So, I'm very excited to finally have this feature supported in Service Portal, and it will certainly make it easier to develop turn-key themes for Service Portal. Multiple Catalog Support — Enables requesters to browse and search for items across multiple catalogs by adding these catalogs to the Catalogs related list when configuring a portal. This has been a long requested feature, but honestly... I'm not a fan of how it was implemented. It certainly checks the "multi-catalog support" checkbox, but in my opinion, this is not an intuitive implementation. Users of the portal don't know what a Service Catalog is, so how are they going to understand when and why to change catalogs. Multiple Knowledge Base Support — Enables users to browse and search for articles across multiple knowledge bases by adding these knowledge bases to the Knowledge Bases related list when configuring a portal. Similar to the multi-catalog support... it's nice to see this finally supported, but I don't think portal users really care to browse through multiple Knowledge Bases just to find an article. My Requests Page — Enable requesters to view open or closed requests, incidents, and tasks in Service Portal using the My Requests page. It's nice to finally see this page finally improved, and I like the support for combining various ticket types, including Incidents, Requests, and HR cases. The widget can be configured by using the "Service Catalog > My Requests Filter" module. Request Cloning — Clone a submitted request by selecting multiple users in the Also request for list of the Additional Actions section. La Jolla Branding — Activates the latest ServiceNow branding, which includes WCAG-AA compliance for contrast. Not really much of a feature, but it does update the stock portal theme to reflect the new branding colors. Multifactor Authentication— Adds a two-step verification requirement in which users enter more than one set of credentials for authentication of an instance. This second layer of authorization is generated by a token from the user's mobile device using the Google Authentification mechanism as the token provider. Users can require multifactor authentication for their own login credentials. Administrators can require multifactor authentication for any user login credentials. Additional Reading: SCSS Support in CSS Includes Multiple Catalog Support Multiple Knowledge Base Support My Requests Page Request Cloning La Jolla Branding Multifactor Authentication Mobile App Although not Service Portal per se, perhaps one of the most exciting features of the Madrid release is the new mobile capabilities. The ServiceNow Agent mobile app is a native app for both iOS and Android, and by default lets users manage incidents, collaborate, respond to approval requests, access the knowledge base, and receive push notifications. But the most exciting feature is the ability to configure and write custom applications within the app. The mobile app is built on a hierarchy and you can have several applications for the mobile app and limit user access by roles. Each application contains folders to help separate applets. Applets are miniature applications that contain various screens with more information. Data items determine the information that appears in each applet. For example, an applet for My High Priority Incidents would have a data item that pulls information from the system to create a list of incidents that are only assigned to that user and have a priority of Critical or High. Additional Reading: ServiceNow Mobile Release Notes Mobile App ServiceNow Studio Mobile Configuration Defects & Enhancement by Product In addition to all the new features, the Madrid release includes well over 200 defect fixes for ServicePortal. Below I've highlighted just a few of the changes, broken down by product. Service Portal The activity log section overlaps the variables section after an upgrade Unable to edit fields with sp-editable-field (e.g. on user profile) in Service Portal due to REST error if mandatory fields are on the form Search page id=search doesn't refresh results while searching for a different term Date validation client script conflicts with built-in validation in Service Portal Translations of Service Portal translated_text fields are not captured in update sets Labels are not displayed for the checkbox on Service Portal Variables not cascading in Service Portal TinyMCE attached images are stored with the table name kb_social_qa_question in sys_attachment_list Setting for the date picker for the first day of the week is not working in Service Portal Scripted UI policies no longer work on Service Portal or mobile in London if 'Isolate Script' is true or for scoped apps Cannot create Standard Changes via the catalog on Service Portal Guided Tours Trying to create guided tours on the Service Portal sometimes fails with the error message "gtd_portal_title should ends with delimiter;" Service Catalog Catalog item count in SC Category page is not accurate when user criteria is used The Service Catalog Service Portal plugin must not be activated before the core Service Portal plugin Using catalog client scripts to set the value of a choice variable to boolean true or false does not work Help Information for a Variable in Service Portal — The Expand help for all questions field at the catalog item level and the "Always Expanded" field at the variable level are applicable in Service Portal. Portal Settings — Define the catalog item behavior in Service Portal using portal settings. Service Catalog Enhancements for Automated Test Framework — Write automated end-to-end tests for requester flows to validate the following for Service Catalog: Order guide in Service Portal, Multi-row variable sets of a catalog item in Service Portal and Variable editor in the Now Platform. Knowledge Management Knowledge articles created using article templates are not displayed correctly in Service Portal Facets for glide list field types — Configure facets for glide list field types on the Knowledge Service Portal search results page. Multi-language search facet — Select which languages to display your search results using the language facet in the Knowledge Walkup Experience — Use Agent Workspace to access and complete interactions at a walk-up queue location. Agent Workspace for Walk-up Experience provides a more efficient, integrated, and intuitive fulfiller experience. New to the Madrid release, the Walk-Up Experience includes: Agent Workspace for Walk-up Experience fulfillers Walk-up appointment scheduling Walk-up queue length notification Walk-up support when a queue is closed Tables Walk-up service channel Upgrade Changes Announcements — Announcements are active on new instances. Fonts — The Font Awesome library has been upgraded to version 4.7 and includes new icon names and syntax changes. Guided Tour Designer — With the Madrid release, you can also enable guided tours to run on Service Portal pages. Validation Script — Validate user input in a specific field type using a validation script. Overall, the Madrid release seems to be very promising with a nice mixture of changes, upgrades, and much-needed fixes. I am definitely looking forward to this release and all it entails. If you'd like to see the full list of the Madrid changes, check out the release notes here. If you know of some additional features in Service Portal not mentioned here, or if there is a feature that you're very excited about, please let me know in the comments below.
Featured Portal: Medical Center Portal
The team at NewRocket recently collaborated with a major medical center in Southern California on their multi-department service portal. This non-profit hospital and multi-specialty academic health science center employs a staff of over 2,000 physicians and 10,000 employees. NewRocket proposed developing a single portal to facilitate a seamless user experience while still preserving individual department identities. “With a relentless, persona-based focus on the user experience, NewRocket ensured our Service Portal replacement solved our request inefficiencies while simultaneously being easier to use. Our developers, fulfillers, approvers and requesters love it!” Portal Features The portal features a user-centric design model that allows for quick access to ticket status as well as the ability to favorite content throughout the portal. The use of simple icons and contextual search creates an easy to use system for interacting with the IT & HR departments. The portal has been well received by both the employees and administrators. Multiple business units (IT, HR) Custom designed responsive theme Uses out-of-box widgets for core functionality Categorized typeahead search results My Account page Support for user delegates Favoriting of catalog items and articles Integrated live chat Take a look at the portal and let us know what you think in the comments below.
Founder of 