Platform Academy: Unlocking the Power of Controller Building in UI Builder

[Sharon_Barnes]

This week’s Platform Academy session brought an exciting deep dive into one of the most powerful tools for building modern, scalable experiences on ServiceNow: controller building in UI Builder. 

Led by Maria Gabriela Ochoa Perez Waechter, the session walked attendees through why controllers matter, how they simplify development, and the many ways they improve collaboration across teams. 

At its core, controller building is about creating the “brains of the operation.” Rather than spreading logic across multiple pages, controllers allow you to configure the business rules of your application in a single, reusable layer. The benefit? Any updates made to a controller automatically flow through to every page that relies on it, saving developers from repetitive rework. 

Controllers also make collaboration easier. In traditional setups, developers risk overwriting each other’s changes when working on the same page. By moving logic into a controller, one developer can focus on business rules while another works on the UI—without stepping on each other’s toes. This separation of concerns streamlines teamwork and boosts productivity. 

Maria illustrated these concepts with a fun demo: a Magic: The Gathering tournament organizer app built entirely in UI Builder. Controllers powered everything from registering participants to tracking match results, showing just how versatile this approach can be. The demo highlighted another key advantage: reusability. Once a controller is built, it can be connected to multiple pages and adapted to new scenarios with ease. 

For anyone looking to sharpen their skills, resources like the UI Builder Fundamentals and Advanced courses on Now Learning, as well as community blog posts and previous Academy recordings, provide step-by-step guidance. 

This session is just one example of how Platform Academy helps developers and creators push their skills further. Upcoming sessions will cover topics like localization, AI-powered mobile experiences, analytics, and process mining—all designed to inspire fresh ideas and practical use cases. 

Whether you’re just curious about UI Builder or ready to build advanced apps, controller building offers a smarter, more flexible way to create on ServiceNow. 

  

👉 Don’t miss out—join the next Platform Academy session, bring your toughest questions, and see how you can take your building skills to the next level.