Service Portal vs ServiceNow Platform

[Mudit4]

Hi,

I am new to servicenow and I'm trying to figure out how this works.

This is what I understand-

ServiceNow Platform is for developers and admins to configure Applications etc. Customer does not get access to this. For customers we can configure the service portal and the Customer has access to that UI. He has access to widgets and everything we configure for them in the portal.

^Is this correct?

Now suppose the customer wants to file an incident or a change request. How does he do that?

Can I customize the service portal for every customer? Every Customer gets to view reports based on his requests?

Is there a different API just for Service Portal? Or do we just expose Table API to allow customers to create incident/change requests.

[Radim Tichy · Accepted solution]

Hello Mudit,

in short we can say the ServiceNow Platform is the basement. It is some central engine enabling all what is build on top and what is visible for end-users.

End users could be roles such as: developers, ITSM, ITIL, support, operations, customer, approver, fulfiller....any person.

From different point of view we can also say that end-users, depending of their role, can work with platform using "backend"....this is what you see when login to the ServiceNow with menus, filters, tables, forms...

Backend can be used to develop, make settings on the ServiceNow instance - of the platform, make a modifications etc. But backend is usually used also for operations, ITIL users, fulfillers and so on. To resolve incidents, resolve change requests.

Frontend, customer portal, support portal, service portal - this is some sort of landing area for your "final" customers, to order, to request, to potentially approve....to get help and consume in a simple way your services.

Portal is used for easy to get in touch with customer, but there is no such power to deliver complex functionality or heavy logic behind. It is possible..but...

Even if you have many possibilities how to make different look and feel of portal pages, widgets... for every customer I would not recommend this. I would rather go for unified very simple portal valid for all customers. This will save your development rapidly and future needed support.

Supporting of thousands versions of portal pages customized for every customer seems for ServiceNow developer or service manager like a night mare.

When we talk about potential customized reports or sharing differently content of the backend sources - yes, then you have quite unlimited possibilities how to do this, how to make and deliver custom reports in different form to your customers.

And about the API...this is more questions to the integration possibilities. While some ServiceNow customers use their default table API to manage incident/change/problem records without limitation also in direction from their customers more common approach is to create own partially enclosed integration interface using OOB features (REST, SOAP, scripted services, import sets), but not directly exposing full set of ServiceNow API. This could be even problematic often from security point of view.

It is quite complex question or set of questions you asked. Much better will be to read the documentation which is a bit time consuming when I thing about already HUGE number of articles or just to contact someone to get more view on ServiceNow platform capabilities and possibilities.

Kind Regards

Radim

[Mudit4]

Hi @Radim Tichy 

Thank you for this amazing answer! This does solve my doubts as to what the customer faces and how ServiceNow Platform works. 

Yes I am going through the documentation and it helps a lot too. Trying to get the basics down before i start developing on the platform.

Thanks again!

Regards

Mudit