Customize the Playbook Experience

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Customize the Playbook Experience

    ServiceNow's Playbook Experience offers a customizable interface for managing playbooks using modular components, templates, and UI Builder functionality. This enables you to tailor the layout and navigation for agents and fulfillers efficiently, accelerating development and enhancing user engagement.

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    Key Features

    • Modular Components: Customize how playbook stages, activities, and modals display with components such as the Playbook Stage Picker, Activity Picker, Activity Viewer, and Playbook Modals.
    • Stage Picker Orientations: Choose between vertical or horizontal stage picker layouts:
      • Vertical: Displays all playbooks for a parent record, their stages, and activity progress.
      • Horizontal: Shows only the stages of the selected playbook, supporting pagination for playbooks with over five stages.
    • Activity Picker: Allows navigation between activities within a stage, expandable or collapsible depending on the stage picker orientation.
    • Activity Viewer: Supports two views:
      • Stacked view: Displays all activities stacked.
      • Focused view: Displays one selected activity at a time.
    • Playbook Modals: Includes modals for canceling playbooks and adding optional activities, essential for managing playbook flexibility.
    • Custom Layout UI Controller: Auto-populates inputs for provided components to speed up setup; note this does not support auto-population for custom components.
    • UI Builder Bundles: Preconfigured layouts (Focused Vertical, Focused Horizontal, Stacked Vertical) containing controllers, presets, activity pickers/viewers, modals, and stage pickers can be added as complete packages to new or existing UI Builder pages.

    Practical Use and Configuration

    • Use UI Builder to create or modify playbook layouts in configurable workspaces, Service Portal pages, or mobile web pages.
    • Add custom layout bundles to streamline setup on standard record pages or custom UI Builder pages.
    • Enable guided activity views to lead end users through playbooks step-by-step, improving process adherence.
    • Create your own custom components with UI Builder if needed, but preset auto-population applies only to base system components.
    • Navigation between multiple playbooks in the horizontal picker requires using a playbook template or a custom drop-down component.

    Key Outcomes

    • Improved agent and fulfiller experiences through tailored playbook layouts aligned with organizational workflows.
    • Accelerated development and deployment of customized playbook UIs using modular components and bundles.
    • Enhanced visibility and control over playbook stages and activities, supporting efficient task management and progress tracking.
    • Greater flexibility in playbook navigation and activity management, including cancelation and optional activity addition via modals.

    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.
    To toggle the Show Stages flag 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.
    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
    • Focused Horizontal
    • Stacked Vertical
    • Stacked Vertical
    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.