Navigating back to your previous page in a CMS portal

[kobby_adu-nti]

Some customers have reported seeing unexpected results in the CMS when using the navigation tools available on the platform; such as the 'back' button, when rendering content from their instance in a CMS portal. Content displayed in an instance can be made available in the CMS using the gsft_main frame.

The Navigation Stack is the portion of the ServiceNow suite of applications that determines where a user will be redirected. The Navigation Stack can be thought of as the end users' navigation history in the system. It is updated every time a user views a new page. However, when a record/list from main content frame is displayed on the CMS portal the end user may have navigated to this content from a page on the CMS that is not managed by the navigation stack. As a result of this we may see controls, such as the gsft_main "back" button, taking users to a page not previously visited or even a blank page. This can all be detrimental to the user's experience.

We can illustrate this in the series of images below:

1. Navigate to the user profile "/ess/profile.do"

2. Click on the back button.

3. See that the end user does not end up on the page he started on

So what can be done to combat this behaviour?

There are two workarounds to help our user revert back to their previously visited page:

1. Hide the button in CSS. This can be achieved with the following code:

   .navbar-btn {
      display:none;
      }

2. Alter the 'url' definition of the   iFrame. Customers may choose to insert a new value into the sysparm_stack parameter in the url field of the iFrame, or choose to remove it altogether.

   By default the iFrame record URL field will have sysparm_stack defined OOB. Lets take the "my profile" iFrame as an example

   

   Updating the URL parameter from the value:

   sys_user.do?sysparm_query=sys_id=javascript:gs.getUserID()&sysparm_stack=no&sysparm_view=ess

                     to the value:

            sys_user.do?sysparm_query=sys_id=javascript:gs.getUserID()&sysparm_view=ess

   This will cause the frame to reload when you click the back button. Or try the following:

   sys_user.do?sysparm_query=sys_id=javascript:gs.getUserID()&sysparm_stack=main&sysparm_view=ess

   This will insert the main page into the stack.

For more details on the sysparm_stack parameter check out the following Service Now Wiki link:

Navigation Stack - ServiceNow.