How to add Work Notes to stories from CWM board?

[Tom Sienkiewicz]

Hi, I am struggling to find where the activity section of CWM can be configured.

There seems to only be a possibility to add "Comments". But I need to enable adding Work Notes instead.

If anyone can point me to the right place that would be great.

Many thanks!

[Dan_Junqueira]

Hey @Tom Sienkiewicz  how are you?

I don’t think you’re missing a configuration in the Activity tab.

The Story record itself (rm_story) definitely supports Work notes OOB. ServiceNow still documents Work notes as a standard Story field.

Check this article - https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/it-business-management/collaborative-work-management/configure-for...

What seems to be different in CWM is the side-panel experience. The Activity tab is presenting the Comments composer, and from what I can see this is not controlled by the normal rm_story form layout in the same way as the Details section.

One thing I would try first is adding Work notes to the CWM view of the Story form:

rm_story.list → open a Story → View > CWM → configure the form and add Work notes.

ServiceNow specifically documents that Stories use the CWM view of rm_story for the fields displayed in the CWM side panel.

See this article too - https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/it-business-management/agile-development/create-a-story.html?

So that may give you Work notes from the Story details, although it will not necessarily replace the Comments input you highlighted in the Activity tab.

If your requirement is specifically:

Activity tab → type update → save as Work notes instead of Comments

then I don’t currently see an OOB configuration documented for switching that CWM composer from Comments to Work notes. In that case, I would avoid customizing the CWM component unless it is really necessary.

As another option, you can use the open full details icon from the side panel and update Work notes on the normal Story form. The underlying Story still uses rm_story, so the Work notes remain on the same record.

Interestingly, ServiceNow also documents Work notes as supported directly on Stories in other experiences, so this looks more like a limitation of the current CWM user experience than a limitation of the Story data model itself.

One more - https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/it-business-management/collaborative-work-management/configure-for...

I’d be interested to hear from the CWM product team whether exposing Work notes directly in this Activity composer is planned, because I can definitely see the use case.

Hope this helps. If it does, please mark the response as useful.

[Tom Sienkiewicz]

Hi Dan,

thank you so much for taking the time to review and give recommendations.

Adding Work Notes in CWM view for rm_story was the first thing I tried, indeed this does not affect the Activity tab in the CWM sidebar.

Opening the story in full details seems to be the workaround to use for now.

Fully agree on avoiding any customization of CWM workspace, it gets a lot of updates all the time so it is critical to stay aligned I think.

I really do hope we get the possibility to control whether work notes or comments or both should be displayed soon, for Stories I don't see much usage for Comments but Work Notes are heavily used by every agile team member in our org.

[Dan_Junqueira · Accepted solution]

Hi @Tom Sienkiewicz ,

Thanks for confirming. That matches what I was expecting.

I completely agree with you about avoiding customization here. CWM is evolving quite quickly, so staying as close to OOB as possible is definitely the safer approach.

And I agree with the use case as well. For Stories, Work Notes are usually much more useful operationally than Comments, especially when agile teams use them to track internal progress and technical updates.

I did a little more digging after your reply, and there is technically another option, although I wouldn’t call it an OOB CWM solution.

ServiceNow’s generic Activity Stream Compose component supports multiple journal fields. It can display journal fields such as Comments and Work Notes together, normally as separate tabs or in a stacked view. The underlying component therefore supports exactly the experience you are describing. 

See here - https://horizon.servicenow.com/workspace/components/now-activity-stream-compose-connected?

The problem is that CWM does not currently expose that as a documented configuration option. The documented CWM configuration allows us to control the fields shown in the Story side panel through the CWM view of rm_story, but that does not change the journal composer in the Activity tab.

https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/yokohama/it-business-management/collaborative-work-management/conf...?

So at the moment I see three realistic options:

1. Stay completely OOB: add Work Notes to the CWM Story view or use Open full details when someone needs to add a Work Note. ServiceNow explicitly supports opening the original record from the CWM side panel for this purpose. - 
   https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/it-business-management/collaborative-work-management/update-detail...
   
   

2. UI Builder customization: if the Activity Stream Compose component used by the CWM page is exposed/configurable, its field definition could potentially contain both comments and work_notes. That would give users both options in the composer. Technically the platform component supports this, but it would mean customizing the CWM experience.
   https://horizon.servicenow.com/workspace/components/now-activity-stream-compose-connected?
   https://www.servicenow.com/community/next-experience-articles/journal-field-components-in-configurab...
   
   

3. Smaller custom action: instead of changing the Activity component itself, create an Add Work Note action/dialog that writes to rm_story.work_notes. This would leave the OOB Activity component alone, although it is still custom development.
   
   

Given how frequently CWM is updated, I would personally stay with option 1 for now unless having Work Notes directly in the Activity tab is a strong business requirement.

But I definitely agree that being able to configure Comments, Work Notes, or both should ideally be an OOB CWM setting.

The interesting part is that the underlying ServiceNow Activity Stream component already supports that concept, CWM just doesn’t currently expose it as a standard configuration.

Hopefully we see that added in a future release.

[Dan_Junqueira]

@Tom Sienkiewicz hey friend. if this answer helps you please mark as helpfull and as solution please. Thanks in advance