Customizing the Playbook Experience

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Customizing the Playbook Experience

    ServiceNow's Playbook Experience offers customizable layouts using modular components, templates, and integrated UI Builder functionality. This enables customers to tailor the agent and fulfiller interfaces to better fit their workflows and improve efficiency in managing playbook stages and activities.

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    Customization is accelerated by the Custom Layout UI Controller, which auto-populates inputs for base system components. While you can create custom components with UI Builder, note that presets only auto-populate data for built-in components, not custom ones.

    Key Features

    • Playbook Stage Picker: Choose between vertical and horizontal layouts to display playbook stages. The vertical layout shows all playbooks for a parent record with stage-level activity counts, while the horizontal layout displays stages for a selected playbook with pagination for playbooks exceeding five stages.
    • Playbook Activity Picker: Allows navigation between activities within stages. When used with the vertical stage picker, it expands stages to show activities; with the horizontal stage picker, it toggles expansion for activities in the current stage.
    • Playbook Activity Viewer: Manage activities within stages using display options such as Stacked view (all activities shown stacked) and Focused view (single selected activity). Additional layouts include Guided and Wizard layouts for tailored activity management.
    • Playbook Modals: Enable functionality to cancel playbooks or add optional activities via modals. These are included by default in templates.
    • UI Builder Bundles: Pre-configured layout bundles (e.g., Focused Vertical, Stacked Horizontal, Guided Layout) simplify setup by grouping essential components like UI controller, presets, activity viewer, pickers, modals, stage picker, and client scripts. Bundles can be added to new or existing UI Builder pages or standard record pages.

    Practical Benefits for Customers

    • Customize agent and fulfiller playbook experiences without extensive development effort.
    • Improve navigation and visibility of playbook stages and activities with flexible layout options.
    • Streamline configuration with bundled layouts that include all necessary components and scripts.
    • Enhance playbook management by enabling modals for canceling playbooks or adding optional activities.
    • Leverage UI Builder presets and controllers to speed up design and data integration for standard components.

    Next Steps

    To implement a customized Playbook Experience, start by adding and configuring components or bundles within UI Builder. Use the provided layouts or create your own to best fit your organizational processes. For detailed setup, refer to the specific instructions on customizing playbooks and adding custom layout bundles to UI Builder pages or standard record pages.

    Customize the layout of your Playbook Experience with base system modular components, templates, and more via integrated UI Builder functionality.

    Build custom experiences for your agents and fulfillers with the modular components in the Playbook Experience apps. To speed up the development process, add the Custom Layout UI Controller to pages where you want presets to auto-populate inputs for the provided components.
    Note:
    You can also create your own custom components with UI Builder, but presets cannot auto-populate custom components with data.

    Components

    Determine how to display these modular components in your Playbook Experience:
    Playbook stage picker
    The stages of a playbook can be displayed horizontally or vertically:
    • The vertical orientation shows:
      • All playbooks for a parent record,
      • The stages of each playbook,
      • How many activities remain to be completed in each stage, and
      • How many activities are in progress for each stage.
      In this example, a playbook named Playbook Experience Demo with stages named Assign, Create, Review and Update is shown. The Assign stage has 2 activities left to complete, with 1 in progress. The Create and Review and Update stages don't have blue numbers next to them, so they don't have any activities that are in progress.
      Figure 1. Vertical stage picker

      Vertical view of a playbook named Playbook Experience Demo with stages named Assign, Create, Review and Update.
    • The horizontal orientation only shows the stages of a selected playbook. To see the activities of a stage, select the stage.
      Figure 2. Horizontal stage picker

      Horizontal view of a playbook named Playbook Experience Demo with stages named Assign, Create, Review and Update.

      Playbooks with more than 5 stages paginate.

      Note:
      The horizontal stage picker only shows you the playbook you are in and its stages, so you can’t navigate between playbooks unless you:
      • Use a playbook template, or
      • Create your own drop-down component with UI Builder.

      All playbook templates include a drop-down component to navigate between playbooks, and is auto-populated when you select the Playbook Picker preset.

    Playbook activity picker

    The activity picker is where you navigate between activities.

    If you're using the vertical stage picker, turning on the activity picker means each stage can be expanded to shows its activities.
    Figure 3. Activity picker when viewing stages vertically

    Activity picker when you're viewing stages vertically.
    If you're using the horizontal stage picker, turning on the activity picker allows you to expand or collapse the entire list of activities for the stage you're in.
    Figure 4. Activity picker when viewing stages horizontally

    Activity picker when you're viewing stages horizontally.
    You can toggle the Show Stages flag on or off.
    Playbook activity viewer
    The activity viewer is where you manage a stage's activities. You can change the way activities are displayed in this space:
    • The Stacked view displays all activities in a stage stacked on top of each other.
      Figure 5. Playbook stacked view

      Activities stacked for the Assign stage. The 1st activity is complete, the 2nd is in progress and can be marked complete or skipped, and the 3rd is pending.
    • The Focused view displays a single selected activity.
      Figure 6. Playbook focused view

      A single activity that you can mark as complete or skip.
    • The Guided layout
    • The Wizard layout
    Playbook modals
    If you want the ability to cancel playbooks and add optional activities, you must add the Playbook Modals component to your pages. If you use a template, this is already included.
    Figure 7. Cancel playbook modal

    The Cancel playbook modal
    Figure 8. Add optional activity modal

    The Add optional activity modal

    To start setting up components for your customized Playbook Experience, see Customize a playbook in UI Builder.

    Provided UI Builder Bundles

    If adding each component individually isn't ideal, you can also add an entire layout to a new or existing UI Builder template.
    • Focused Vertical
    • Stacked Vertical
    • Stacked Horizontal
    • Guided Layout
    • Horizontal Wizard
    • Focused Horizontal
    Each layout contains the following components:
    • UI controller
    • Presets
    • Activity viewer
    • Activity picker
    • Modals
    • Playbook picker
    • Stage picker
    • Client scripts

    To add a bundle to an existing or new UI Builder page, see Add a custom layout bundle to a UI Builder page. If you're creating a new experience and want to add a bundle to a standard record page, see Add a custom layout bundle to a UI Builder standard record page.