In ServiceNow, Workspaces are modern UIs built for specific personas or roles. They focus on the core tasks these users need to complete.
Today, there are more than 50 out-of-the-box Workspaces shipped by ServiceNow. With so many available, it’s not surprising that there is an overlap in tasks these Workspaces can perform, and maybe one Workspace might handle this specific task better than another.
When you face this situation, you usually have three options:
- Switch Workspaces for that task – Not ideal. It forces users to jump between UIs, which is the opposite of what Workspaces are meant to solve.
- Copy or recreate the page in another Workspace – Also not good. It leads to high maintenance and duplicate work.
- Stay in your current Workspace and live with the limitations – The worst option. It creates a poor user experience.
So, what’s the solution?
Let’s say you’re a CSM agent using the CSM Configurable Workspace to resolve cases. Sometimes you need to open related incidents and work on them as well. The CSM Workspace supports incidents, but the Service Operations Workspace (SOW) offers a much better experience for managing them.
With the Zurich release, you can now use pages across Experiences. There’s no need to copy or recreate pages. With a few simple configurations, you can display the SOW record page inside the CSM Workspace.
And as a bonus: with the Service Operations Workspace ITSM Applications 8.0 Plugin, some SOW pages are already marked as shareable. You just need to configure which Experience should use them.
These are the steps you need to do:
- Configure a page so it can be shared across Experiences.
- Create a configuration to consume the shared page in another Experience.
- Ensure that additional routes for the shared page also work in the target Workspace.
1. Share a page
To share a page, go to the UX App Route record [sys_ux_app_route] and enable the Use across experiences [interoperable] attribute.
Once enabled, you’ll see a small blue icon in UI Builder showing that the page can be used in other experiences.
Keep in mind: users still need the right access and audiences, also conditions still need to apply.
2. Consume a shared page
To use a shared page in another Experience, create a UX Cross-experience Route [sys_ux_interoperable_route].
For example, you can configure the SOW record page so it’s used in the CSM Workspace. If you configure it like on the screenshot above, you will notice that the SOW record page will be used in the CSM Workspace not only for Incidents.
Add a usage condition such as table=incident and the SOW page will open only when incidents are viewed.
This configuration is also visible in UI Builder. Make sure you’re on the latest UI Builder version, otherwise, you won’t see the new indicators.
3. Configure dependencies
Now, the SOW record page can be used for incidents inside the CSM Workspace. But there is one more thing to handle:
Shared pages may link to other pages that don’t exist in the target Workspace. To avoid broken navigation, you need to define the missing routes.
This is done with UX App Linked Routes [sys_ux_dependent_route]. These records link the missing route to the shared one so that it’s also accessible in the borrowing Workspace.
If you have updated the Service Operations Workspace ITSM Applications Plugin to version 8.0, these dependent routes are already included.
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