Platform Academy - Next Experience all menu editing

Sharon_Barnes

If you’ve ever spent time hunting through multiple tables to wire up app menus for the Filter Navigator/All menu, hand-editing order fields, and bouncing between records just to get a list module configured—this post is for you. In a recent Platform Academy session, product managers Forest Reed and Maria Gabriela Waechter demonstrated a feature that makes all of that a lot easier: in-context app menu and module editing in Next Experience, “All menu editing”.

Here’s a rundown of what was shown and what it means for your day-to-day as a ServiceNow admin.

What Is All Menu Editing?

All menu editing is a modernized configuration experience for app menus and modules in the ServiceNow platform. The goal is simple: let admins build and configure list, record, and landing page modules without needing to script, understand CSS, or navigate between multiple records and tables to get things done.

A few important callouts up front:

Target persona: ServiceNow admins building bespoke, line-of-business apps.
Not for workspaces: Workspace builds come with their own pages and often require complex scripting. All menu editing is designed for smaller apps primarily using list, record, and landing page modules.
Familiar architecture: It uses the same underlying architecture as UI Builder but wraps up a lot of the complexity—so if you’ve used UI Builder before, you’ll find it familiar. If you haven’t, you don’t need to.
Available in Australia: Install the plugin from Plugin Manager if you don’t see the plus button in the All Menu by default.

The feature is also grounded in real usage data: 70% of all app menu modules being created in the platform today are for lists. That’s a lot of admins doing repetitive work that could be much easier.

Creating an App Menu: The New Flow

The entry point is the All Menu. You’ll now see a “+” (Create Menu) button that kicks off the app menu and module creation flow. From there:

Give your app a name, assign a role, and optionally add a description.
You’re dropped into a module selection page where you can manually add modules or use AI-assisted generation.
Out-of-the-box templates are available for list, record, and dashboard modules—or you can add folders and line separators to organize your menu.

AI-Assisted Module Generation

If you have the UI generation plugin installed, you can describe what you want in plain language and Now Assist will generate the modules for you. In the demo, a prompt asking for an active task list filtered to the current user, an incident record page, and a landing page produced three configured modules—complete with the correct filters already applied. The “active is true” and “assigned to me” conditions came through without any manual wiring.

Drag-and-Drop Ordering (RIP, the Order Field)

The order field is gone—or at least, you never have to touch it manually again. Reordering modules is now a simple click-and-drag operation. Move line separators, nest items into folders, rearrange modules however you want. The app menu updates in real time to reflect exactly what your users will see.

Editing Modules: Everything in One Place

Once you hit “Done” on the module selection screen, you’re taken directly into the editing experience. This is where things get interesting.

List Module: Columns, Filters, and Data Visualizations

From the stage (the main content area), you can:

Drag and reorder columns inline.
Remove or add columns—with dot-walking support for related fields.
Set default filters that only admins can modify, while still allowing end-user personalization from the list component.
Add experience components from a curated toolbox—pre-wired to data, so they work right out of the box without additional configuration.

That last point is worth emphasizing. Rather than surfacing 200+ components like UI Builder does, the toolbox here is intentionally curated and context-aware—it surfaces components that make sense for where you’re trying to add them. Adding a data visualization component, for example, opens a floating config pane where you can set the data source and chart type. If you add multiple data visualizations, clicking between them in runtime automatically filters the list to show the corresponding records.

Record Module: Integrated Form Configuration

Record modules now include direct integration with form builder—right there in the editing experience. You can grab fields and reorder them, delete fields you don’t need, add new ones, and switch between one-column and two-column layouts. No need to jump to a separate form builder record or tool. The contextual sidebar is also configurable here, with opinionated out-of-the-box tab templates you can toggle on or off.

Dashboard Module: Dashboard Builder Integration

Rather than reinventing dashboard configuration, the team integrated the existing dashboard builder directly into the all menu editing experience. The dashboard ID is automatically bound to the module—no additional steps required to wire it up. (One note: the dashboard does require its own save action, separate from the autosave behavior of the rest of the editing experience.)

Autosave, Undo, and Staying in Context

Two quality-of-life features that stood out in the demo:

Autosave: Every change you make is saved automatically. No manual saves, no “are you sure you want to leave?” modals, no lost work.
Undo/Redo: Made a change you didn’t intend? Undo it without manually moving things back.

The broader design philosophy is single-pane-of-glass configuration. The 80% of configuration tasks you’d normally need to hop between records to complete can now be done directly in context.

UI Interactions: Coming Soon to the Action Bar

One feature briefly shown (though flagged as still in active development) is the ability to add UI interactions directly from the action bar in the module editor. UI interactions are the new interface for what was previously UI actions and declarative actions. You’ll be able to configure an interaction in UI Interaction Builder, then link it to your module from right here—without leaving the editing experience. There are some known caching issues being worked on, so if you run into problems, submit a case and share your feedback.

What About Existing Menus?

Old menus won’t automatically be converted to the new configuration experience. You can reorder existing menu items, but the new in-context editing won’t apply to classic modules. The recommendation from the team: if you want the new experience, the lift-and-shift approach—rebuilding your modules using the new UI—is likely the path of least resistance. Given how fast modules can be built now, it may be less of a lift than you’d expect.

Getting Started

Build Anywhere is available in the Australia release. If you don’t see the “+” button in the All Menu, install the plugin from Plugin Manager.

The team is actively developing this feature and is genuinely looking for feedback. What components do you want to see? What configuration options are missing? What bugs did you hit? You can reach them on the ServiceNow Community, LinkedIn, or in this article’s comment section.