Why is my ServiceNow form loading slowly, and how can I troubleshoot it?

[Matthew_13]

I’m running into an issue or again where some ServiceNow forms are taking a long time to load, and I’m trying to understand what might be causing it.

This seems to happen more often on tables that have a lot of customizations. I know things like client scripts, UI policies, business rules, and even integrations can affect form load time but I’m not sure how to tell which ones are actually slowing things down. Im hoping to get some guidance on:

- What usually causes forms to load slowly in ServiceNow?

- How you normally troubleshoot or narrow down the root cause?

- Which scripts or configurations tend to have the biggest performance impact?

- Any best practices you follow to keep forms loading quickly?

I would really appreciate hearing how you have handled this in real situations.

Thanks in advance!

[OlaN]

Hi, 

I would say that there are two things in particular you should look at.

Client scripts that run onLoad of record, and business rule that run on Display.
My experience is that more often it is poorly designed Client scripts that slows down performance.

You could also have things in your form that's badly configured on Dictionary-level with default values loading that could take time to evaluate.

And of course dot-walked fields in a record form will also degrade performance.

If you have no clue at all what's causing the slowness, start by disabling one client script at a time, and evaluate the difference in load time to see and possibly pinpoint the issue.

[Matthew_13 · Accepted solution]

Thanks so much for the detailed feedback! 🙏

I really appreciate the pointers about looking into on load client scripts and display business rules makes a lot of sense, and I hadn’t fully considered how dictionary-level default values or dot-walked fields could impact performance. 

I’ll definitely give that a try.

Thanks again for taking the time to explain this so clearly!