Mark Roethof
Tera Patron
Tera Patron

Articles, Blogs, Videos, Podcasts, Share projects - Experiences from the field

 

Hi there,

 

The "My items" widget on the Employee Center homepage displays all user activity that requires your input or review. What is displayed under the "My active items" section is highly configurable through Activity Configuration. On the widget also a section "Quick tasks" is shown when the count for the primary activity is equal or greater than 1.

 

While the My active items section is highly configurable, the options for the Quick tasks are very limited. Basically what is displayed as Quick tasks is related to the primary activity. Though what if we want to show a different number of Quick tasks? Or if don't want to show any Quick tasks at all? How do we achieve this?

 

Instance Options

The Quick tasks section on the My items widget is only configurable through (overriding) CSS, changing the primary activity, and one instance option. Only one instance option, though it is the one for what we are after: changing the number of Quick Tasks shown under My active items.

 

By default, three cards for the primary activity are displayed on the Quick tasks. You can configure the instance options to view more cards. On the Employee Center homepage, press and hold the control key, right-click the My items widget, and then select Instance Options.

 

01.png

 

The options available are "-- None --", "3" and "5". Selecting 3 or 5 will be immediately effective. Selecting -- None -- actually does not work!

 

Applying different number of cards

So what if you are after displaying a different number of cards, for example 2 or 4? And since -- None -- actually does not work, how can show no Quick tasks at all? It's a small workaround, though a proven mechanism: editing the instance option record from within the platform. On the Employee Center homepage, press and hold the control key, right-click the My items widget, and then select Instance Options. On the top left hamburger menu, select Open in platform. On the Data record which is opened within the platform, notice the "Additional options, JSON format" field. This field holds the values for all instance options. To change the default 3 cards, simply update the value and displayValue to for example 2 or 4. If after not showing any Quick tasks at all, update the value and displayValue to 0.

 

02.png

 

Setting the value and displayValue will result in something like:

 

04.png

 

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Hope you like it. If any questions or remarks, let me know!

 

C

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Kind regards,


Mark Roethof

Independent ServiceNow Consultant
3x ServiceNow Developer MVP

3x ServiceNow Community MVP

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Comments
NM8
Tera Explorer

Hi Mark,

 

Thanks for the knowledge sharing. Seems the link (Experiences from the field: Employee Center) given at the end is broken, you may want to take a look at it.

 

Many Thanks

Neha

 

Alex Edmiston1
Giga Guru

Great article. Do you know if there is a way without cloning the widget to change the 'Quick tasks' header value when you change the primary activity? I've changed our primary activity to requests and would like to change the header from 'Quick requests' to 'My requests' or something along those lines. 

Mark Roethof
Tera Patron
Tera Patron

Hi Alex,

 

 

When changing the primary activity, "Quick tasks" title should update automatically (or if strangely not... just cache.do).
The gs.getMessage in the widget shows:
gs.getMessage('Quick {0}', data.activityDetails.primaryCountData[0].itemName.toLowerCase())

 

I just changed the primary activity on my PDI, see the instance difference:

x.png

 

Kind regards,
Mark

Alex Edmiston1
Giga Guru

It looks like in the November Employee Center updates you can now customize the 'List Heading' via instance options instead of it defaulting to 'Quick <primary activity>'. Example below. 

Screen Shot 2022-11-10 at 9.25.14 PM.pngScreen Shot 2022-11-10 at 9.25.02 PM.png

Dan O Connor
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Nice post 🙂 

 

I just recently did this for a customer who wanted to setup a Zero configuration option, as they didn't want to see previews of any tasks in the widget 🙂 

Akalu
Tera Contributor

I have request to remove surveys from the list. I could not figure out how

matthew_hughes
Kilo Sage

Hi @Mark Roethof I'm using the 'My Items' widget below:

matthew_hughes_0-1722842433468.png

 

These are the settings that are currently available to me:

 

matthew_hughes_1-1722842489482.png

 

How do I get Quick Tasks to show?

abcd574221
Tera Contributor

abcd574221_0-1747835789975.png


for Some user the tasks showing as 0, even if they are approver for the RITM

AdolfMontaner
Tera Contributor

@abcd574221 @Mark Roethof Hi I just want to know how to configure the look of the widget? On my end it is displaying different, is it because of the current version? My instance is Xanadu.

AdolfMontaner_0-1750686381816.png

 

Version history
Last update:
‎08-03-2024 10:19 AM
Updated by:
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