Remove Pencil, Menu, and Checkbox from SOW Default and Custom Lists

Lance_B
Tera Contributor

‎06-18-2025 09:15 AM

My instance is using Xanadu Patch 8 with the current version of Service Operations Workspace. In the List view of SOW, is there a way to remove the two first columns? Column 1 contains a pencil icon and menu or copy URL icon (and a lot of white space). Column 2 contains the checkboxes. They appear on both the Default Lists and on the personalized My Lists for each user. I would like to remove them from both lists because they are not used by my staff and they take up a lot of room, especially on smaller screens.

Thanks for your help!

 

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larralapid
Giga Guru

‎06-18-2025 11:58 AM

these icons are standard in the Workspace List component in Service Operations Workspace (SOW), and unfortunately, they are not currently configurable through the UI builder or list preferences.

 

 

🎯 What you’re seeing:

  • Column 1: Pencil icon = open record in a new tab, menu = row-level actions.

  • Column 2: Checkbox = bulk actions.

 

🚫 Can I remove them?

Out of the box: No — these are baked into the Workspace List component. Even in “My Lists,” which is user-configurable, the component renders the action columns by default.

 

 

🛠️ Workarounds:

  1. Feature Request / Idea Portal: ServiceNow does monitor UX feedback for Polaris & Workspace. You can submit an idea on the ServiceNow Idea Portal.

  2. Custom Workspace Component (Advanced): If you’re using UI Builder, it’s technically possible to build a custom list component using the Now Experience UI Framework that omits these columns. But that requires frontend development effort and is not trivial.

  3. Smaller Screen UX: Consider switching to compact view or customizing your column layout to prioritize visible data and reduce row height. This doesn’t remove the icons, but improves visibility.

 

See related community post: https://www.servicenow.com/community/architect-forum/user-have-the-quot-knowledge-quot-role-service-... 

 

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Lance_B
Tera Contributor
In response to larralapid

‎06-19-2025 05:58 AM

@larralapid 

1. Do you have a new link to the Idea Portal? That one doesn't seem to be working.

2. Yeah, I don't know if it's worth the effort to build a whole new List UI. Really hoping for a setting I could just turn off or a simple script that would run when the list loads.

3. The complaint is actually "I don't like when things change so please put them back." Telling people to change their columns to work around the new waste of space SN forced us into probably won't help.

 

I have a server is still on the old version and I noticed another waste of space with the new design. You can't resize the left-hand list tree as small on the new version. The image below is as small as I can get it on my 4k monitor. Not sure why they would change that, but it won't be as noticeable on smaller screens. One more thing for the Idea Portal, I guess. 

Thanks, Lance

 

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