What is the difference between a Gauge, a Widget, and a Gadget?

[robinchadwick]

I've been reading about Gauges, Widgets and Gadgets, but I'm afraid I don't understand what the difference is.

Can someone please explain the differences and when you would use one verses the other?

Thanks

[Stijn Verhulst3 · Accepted solution]

Hi Robin,

- a widget can be added to a dashboard or a homepage and can contain any kind of information. For example, you'd like to display an overview of critical and less ciritical approvals which can be modified directly within the widget. In order to create functionality like the latter, you can create UI Pages which in their turn are custom HTML pages; covering your own needs.

- a gauge is a widget with a specific use, which allows to make a report available for use on a homepage. In releases before Helsinki reports couldn't be added directly to Homepages, only gauges can. So when you add a report to a homepage a gauge is created for it, and the gauge is added to the homepage. ServiceNow removed this extra gauge-creation step as part of our efforts to improve the user experience around Homepages.

In Istanbul ServiceNow rolled out responsive dashboards with a drag-and-drop canvas. These responsive dashboards provide a modern user experience and can replace homepages for all users on a instance. So now it doesn't matter whether you add a report directly to a homepage / dashboard or via a gauge.

- a gadget is a widget with a specific use, yet it has a specific look & feel; they do not invoke for example UI Pages and display simple content (never really saw much use in this personally).

Then what's the difference between a homepage and dashboard? According to ServiceNow Docs: "dashboards enable you to display multiple Performance Analytics, reporting and other widgets on a single screen while a homepage is more basic; it can contain navigational elements, functional controls and system information."

Basically (as mentioned before for the gauges) ServiceNow is shifting towards usage of dashboards as they can do everything a homepage can. The real difference is that dashboards are more interactive and can work with a tabbed layout on the same screen.

Does this clarifies the necessary for you? 🙂

Kind regards,

Stijn

[Saurabh singh4]

Hi Robinchadwick

lets take the definition in the simplest way as per servicenow standards

WIDGETS  -  Widgets are reusable components which make up the functionality of a portal page. Widgets define what a portal does and what information a user sees. ServiceNow provides more than 125 baseline widgets.We can create a widget in many forms  but max usage is inside the service portal container where we define the a widget that can be out of the box or it can be customized by us only to achieve the desired functionality.

GAUGE  -  

Gauges are containers for holding graphical content on dashboards and homepages in ServiceNow®, but gauges are no longer supported. Widgets are the supported containers for graphical content.

It is not possible to create gauges through the Dashboard and Homepage user interfaces. When you navigate to System UI > Gauges and click New, a widget is created for your content. You may have gauges in your instance if they have been moved from an earlier instance in an update set or are present in an older installed plugin. If gauges do not contain content or do not behave correctly, create a new widget with the content you want to show.

Note: Admins can create gauges at the table level using platform functionality. An ACL on the sys_gauge table restricts other users from creating gauges.

To create a new widget, navigate to System UI > Widgets and click New. For an example, see Create a widget that displays a ServiceNow UI page.

GADGET  -

A gadget is a Homepage item used to show the knowledge search field and notes, for example, pulling up information from knowledge table.

The gadget's title and conditions are defined in the sys_widget table in the Gadget record. To access the Gadget record:

1. Navigate to System UI > Widgets.

2. Open the widget record (https://<instance-name>.service-now.com/sys_widgets.do?sys_id=a066bb690a0a0aa300d40d0cce7ed94f).

The render_gadget_nets UI page defines what is displayed in the gadget/widget (https://<instance-name>.service-now.com/sys_ui_page.do?sys_id=225c69940a0a0b57008029aaea037e49).

Examples

---

This section describes how to make some typical changes to gadgets.

• To change the title of the gadget that the user selects when adding content on the Homepage:

  1. Navigate to System UI > Widgets.

  2. Open the Gadget record (https://<instance-name>.service-now.com/sys_widgets.do?sys_id=a066bb690a0a0aa300d40d0cce7ed94f)

  3. In line 4, change:
     News' : { 'type' : 'news' },
     to:
     'NEWS TEST' : { 'type' : 'news' },

  4. Add the widget again.

• In the News gadget, to pull articles with Category= News not Topic=News:

  1. Navigate to System UI > Widgets.

  2. Open the Gadget record (https://<instance-name>.service-now.com/sys_widgets.do?sys_id=a066bb690a0a0aa300d40d0cce7ed94f)

  3. In line 29, change:
     return 'kb_knowledge_list.do?sysparm_query=topic=News';
     to:
     return 'kb_knowledge_list.do?sysparm_query=category=News';

Hope this will also help you Robinchadwick

thanks and regards 

saurabh