The new ServiceNow mobile application is a great addition to our platform, allowing you to stay connected and productive when you're on the go, and to work at lightspeed. It's available for both iOS and Android, and works the same on both operating systems. This means that regardless of your choice of mobile device you can gain the same great benefits, which is especially valuable in a world of BYOD!
During my time in Customer Support, one area of the mobile app which I have noticed can cause confusion is list and form layouts. Due to the size of a mobile device's screen, it's not possible to cram in as much data as would be presented in the normal interface. This introduces new parts of the platform which can be configured to alter "what shows where" in the mobile interface. This can lead to some confusion when configuring the normal tables, and not seeing the changes that you expect reflected in the mobile interface.
UI16 Interface
First, let's go through the way that lists and forms are configured in the UI16 interface, so we can be aware of the differences when we look at the mobile interface later on.
Lists
List layouts are stored within the sys_ui_list table. Each record has a table, and a view. In addition to this, it has a user field. Records in this table with the user field empty are considered the "system" lists, and will be used by default. If a user personalises their list columns, there will be an entry in this list corresponding to that user, and that list layout will be used in place of the "system" list. If a user resets their column to the default (from within the "Personalise List Columns" dialog), it will delete this record and thus the user will be reverted back to using the "system" list.
This is similar to the way that User Preferences work, where a "user-specific" record overrides the system default record.
Forms
Form layouts are stored within the sys_ui_form table, and other related tables. We advise customers to never manually manipulate data within theses tables, and instead to use either the Form Designer, or Form Layout, to configure forms.
Mobile Interface
List view
Yes, this is a list of records, but that doesn't mean this is configured in the same way as lists in the UI16 interface. You'll notice that in the following list there are only two things showing for each incident: the Short Description, and record Number.
What shows as the main component of the list (in black/bold text) is configurable via "Document Titles", which are stored in the sys_ui_title table. The default out-of-box document title for the incident table is short_description, hence why the Short Description is showing in the list above as the document title.
The second part of how each record shows in the list (in grey/light text) is the "Display" field of the table. Out-of-box, the Number field on the incident table is the display field, which is why it's showing in the screenshot above below the document title of each record.
To configure which field/fields are used as the document title for a table, you just need to open the corresponding record for that table in the sys_ui_title table, and alter the fields selected in the Fields list collector. You can also write a script to determine what will be displayed; within this script, setting the answer variable to be what you want to be displayed. You can see in the following screenshot how you might use the script field to set the document title in the format: ([state]😞 [short_description].
Detail Screen
The fields showing on the detail screen will be determined by the mobile view list layout for the table of the record you're viewing. As with the UI16 interface, the list layout is stored in the the sys_ui_list table.
Note that if a mobile view doesn't exist on the current table, and the table is extended from another one, it will use the mobile view of the extended table. For example if you were viewing an incident and the incident table didn't have a list layout for mobile view, it would instead use the one from the task table (if that exists), rather than use the "Default view" of the incident table.
If one of the fields you have chosen to display in the "Document Title" is one of those fields configured to show on the list, it will not appear (as it is already appearing at the top in the "Document Title", and there wouldn't be any point in showing it twice!).
For example, the following fields are set to appear in the mobile view of the incident table:
- Number
- Category
- Short Description
- Priority
Notice how Short Description doesn't appear in the list, but it appears as the title of the screen? This is because the default out-of-box document title for the incident table is short_description.
Form view
Form view is quite simple, in that it uses the list layout of the mobile view of the table.
One last thing to be aware of is that for a number of the above configuration changes, you will need to close and reopen the app for the changes to be applied. Instructions for this vary per device, however here are some for iOS and Android.
I hope the above helps to clear up some confusion! If you have any feedback or further questions, feel free to hit me up in the comments below, or via twitter on @dylanlindgren.
Dylan
