What is Service Portal?
- Service Portal allows you to build a mobile-friendly self-service portal experience for your employees or customers. Service Portal is a ServiceNow AI Platform feature that is active by default and interacts with parts of the platform so users can access platform features through portals.
- Both beginner and expert developers can configure portals using Service Portal. Less technical users can make basic configuration changes to the UI using Branding Editor and other components of Service Portal. More advanced users can edit and extend portals, pages, and widgets. Expert users can use the Widget Editor tool to write scripts to power a portal, and even create rich web applications on the ServiceNow AI Platform.
- Whether you're adapting a base system portal or developing a custom portal, learn more about the available features that help you provide a self-service portal that drives productivity and satisfaction for your employees or customers.
How to use Service Portal
Service Portal is an application included in the platform UI, however it includes a visual layer for you to do most of your configuration. In the application navigator, navigate to Service Portal > Service Portal Configuration to view the configuration page.
The Service Portal configuration page provides a unique, intuitive way of viewing all the pieces of your portal and how they interact with one another. The configuration page allows you to take advantage of a real-time preview, while configuring portal settings. Use each of the tiles on the configuration homepage to assemble the different components of your portal.
If you prefer the platform layout for configuring Service Portal, you still have the option of creating your portal components within the platform UI. The two options are not separate. Everything you create in the Service Portal configuration page also appears in a table in the platform UI.
Who can use Service Portal
Several different kinds of users can configure a portal.
- Limited coding: Service Portal was designed so that even users with limited coding ability or knowledge of the platform UI could set up a portal.
- ServiceNow Experts: Users with an understanding of the ServiceNow platform can create portals, set up URL redirects, and view all the components of the portal in a table. Most portal configuration takes place in the Service Portal configuration page, but in specific circumstances, Service Portal administrators may need to do additional configuration directly within the platform.
- Developers: Advanced customizations and new widget creation are tasks for a developer or someone who understands AngularJS and Twitter bootstrap.
In all cases, the user configuring a portal must have the admin or sp_admin role.
Basic concepts
You should have a basic understanding of all the following components that make up a portal:
- Themes: Themes define the look and feel of the whole portal, but can be overridden by other style configurations.
- Pages: Pages control where and how you store portal content. Pages do not have a defined relationship to portal records, they simply exist.
- Widgets: Components in Service Portal are called widgets. You can use HTML templates, CSS, client scripts, server scripts, and any JavaScript dependencies to define what a widget does. From an AngularJS standpoint, widgets are essentially a superset of an Angular directive.
- Most of the data in Service Portal is managed in different locations throughout the system.
For example, if you are building a knowledge portal, the data exists in Service Portal, but the knowledge articles are authored and managed in the Knowledge application. The same is true for any other type of content you plan to leverage. Take time to understand which tables contain and control the data you are working with in Service Portal.
Service Portal core concepts
Service Portal contains two parts: a framework and a portal. The framework is composed of a set of APIs, Angular services, directives, and tools that help to build portals. The portal is a group of pages linked by page IDs.
After you enter a URL, the framework uses the suffix and picks the appropriate portal to determine the theme and configurations. Then it loads the configured default portal home page unless the URL has a specified ID.
Each widget added to a page becomes its own instance. A widget instance is basically the application of a widget in a page. Because widgets are reusable and can appear on different pages to do different things, a widget on a page is referred to as a Widget Instance. The page loads with content represented by widgets.
Widget instances get their logic from the base widget template, client scripts, server scripts, and depending on the widget, CSS.
Service Portal configuration page
Most Service Portal configuration is accessible through the Service Portal configuration page landing page.
In your instance, access the Service Portal configuration page by navigating to Service Portal > Service Portal configuration. The Service Portal configuration page opens in a new tab in your browser.
Service Portal configuration page
You can also access the configuration page by appending your URL with sp_config. For example, https://<instance name>.service-now.com/sp_config.
Use each option on the Service Portal config page to set up the different parts of your portal.
Page navigation in Service Portal by URL
https://<instance>/<portal suffix>/<guest language>/<keywords>?id=<page id>&lang=<language>&<page parameters>
Supported features in Service Portal
Service Portal is an alternative presentation layer for the platform. As such, not all features of the platform are extended to Service Portal. Consider your full application and the abilities of Service Portal before making considerable investments.
Not currently supported
Domain separation at Levels 1-3. However, Service Portal does include support for domain separation at the Data only level. For more information, see Application support for domain separation and Domain separation and Service Portal.
No plans to support
- @ Mentions
- Click-through/pop-ups
- Embedded HTML outside of HTML fields
- Embedded lists
- UI macros
- Formatters
- UI actions marked as Client
- Nested container Catalog variables
- Survey wizards
- OpenFrame
Service Catalog forms in Service Portal
Service Catalog forms are rendered within Service Portal widgets in a two-column layout. Complex forms may not display as expected.
Recommendations when creating Service Catalog forms
Use the following recommendations as a guide to building scalable forms that can be used in both applications:
- Keep forms simple. Because forms with multiple containers, variable sets, and client scripts do not always display as expected in Service Portal, keep forms short to eliminate conversion and debugging issues.
- Think in mobile. Any support for Catalog Client Scripts or Catalog UI Policies is the same as in mobile. Review the following resource: Mobile client GlideForm (g form) scripting and migration.
Service Portal and client scripts
You can use client scripts and catalog client scripts in the Service Portal if the UI Type is set to Mobile / Service Portal or All. Client scripts and catalog client scripts are used with the Form widget and SC Catalog Item widget, as opposed to a widget client controller.
Before flagging a script as Mobile/Service Portal or All, make sure that you are only using the mobile APIs. Setting a client script to Mobile does not ensure that it will work, it simply flags that the script should be attempted by the mobile app or the Service Portal. Many of your existing client scripts can be set to All as long as the API calls are supported by the mobile client scripting environment.
Unsupported client scripting globals
The following globals and APIs are unavailable in client scripts and catalog client scripts used in the Service Portal:
- $
- $$
- $j
- angular
- control
- document
- jQuery
- window
Note:
Widget client controllers are full Angular controllers and are not subject to the unsupported client script globals listed here. Use jQuery and Angular as needed.
Embedded widgets & g_form
When using the Service Catalog variable type Macro and Macro with Label, you can pick a widget to embed in a catalog item form. Within the client controller for the embedded widget you can access the field object and catalog item g_form instance using:
- $scope.page.field
- $scope.page.g_form()
Configuring Service Portal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYRI1Kufz4w
Summary of Article:
- Upgrading Service Portal
After upgrading a ServiceNow instance from a previous release, you might need to perform additional tasks to take advantage of new or updated functionality in Service Portal. - Create a portal
Create a portal for users to browse company resources, discover articles, and get help. - Defining portal styles
Pages are made up of containers, columns, rows, widgets, and widget instances. You can configure the CSS of each component, or use the CSS defined in theme and branding as global definitions for the portal. If you do not define CSS in theme or branding, Bootstrap defaults are used. - Creating portal pages
Use pages to organize content, ensure responsive mobile optimization, and design meaningful portal user experiences for your customers. A page houses containers and rows, which then contain widgets. By manipulating the layout of the page, and the widgets within it, you can construct your desired user experience. - Configure Service Portal Approval Configuration record
Configure the Service Portal Approval Configuration record to make the Approval assistance AI agent and Approval Info Record widget work better for your specific use case. - Using portal widgets
Widgets are what define the content of your portal pages. You can use the base system widgets provided with Service Portal, clone and modify widgets, or develop custom widgets to fit your own needs. - Configuring search in a portal
Service Portal displays search results data within a widget on the search page. To make data searchable from Service Portal, you can fetch data from a single table within your ServiceNow instance, from multiple ServiceNow tables, or from an external site. - Managing portal access
Control user access to a portal.
If you find my answer useful, please mark it as Helpful and Correct.
Regards,
Soham Tipnis
ServiceNow Developer || Technical Consultant
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/sohamtipnis10
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