Customize the Playbook Experience

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Customize the Playbook Experience

    The Playbook Experience in ServiceNow Zurich release allows customers to tailor the layout and interactions of playbooks using modular components and templates via the integrated UI Builder. This customization empowers agents and fulfillers by creating intuitive, efficient workflows that match organizational processes. Customers can leverage pre-built components or create custom ones, though data presets only auto-populate predefined components.

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    Key Features

    • Playbook Stage Picker: Choose between vertical or horizontal orientations to display playbook stages. The vertical view shows all playbooks for a parent record with detailed progress, while the horizontal view focuses on stages of a selected playbook with pagination for more than five stages. Navigation between multiple playbooks in horizontal mode requires templates or custom dropdown components.
    • Playbook Activity Picker: Enables navigation between activities within stages. When combined with the vertical stage picker, it allows expansion of stages to reveal activities. With horizontal stages, it lets users toggle the visibility of all activities in a stage.
    • Playbook Activity Viewer: Provides two display modes—stacked view (all activities shown together) and focused view (single selected activity)—to manage and engage with activities effectively.
    • Playbook Modals: Adds functionality to cancel playbooks or include optional activities through modal dialogs, included by default in templates.
    • UI Builder Bundles: Pre-configured layout bundles (Focused Vertical, Focused Horizontal, Stacked Vertical) combine essential components such as UI controllers, presets, activity viewers, pickers, modals, stage pickers, and client scripts, streamlining setup for new or existing UI Builder pages.

    Practical Application

    • Custom Layouts: Use UI Builder to add and configure modular components or full layout bundles to standard record pages or custom pages, enabling tailored playbook experiences across configurable workspaces, Service Portal, and mobile web.
    • Presets: Utilize the Custom Layout UI Controller to auto-populate inputs for standard components, speeding up development, though this does not apply to custom-built components.
    • Navigation and Usability: Select orientation and components based on the desired user flow, balancing visibility of stages and activities with navigational ease.
    • Guided Activity View: Optionally enable step-by-step guidance for end users progressing through playbooks to enhance usability and adherence to process.

    Next Steps

    • Start customizing by adding playbook components or bundles in UI Builder according to your use case.
    • Configure stage and activity pickers to match your navigation preferences.
    • Incorporate modals for enhanced control over playbook lifecycle actions like cancellations and optional activities.
    • Explore creating custom components if needed, keeping in mind preset data auto-population limitations.
    • Enable guided activity view to support users through complex playbooks.

    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.