Variable Instructions Not Being Displayed Internally vs Portal

[Joshua Cassity]

Hello there,

We've ran into an interesting predicament. When we create variables that have instructions, the instructions show up on the new Service Portal but they don't show up on the internal view of the catalog. Has anyone else ran into this issue and/or have a solution? Is this a bug?

See below:

Adding the instructions.

Portal View

Internal View

[rohantyagi]

Hi Joshua, I could reproduce the behavior. Looks like Portal picks up Instructions field to show on the UI however Service Catalog picks the help tag/text to show on UI. If you put a help tag on the variable, it will not show on Service Portal. For now, as a workaround, you can have the same text (instructions) in both the Help tag/text and Instructions. With this Service Catalog users and Portal users will both see the same info.

This could be due to the fact that Instructions were introduced for variables in the same release as Service Portal (Helsinki)

[Joshua Cassity]

My only beef with the help text is that the user has to click a button to see the text on the internal view. A minor thing but it's just an inconsistent behavior / experience that really bugs the heck out of me and then we end up having to hear about it from our customers.

[rohantyagi]

Writing scripts is my last resort but unfortunately i could not find a way to configure this feature. If this is something you really need badly then please take a look at this post, this is precisely what you need. Show/Hide Service Catalog Variable Help Text - ServiceNow Guru

Thanks,

_Rohan

[elemonnier]

I had kind of the same problem but this solution should work for you as well if you copy the Instructions text into the Help Text field.

We have a lot of Help Text filled in, some with HTML code in it. The problem is that Service Portal doesn't render the HTML we entered, so we needed to switch to using the Instructions for this. The next problem is that only the Help Text will render in non-SP view and the Portal view will render both. Not so pretty.

1. I created a global UI Script function:

function hideHelpBlocks(){
         //Only run in Service Portal
         if(window.NOW.sp){
                   var counter = 0;
                   var timer = setInterval(function () {
                   //console.log('*** Calling "Hide help-block Elements" UI Script: ' + counter);
                   window.$('.help-block').hide();
                   if (counter >= 6) {
                             clearInterval(timer);
                   }
                   counter++;
                   }, 1000);
         }
}

2. Add this new UI Script to the JS Includes on the theme you are using in the sp_theme table

3. Add an onLoad Client Script on the catalog item you want it to hide the Help Text fields in SP