Build a search provider for your instance

ServiceNow Search Providers allow you search and our Forums from the IE and Firefox search bar.

About this task

In Firefox 3.x you can also assign a keyword to each Search Provider and access them from the address bar. For example, assign w to the wiki search provider and you can search the wiki for Business Rules by typing: w business rules in the address bar.

Figure 1. Search Bar

Procedure

1. Create an opensearch description document.
   You can review the OpenSearch standards for details on additional attributes of this document such as including an icon.

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
   	<ShortName>Demo Search</ShortName>
   	<Description>Demo Search provider</Description>
   	<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
   	<Url type="text/html" template="https://www.service-now.com/demo/nav_to.do?
   	uri=incident_list.do?sysparm_query=active%3Dtrue^123TEXTQUERY321%3D{searchTerms}"/>
   	</OpenSearchDescription>

2. Save the file to a web server with xml extension.
   The method used to install doesn't allow local file calls.
3. Create a simple html page to install the provider.

   <a href="javascript:window.external.AddSearchProvider('http://yourServer/yourFile.xml');
   " title="MySearch" name="ServiceNow Custom Search">Add ServiceNow Custom Search Provider</a>
   

   You could try running the JavaScript command from the browser location box instead of using the html file. This works with FF not IE.