Customize the Playbook Experience
Summarize
Summary of Customize the Playbook Experience
This guide explains how ServiceNow customers can tailor the Playbook Experience using modular components and templates via UI Builder. It enables building customized workflows and interfaces for agents and fulfillers, improving interaction with playbooks by adjusting layouts, navigation, and activity management.
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Key Features
- Modular Components: Customize how stages and activities are displayed using components such as the Playbook Stage Picker, Activity Picker, and Activity Viewer.
- Stage Picker Orientations: Choose between vertical orientation, which shows all playbooks and their stages with activity counts, or horizontal orientation, which focuses on stages within a single playbook.
- Activity Picker: Allows navigation between activities, expandable by stage when vertical orientation is used, or collapsible for the current stage in horizontal orientation.
- Activity Viewer Layouts: Options include Stacked view (all activities visible), Focused view (single selected activity), and Guided view (step-by-step navigation without distractions).
- Playbook Modals: Add dialogs for canceling playbooks or adding optional activities. These are included by default in provided templates.
- Custom Layout UI Controller: Speeds up development by auto-populating inputs for provided components on pages.
- UI Builder Bundles: Pre-packaged layouts combining controllers, presets, pickers, viewers, modals, and client scripts are available for quick setup on new or existing UI Builder pages.
Practical Application
- Use provided UI Builder bundles for rapid deployment of customized playbook layouts such as Focused Vertical, Focused Horizontal, and Stacked Vertical.
- Customize navigation with stage pickers and activity pickers to fit workflow needs, including pagination for playbooks with many stages.
- Implement Guided activity view to direct users step-by-step through playbooks, enhancing user experience and reducing complexity.
- Add Playbook Modals to support common actions like canceling or adding activities, improving operational flexibility.
- Leverage the Custom Layout UI Controller to enable presets that simplify component configuration on pages.
- For advanced customization, create your own components with UI Builder, understanding that presets do not auto-populate custom components.
Next Steps
- Start customizing by adding playbook components or bundles in UI Builder to your workspace, Service Portal, or mobile web page.
- Follow specific instructions to add bundles to standard record pages or custom UI Builder pages as needed.
- Enable Guided activity view to streamline user navigation through playbooks.
Customize the layout of your Playbook Experience with base system modular components, templates, and more via integrated UI Builder functionality.
Components
- 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
- 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
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
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.To toggle the Show Stages flag flag on or off, .Figure 4. Activity picker when viewing stages horizontally
- 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
- The Focused view displays a single selected activity.
Figure 6. Playbook focused view
- The Guided view moves end users through a playbook, step-by-step. The sole focus in a Guided activity view is each activity. There are no stage pickers or filters as the end user moves through each activity of the playbook.
- The Stacked view displays all activities in a stage stacked on top of each other.
- 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
Figure 8. 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
- Focused Vertical
- Focused Horizontal
- Stacked Vertical
- Stacked Vertical
- 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.