Service Portal properties

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated July 20, 2026
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of Service Portal properties

    Service Portal properties in ServiceNow control various aspects of the portal experience for both administrators and end users. These properties allow you to customize error handling, user interface behavior, notification timing, sorting preferences, debugging options, and access control settings. Most commonly used properties are managed on the Service Portal properties page, while additional settings are accessible via the System Properties table.

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    Key Properties and Their Practical Use

    • Default 404 page: Specifies the page shown when a requested portal page cannot load, ensuring users see a friendly error page rather than a system error.
    • Browser error message visibility: Allows admin users to see error messages on portal pages to assist in troubleshooting.
    • Stream entry limit: Controls how many recent activity entries appear in conversation widgets, improving performance and usability by limiting history depth.
    • Notification timeout: Sets how long informational and error messages remain visible before auto-dismissing, enhancing user experience by managing message persistence.
    • Announcement sort order: Defines how banner announcements are ordered by start or end date, allowing admins to prioritize visibility of announcements.
    • Debug runtime information: Enables or disables Angular.js debug info to balance performance with troubleshooting needs.

    User Criteria Properties

    These properties govern access control in the portal:

    • Enable User Criteria: Switches entitlement definitions from role-based to user criteria, allowing more granular access control for portal components.
    • Entitlement override roles: Lists roles that bypass user criteria restrictions, typically including admin roles for unrestricted access.

    System Properties for Advanced Configuration

    • ACL enforcement for encoded queries: Controls whether read access control lists (ACLs) are always enforced on filter queries in list widgets, enhancing security.
    • Human-readable URLs: Enables configuring friendly URLs for portal pages, improving usability and SEO.
    • Cross-scope privilege enforcement: Validates access when form widgets retrieve data across application scopes, ensuring compliance with security policies.
    • Notification threshold: Defines the number of notifications before users can clear all at once, improving notification management.
    • SSO early redirect: Redirects users directly to the Single Sign-On provider login page, streamlining authentication.
    • Language selector enablement: Allows users to select their preferred language in specified portals, supporting multilingual user experiences.
    • SSO starting page ignore list: Prevents intermediate SSO pages from interrupting navigation to the user’s intended starting page.
    • SCSS parsing mode: Determines whether compiled SCSS is loaded as linked files or inline, affecting page load performance.
    • Performance Analyzer portal list: Specifies which portals display the Performance Analyzer icon for admins, aiding performance diagnostics.

    Implications for ServiceNow Customers

    By configuring these properties, ServiceNow customers can tailor the Service Portal to better fit their organizational requirements, improving usability, security, and performance. Understanding and adjusting these settings helps ensure a smoother user experience, effective access control, clearer communication, and efficient troubleshooting. Customers should review and adjust these properties according to their portal design, user base, and operational priorities.

    Service Portal properties control aspects of the portal experience for admin and end users.

    The most commonly used Service Portal properties are set on the Service Portal properties page. Some less commonly used properties are available only from the System Properties [sys_properties] table.

    You can access the properties listed in the following table by navigating to All > Service Portal > Properties.

    Table 1. Service Portal page properties
    Property Description

    Default 404 page (page ID or sp_page sys_id) for Service Portal

    glide.service_portal.default_404_page

    		 Set the default page that your users see whenever a page can’t load properly.The string must match the name of the page exactly.

    Show a message to admin users in Service Portal pages if a browser error is encountered

    glide.sp.show_console_error
    • Type: true | false
    • Default value: true

    Maximum number of stream entries displayed in Service Portal (activity widget, conversation widget, and so on)

    glide.service_portal.stream_entry_limit

    		 Limit the number of entries users can see in the ticket conversation widget. Users only see the most recent entries and can’t go further back in the history than the maximum allowed amount.
    • Type: integer
    • Default value: 100

    Duration (in seconds) info and error messages persist in the Service Portal before auto-dismissal

    glide.service-portal.notification_timeout.seconds

    Set the duration in seconds that non-critical notifications remain on the screen before they are auto-dismissed. If set to 0, messages do not auto-dismiss and require that a user close them.

    • Type: integer
    • Default value: 5

    Critical notifications should be tagged with the sn-sticky-notification HTML class attribute to prevent them from being automatically dismissed.

    If the glide.ui.accessibility preference is enabled, messages don’t auto-dismiss, regardless of the system property value. To set this preference, see Enabling accessibility features.
    Default sort order for announcements

    glide.service_portal.announcement.default_sort_order

    		 Define the sort order for banner announcements.
    • Type: choice list
    • Default value: Start Date Descending
    Options include:
    • Start Date Ascending: The oldest start date appears first.
    • Start Date Descending: The most recent start date appears first.
    • End Date Ascending: The oldest end date appears first.
    • End Date Descending: The most recent end date appears first.
    Enable debug runtime information

    glide.sp.debug

    		 Controls whether the Angular.js flag $compileProvider.debugInfoEnabled is set to true or false. This option allows debug runtime information in the compiler, such as adding binding information and a reference to the current scope on to DOM elements. This property is turned off by default to improve performance on the instance.
    • Type: true | false
    • Default value: false
    If user criteria [com.glide.service-portal.user-criteria] is enabled, the following properties also appear in the Service Portal properties page:
    Table 2. User criteria properties
    Property Description

    Enable use of User Criteria records instead of Roles fields for Service Portal entitlements

    glide.service_portal.user_criteria_enabled

    Define permissions for Service Portal widgets, widget instances, pages, and search sources.

    List of roles (comma-separated) that bypass User Criteria validation in Service Portal

    glide.sp.entitlement.override

    		 Allow users with a specific role to see any page, widget, widget instance, or search source regardless of user criteria.
    • Type: string
    • Default value: admin

    You can access the properties listed in the following table in the System Properties [sys_properties] table.

    Table 3. Service Portal system properties
    Property Description
    glide.service_portal.enable_acls_for_encoded_query_in_list

    Option to always enforce read ACLs for filter conditions specified in Simple List widget instances. If false, the Enforce field-level Read ACLs on Filter query terms option in Simple List widget instances determines whether to enforce the ACLs.
    glide.service_portal.enable_human_readable_urls

    Option to allow configuring human readable keywords in portal page URLs for the instance.
    glide.service_portal.enforce_cross_scope_check_in_form Option to enforce validating cross-scope privileges to a table when the form widget fetches data from a table.
    • Type: true | false
    • Default value: true
    • For more information, see Form widget.
    glide.service-portal.notification.threshold

    Specify how many notifications should appear before users have the option to clear all notifications at once.

    • Type: integer
    • Default value: 5
    glide.service_portal.sso.early_redirect.portals Redirects users to the SSO Identify Provider (IdP) login page without first redirecting them to the portal login page. Provide a comma-separated list of portal suffixes.
    Note:
    If your portal uses a customized version of the Login widget, you must update the sp_sso_early_redirection UI macro as needed to redirect users to the SSO Identify Provider (IdP) login page without trying to load the portal page first.
    glide.sp.portals.language_selector_enabled Allows any user to choose and view content in their preferred language.

    This property contains a list of portal sys IDs separated by commas. By default, the sys IDs for the Knowledge (/kb), Customer Support (/csm), and Customer Service (/csp) portals are included. For any portal specified, the language selector appears in the portal header if any languages are installed and active on the instance in addition to English.
    glide.sp.starting.page.ignore.list Ignores intermediate pages used during SSO authentication in order for users to be directed to their starting page rather than an intermediate page. Provide a comma-separated list of page IDs.
    • Type: String
    • Default value: login_with_sso,idp_disco
    glide.sp.theme.parse_scss

    Option to allow compiled SCSS files to be loaded as links to improve repeat page view performance. If set to false, SCSS files are included inline in the page HTML instead.

    • Type: true | false
    • Default value: true
    sp_allow_perf_debug_option_for_portals Specify the portals to evaluate using the Performance Analyzer by providing a comma-separated list of portal suffixes. For users with the sp_admin or admin roles, the Performance Analyzer icon (Open Performance Analyzer) appears on pages in the specified portals.