ServiceNow Hidden Gem #1: Navigation Handler

[Rajiv Handa]

There are various types of ServiceNow developers (two of them are listed below):

Category I: You would open the Flow Designer from the application navigator, do the job, and done!

Category II: You would like to see the tables involved in a Flow, do some experimentation, or work on native ServiceNow UI with fields on the form, related lists, UI actions, etc. Then, as a curious developer, you are somehow able to figure out that the table corresponding to Flow Designer is sys_hub_flow. And finally, when you try to open one of the records in the sys_hub_flow table, BOOOM! it opens the Workflow Studio again!

The magic that did this is a feature called Navigation Handlers, which even I don't know when it was introduced. I know you can read more about it in the docs provided below, but I want to highlight here one use case where this came in really handy. 

Suppose you are creating an app on the Service Portal and do not want any user to access the backend fields, forms, or list layouts, probably because you might not have added all the relevant UI policies or client scripts as this app was not supposed to be used from the native ServiceNow UI. In this case, create a navigation handler and write the script so that only users with 'admin' (or any other restrictive role) get access to the native view. 

Some may argue that you can write an on-load client script on the form, which could redirect the user to the desired location. Yes, my buddy, you can do this, but remember, any UI-level changes can be easily bypassed if you know a few simple browser tricks.

Please note that navigation handlers are server-side code execution handlers that can support complete GlideSystem utilities, so they cannot be bypassed. 

So try it, and share your views in the comments. Refer this official product documentation:

https://www.servicenow.com/docs/bundle/xanadu-platform-user-interface/page/administer/navigation-and...