question Re: Accessing/editing variables from now agent mobile app in Mobile Apps & Platform forum

Accessing/editing variables from now agent mobile app

Dharani Krishna — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 18:16:41 GMT

Hello All,

We have a requirement where we need to edit couple of variables before closing the catalog task from now agent mobile app.

Was able to display variables on details screen but was unable to configure variables in edit button (function nor action item).

Any inputs/suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Re: Accessing/editing variables from now agent mobile app

Adam43 — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 19:47:58 GMT

same here

Re: Accessing/editing variables from now agent mobile app

Dharani Krishna — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 15:01:25 GMT

Took a diversion and tried to access the result via portal and failed there too as our scripts are not working as expected on the portal view.
To achieve this, change the edit button - function type to "URL" and give your portal path to open the same record on portal instead of details screen. once you hit on the "edit" option from mobile it should take you to the portal form. e.g.: /sc_task.do?sys_id={{sys_id}}&table=sc_task
Try this, it may work.

Re: Accessing/editing variables from now agent mobile app

Adam43 — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 21:48:45 GMT

this is displaying, and I can edit variables that are multi-line text, but the ones i'm really hoping for are reference field variables- wanting to scan a bar code with the phone camera to bring it up into the variable field for the task. the display is showing a magnifying glass, but it doesn't function in any way. When there's a value already populated in one of the reference fields, I can tap the info button and it will bring up the related record though. is this maybe some additional piece of config on the mobile?

Re: Accessing/editing variables from now agent mobile app

Adam43 — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 15:46:54 GMT

here's what I have currently in my Now Agent, with this solution displaying. these magnifying glasses don't function though. I can however tap into and type in the multi-line text box (list agency specific software).

Re: Accessing/editing variables from now agent mobile app

Dharani Krishna — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 16:49:48 GMT

That's the same reason we're unable to achieve the result and the link which I've sent you before is replicating the platform view on mobile but ultimately displays mobile platform view by default and is barely interactive.

Actually, here's the proper URL to navigate to portal form from mobile -

/mesp?id=form&sys_id={{sys_id}}&table=sc_task

compared to the previous one this will be quite interactive, and you may achieve the functionality if not just configure whatever is required on the native view i.e., on sc_task record's platform view.

Re: Accessing/editing variables from now agent mobile app

Dharani Krishna — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 17:29:54 GMT

okay! so in order to have those buttons configured. You can use smart buttons and that can be done on the mobile details screen not on the portal. Here's the link -

Configure a smart button (servicenow.com)

Re: Accessing/editing variables from now agent mobile app

Steven Parker — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 21:28:30 GMT

Were you able to display variables that have no data in them? I can display the variables on a catalog task, but it only displays the variables that have data in them. It doesn't display the variables that may need to be answered on the task even if they are mandatory it doesn't display them.

How can I display all the task variables in the now agent catalog task? Also, how do you get an Edit button on the Catalog Task? Did you have to create it from scratch? Only one I see is Incident table Edit.

Re: Accessing/editing variables from now agent mobile app

dp11 — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 18:50:51 GMT

This is in reply on how to get the Edit button on the Catalog Task similar to Incident. Open the Mobile App Builder, select ITSM Mobile Agent, then select Incidents record screen. Scroll down the left panel until you see Edit Function Instance. You will need to create a similar structure for Catalog Task.

Please mark this reply as correct or helpful if it helped you with your question.

Re: Accessing/editing variables from now agent mobile app

Dharani Krishna — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 19:23:18 GMT

Yes, you're right! only the variables which has some date will be visible on the details screen. I've created an Edit button similar to incident edit. You need to map all action items in the created edit button -> Parameter screen/actions same as in incident.

Re: Accessing/editing variables from now agent mobile app

Steven Parker — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 20:14:29 GMT

Being that catalog tasks have varying different variables (essentially each task in our system could have different variables on it). How do you create an edit button to edit a task when each task variables could be different?

The Incident has category, sub category, short description, etc...so Editing that is the same for every Incident, but a Catalog Task could have any variable on it that you can create. So I am just confused on how you create an edit button that would allow you to populate data on a task (maybe some variables are mandatory on the task) when each task can be different.

Re: Accessing/editing variables from now agent mobile app

Dharani Krishna — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 17:48:36 GMT

Well! We know what variables are been used on a particular catalog task and that being said, you'll have to create separate parameters and map it accordingly for each of the variable (in edit function) and hide the rest of them using mobile UI rules limiting to display only few of them based on the task OR I believe the catalog UI policies might work on the mobile as well. So, you just need to develop a proper condition on the native view that'll reflect on the mobile.

This might not be a feasible way to do it, but since there are no other potential ways to access variables from mobile, I just followed this.

Re: Accessing/editing variables from now agent mobile app

Steven Parker — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 19:19:02 GMT

Yea that's just not feasible. When you have 1,000 different catalog tasks and a 1,000 different variables, there is no way we can build this out for each variable.

It's really disappointing in the lack of OOB functionality in the Agent app around Catalog Tasks. Ideally you would work tasks in the app just as if you were sitting at your desk. Some of our agents like to work tasks while they are in the field, but they aren't going to be able to at this time unfortunately.

Re: Accessing/editing variables from now agent mobile app

Adam43 — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 19:06:52 GMT

I'm actually starting an Impact conversation around this- hoping to get some assistance with our use case.

Re: Accessing/editing variables from now agent mobile app

Steven Parker — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 19:21:48 GMT

We have impact as well so let me know your results with this. I still don't know a way to allow our ITIL users to work/edit tasks in the agent app with all the tasks having different variables on them.

I created the ability for them to assign catalog task to themselves, but they can't work or edit the tasks.

Re: Accessing/editing variables from now agent mobile app

NBeheydt — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 19:39:18 GMT

We have the same issue. We have catalog items that have catalog tasks with variables that need to be updated before the task can be completed. So the mobile agent is not very useful for our technicians out in the field since they cannot update the variables to close their tasks.

Re: Accessing/editing variables from now agent mobile app

Adam43 — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 17:41:22 GMT

I had thoughts around a list view of all variables belonging to one particular task- a list view on the sc_item_option_mtom table, so that each variable was a seperate record to click on. empty ones were present, but I still need to figure a function/action to launch an edit process I think.

Re: Accessing/editing variables from now agent mobile app

Steven Parker — Wed, 22 May 2024 14:46:53 GMT

It's been a few months, but did Impact or support have any solution for task variables that need to be populated showing up on catalog tasks in the Mobile Agent app?

The app is actually useless to us without that functionality.

Re: Accessing/editing variables from now agent mobile app

Tim Preston — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 20:25:32 GMT

So, not sure if you're still trying to accomplish variables in the mobile agent. I'm running into this issue as well, but what I'm thinking of doing was something like this.

I would create a workspace and workspace page for the mobile agent in the UI Builder. Then I just add the form component to it and set it up. Then I'll create a custom form view called "variables" or something and only place the variable formatter on that form view and force the form component on the workspace to only show that specific view on that workspace page.

Then, in the mobile app builder, add a record screen segment on my record screen with a mobile web screen with the URL for my workspace page. This would basically add the variables for the task on a separate "tab" like the activity stream in the mobile agent. Then I just need to update my button to close the task to check for required variables and send an error message if they aren't all filled out. I already have a decision table set up for some catalog items and some script includes to check that all required variables are set before the task is closed, so that shouldn't be too much of a lift to complete.

That seems like the easiest route to me with the least amount of work since the form in the workspace will have all the same UI rules and scripts applied to it that any workspace view would have and also, seems to get around the issue of having to set up inputs on an input form screen since we won't always know which tables/conditions the variables would have, but did anyone find a better solution to this?

Re: Accessing/editing variables from now agent mobile app

Tim Preston — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 12:37:35 GMT

In case anyone was wondering, I couldn't find an OOB way to do this, so I tried my earlier post, and it seemed to work for us. Basically, all I did was the following:

Create a form view on the sc_task table that only contains the Variable Editor formatter
1. I called ours Mobile Variables
Create a workspace and a workspace page
1. The workspace and page can be called whatever you want
2. For URL parameters, you are going to need sysId and table
On the workspace page, I added 2 containers
1. The first container displays a message saying there are no variables for the ticket and is only displayed when the ticket has no variables associated with it
2. The second container contains the Form component and is configured to only show the form view "Mobile Variables" which I created in an earlier step and only shows when there are variables associated with the ticket
  1. I also included a save button in this container as well and set it to save the form using the Button clicked event which triggers the "[Form action] Save - Data resource" action on the form controller data resource
  2. All you should have to do to force the form view to be the mobile variables is set the view and forced view name to Mobile_Variables or whatever you called your view in the Form Controller in the data resources section of the UI builder
Go to the record screen you want to add a variables tab to and add a new record screen segment
1. For the embedded screen, you're going to want to create a mobile web screen and set the URL to the workspace page you just created with the sysId and table in the URL set to {{sys_id}} and {{sys_class_name}} respectively
2. If you don't have much workspace experience, you can probably use the platform view URL or a portal form view, but the workspace view seems to work better for us
After all that, you just need to update any actions on the screen that let you close the ticket to verify all required variables have an appropriate value before updating the ticket.
1. This requires using the script-type action item instead of any other option
2. For us, we use a script include and a decision table to tell which variables are required before closing, so we already had a script set up to do this

The steps above didn't take that much effort/time in total and seemed to work for us with a semi-final output that looked like this: