Configuring Service Portal

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Configuring Service Portal

    This guide outlines the essential steps for ServiceNow customers to plan and set up a self-service portal for employees or customers using Service Portal, Yokohama release. It highlights the workflow to configure a portal, though the sequence can be adapted based on specific use cases.

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    Key Features

    • Upgrade Service Portal: When upgrading from previous releases, additional tasks may be required to leverage new or enhanced functionality.
    • Create or Update Portals: Portals act as the core container for your site’s content, defining the URL extension, knowledge base, catalog, homepage, header menu, and branding. You can either create a new portal or customize an existing base system portal.
    • Configure Portal Branding: Use the Branding Editor for real-time styling and theme updates, allowing you to preview changes immediately. Advanced users can create custom CSS stylesheets but will not benefit from live previews. Note that Branding Editor changes override other customizations.
    • Create or Update Pages and Widgets: Pages shape the end-user experience, controlling layout and mobile responsiveness. You can build pages from scratch or modify base system pages. Widgets provide the content for pages and can be selected from base system options to expedite configuration.
    • Configure Search: Search features are enabled by defining search sources that pull data from one or multiple tables or external sites. AI Search can be enabled to provide intelligent query capabilities for faster, more accurate results.
    • Manage Portal Access: Control access by setting pages as public or restricted, configuring user logins, single sign-on, role-based access, multi-factor authentication, and advanced user criteria for granular control over pages, widgets, and other components.

    Practical Next Steps

    Customers should consider watching provided instructional videos for common configuration examples and tailor the portal setup to their organizational needs, leveraging the flexibility of the Service Portal framework to deliver an intuitive, branded, and secure self-service experience.

    Plan and set up a self-service portal for your employees or customers.

    Configuration overview

    The following list is a high-level overview of the workflow to get started configuring a portal. However, there may be use cases where performing these steps in a different order is preferred.

    1. Upgrade Service Portal

      If you upgraded from a previous release, you might need to perform additional tasks to take advantage of new or updated functionality in Service Portal.

    2. Create a new portal or update a base system portal

      A portal is the engine that houses all the references to content for your site. The portal record defines the URL extension for a site, as well as things like the knowledge base, catalog, and homepage. You can also use the portal record to define the header menu and the portal branding. You can create a new portal or update an existing base system portal to suit your needs.

    3. Configure portal branding

      With the Branding Editor, you can configure the styles and theme of your portal in a view with real-time updates. You can see how your portal appears to users with the click of a button. More advanced users still have the option of creating CSS style sheets for the portal theme. However, they won't take advantage of the real-time update that the Branding Editor provides. Changes made in the Branding Editor or to specific components of the portal (such as a widget or a page container) override any customizations made to the theme. If you need more customization than what the Branding Editor can provide, see Create a portal theme.

    4. Create new pages or update base system pages and configure widgets

      Pages are the centerpiece of the end-user experience. Page definitions not only control the layout of the content, they craft the experience for the user. Pages also help define mobile responsiveness, which is a key component in the user experience. Use any existing base system pages as an example for your own creation or create new pages from scratch.

      Widgets are what define the content of your pages. You can use the base system widgets provided with Service Portal to get started configuring pages.

    5. Configure search in a portal

      Search data displays within a widget on the search page. To make data searchable from a portal, create a search source that fetches data from a single table within your instance, from multiple tables, or from an external site. Enable AI Search to take advantage of intelligent query features and quickly find the answers they need.

    6. Manage access to a portal

      Manage who can access your portal by making pages public, configuring user logins and single sign-on, limiting page access by role, or enabling multi-factor authentication. You can also use advanced user criteria for access to pages, widgets, and more.

    Common portal configurations

    Refer to this video for examples of common configurations for portals.